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To: dsc
Your setting up and knocking down the incest argument was, therefore, a straw man.

No, it was an answer to your question. You simply expected me to respond in a different way. You might want to check out this: Straw Man.

83 posted on 06/17/2005 7:12:44 AM PDT by Hemingway's Ghost (Spirit of '75)
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To: Hemingway's Ghost

Let's look at your link.

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:

Person A has position X.

(Call my position as described in my last note position X.)

Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).

(You presented this position Y: “Since society rightly dictates that having sexual feelings for members of one's own blood family is wrong, you now have a device by which you can leap to this conclusion: "since I wouldn't want to see my niece naked in Playboy magazine, Playboy magazine---and everything pornographic in general---must therefore be wrong." Clearly a misrepresentation of my position.)

Person B attacks position Y.

(Which you did, saying, for instance, “I merely pointed out how specious it was as a line of reasoning.” Yes, I agree, it is specious as a line of reasoning. However, it is a line of reasoning I never advanced.)

Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

(Res ipsa loquitur.)

"No, it was an answer to your question."

As we have just seen, it wasn't. It was an attack on the straw man you set up: the incest argument.


84 posted on 06/17/2005 7:33:27 AM PDT by dsc
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