Can We Ever Pin One Down to a Formal Fallacy?
Erik C. W. Krabbe · 1995
According to one definition of ‘fallacy’, a fallacy is a violation of a rule of critical dialogue. The question then arises what a critic is to do about alleged violations. How can she convincingly build up a case that a fallacy was committed and that her adversary should retract his argument? In this paper formal fallaciousness, and more generally non sequitur, will be studied from such a dialectical point of view. Basically, to substantiate a charge of formal fallaciousness, the critic is to show two things: that the argument is invalid and that the invalidity is of a vicious type, meaning that it violates a dialogue rule. It appears that there are several techniques of which the critic may avail herself to show invalidity, the most vigorous one being that of giving a counterexample. Notwithstanding the Oliver-Massey asymmetry thesis, this is a strong method of showing invalidity.