“Getting Duped”

Just a quick distraction from the excellent discussion of David’s book. A short pop piece that I wrote with my friend Yvonne Raley titled “Getting Duped” is about to appear in Scientific American Mind. “Getting Duped” identifies a new fallacy, a twist on the Straw Man, called The Weak Man, in which one picks one’s weakest opponent, soundly refutes him or her, and then claims that the weak opponent is representative of the strength of all opposition to one’s view. The claim is made that much of the polarized discourse in popular political commentary employs this fallacy (viz., refute Ward Churchill, then claim to have refuted Noam Chomsky). Anyway, I thought it might of of interest. Here’s a link to the piece: “Getting Duped.”

It should be mentioned that “Getting Duped” draws on a paper I co-authored with Scott Aikin that appeared in Argumentation titled “Two Forms of the Straw Man”.

Comments, criticisms, thoughts, refutations, etc. are of course welcome.