RE: AF Hall of Fallacies
January 4, 2017 at 8:46 pm
(This post was last modified: January 4, 2017 at 8:50 pm by Thumpalumpacus.)
(January 4, 2017 at 2:08 am)robvalue Wrote: It's sort of a slippery slope fallacy I guess, as well. If this is true, then this other thing which is a bit like it is also true, and then this other thing is also true and...
The way I learnt of the Gish Gallop, many years ago, is that it is a bombardment of questions, one after the other, giving one no time to answer one question in particular because each have complex answer. In that sense, it's a rhetorical device used to shut down conversation by shoveling on so many assumptions that unraveling them takes so much time that the audience does of boredom, losing sight of the original point: "Aha, but you didn't answer this, therefore I'm right!" is the explicit or assumed conclusion.
(January 4, 2017 at 2:35 am)Astonished Wrote:(January 4, 2017 at 2:18 am)robvalue Wrote: Exactly, yeah. I can't think of a specific name for that. It's one of a number of dishonest techniques.
Like Thump said, it's a string of non sequiturs.
You know, I've really got to start talking with some more of my friends who are interested in reforming the English language to accommodate the evolution of words. We can invent new ones for things like that, and what with new gender identity terms and such, there's room for new words in other contexts too. Personally I'm more interested in reforming the standard English alphabet, and giving each sound its own character, and getting rid of some of the unnecessary things like C, which can easily be replaced by 'S' and 'K'. But that's kind of off-topic. Still, it would be nice if this particular set of fallacious add-ons had a formal name, possibly even if there are certain specific variations of it. Like if you're just trying to sneak one extra caveat in, or if you shoehorn several. And if they're at least closely related or completely disconnected non-sequiturs.
The beauty of the English language is that it is so malleable. "Gish Gallop" is an example, recruiting the metaphor of a horse at full speed to describe a barrage of questions launched so quickly that invariably one or more gets missed, launching the "Aha!" phase.
