Abstract
In this paper, we consider the straw man fallacy from the perspective of pragmatic inference. Our main claim is that the straw man fallacy is a ‘pragmatic winner’ not primarily because of its persuasive power but rather because it targets the pragmatic cognitive-inferential skills of its victim while enhancing the prestige of its author. We consider that in the context of a straw man fallacy, the issue of the burden of proof, which is ‘reversed’, does not directly bear on the argumentation itself but has essentially to do with the difficulty for the targeted speaker of getting the attention of the audience back. It is difficult because countering this fallacy involves primarily a discussion of the reasons why the inference drawn (the meaning or the thought fallaciously attributed to the targeted speaker) was unduly derived, a process which is virtually destined to be a failure first of all because of the lack of relevance (in the sense of Sperber and Wilson in Relevance. Communication and cognition. Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) of justifications in comparison with that of actual points. Notions of retractability and the explicit-implicit divide are central to our approach.
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Notes
- 1.
These approaches are not similar; they diverge on various points which we cannot discuss here. They however all tackle the fact believability often relies on other processes than analytical, reflexive, judgement.
- 2.
For a thorough discussion of language evolution at large, including these types of verbal behaviour, see Reboul (forthcoming 2017).
- 3.
- 4.
Needless to say, the notion of retractability is the cognitive psychological counterpart of the formal cancellability of implicatures pointed out by H. P. Grice. We will come back to these notions below.
- 5.
Sperber and Wilson (1995, first edition 1986) argue that the process of comprehending an utterance relies on a principle which can be summarized as follows: ‘look for relevance’. The hearer assumes (and the speaker assumes that the hearer assumes) that the speaker is speaking relevantly: his utterance provides as much information as expected for the smallest possible cognitive expense.
- 6.
In fact, the SMF may also occur on the basis of other communicative or even non communicative behaviours, which is not surprising because this fallacy is basically about attributing intentions and thoughts to an individual, which can be reconstructed on the basis of various forms of behaviour, not only verbal utterances. This chapter focuses specifically on those SMFs that are linked to verbal utterances.
- 7.
Example by courtesy of Thierry Herman, Steve Oswald and Misha Müller. Our (approximate) translation.
- 8.
Even if this reconstruction may come from some manipulation of ‘what is said’: such a manipulation is actually extracting a potential inference (for example, when many is rephrased as all as an inference of an understatement).
- 9.
This is a scalar inference. Such inferences are sometimes still named scalar implicatures by reference to the Gricean conception that there is only ‘what is said’ and ‘what is implicated’ but they actually fall within what is felt as explicit but context-dependent.
- 10.
For more details on this process, as well as on the notions of strong and weak implicatures and explicatures, see Sperber and Wilson (1995).
- 11.
On the notions discussed in this paragraph, see Sperber et al. (2010).
- 12.
- 13.
Certainly, a justification is a point in some way, but since it is directly subordinate to some other point, we will not call them points proper.
- 14.
See also de Saussure (2005).
- 15.
‘The argumentative theory of reasoning blog’: https://sites.google.com/site/hugomercier/theargumentativetheoryofreasoning.
- 16.
Both better outcomes in collective decision making and targeting manipulative attempts are operations that go hand-in-hand in argumentation; that one is the main evolutionary reason of argumentation is out of the scope of this paper, so we will not attempt at discussing the various positions on offer here in this respect.
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de Saussure, L. (2018). The Straw Man Fallacy as a Prestige-Gaining Device. In: Oswald, S., Herman, T., Jacquin, J. (eds) Argumentation and Language — Linguistic, Cognitive and Discursive Explorations. Argumentation Library, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73972-4_8
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