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#66550 04/20/02 01:22 PM
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in the spirit of the Board's longstanding atmosphere of philopolemica, i offer a few of my favorite words describing arguments, arguers, and the like:

prolepsis - rendering an argument ineffective by anticipating and disarming it hi, W'ON

trichoschisticism - hair-splitting; arguing overly fine points

logicaster - a person pedantic in argument; a person whose logic is less valid than he thinks

choplogic - absurdly convoluted, sophistical, or illogical argumentation; glib and specious reasoning



and this last one, which i think may be a legal term (Sparteye?? can you elaborate?)

ex silentio - from silence: basing an argument on the lack or absence of evidence, data, firm proof, etc.

i'm not sure i understand the last ~ does this mean that the aggressor in the argument bases his/her argument on the fact that his/her opponent hasn't offered some sort of empirical proof?

~~~~~~~~

anyone care to add to the list? rhetorical terms are of course welcome =)


NOTE: all liability is specifically released by this poster; should anyone choose to use any of these terms while engaged in real life argumentation, specifically with one's spouse, they shall do so at their own risk.


#66551 04/20/02 01:59 PM
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only days ago it seems, we had the thread on elizabethian insults, rememeber? take one word from column A, one from column B, and finish with a word from Column C.

Caradea is being a bit clever, but i think her efforts might serve to repullulate hard feelings.

Please feel free to respond, using any obsure, off beat, or interesting word you can thing off.

don't forget to check out WWFTD, or Peter Bowler's Supior Person's Book of Words, or your favorite reference.



#66552 04/20/02 02:34 PM
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Krup you!
[cheesy grin]


#66553 04/20/02 02:35 PM
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Dear of troy: I do not sense in caradea's post any hint that she wants to prolong the polemics. I see only a bid to have us learn to use properly the terms she has listed. I am in favor of that.


#66554 04/20/02 04:35 PM
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Just came across choplogic this morning while reading the dictionary. Wasn't there a famous work entitled The Choplogigetics?


#66555 04/20/02 04:52 PM
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one tool of a philopolemica(n)(?) might be battology--the continual reiteration of the same words or phrases

i am trying to stay in the spirit you sugget, Dr bill, but i am skittish, and fear this thread might lead to Jackie giving us a jobation


#66556 04/20/02 05:10 PM
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on the nether side of argument we have eristical, from Eris the goddess of strife; and ipsedixitism, an arbitrary or dogmatic argument (or just call it argle-bargle); and paralogism, a piece of false or erroneous reasoning, an illogical argument.



()

#66557 04/20/02 08:08 PM
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paralogism, a piece of false or erroneous reasoning, an illogical argument.

So, then, would Mr. Spock be incapable of entering into a paralogism, since he is incapable of being paralogistic? And does this make him a paralogiaphobe, or is this just a logical reaction due to the nature of his being? Or am I waxing paralogistical, myself, here? Answers, damn you! I want answers! "you" in the collective sense



The Only WO'N!

#66558 04/20/02 09:16 PM
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caredea, you'll find an lovely list at this nicely-titled site: http://www.nobeliefs.com/fallacies.htm

From that site, on your question about appeal to ignorance (argumentum ex silentio): appealing to ignorance as evidence for something. (e.g., We have no evidence that God doesn't exist, therefore, he must exist.) Ignorance about something says nothing about its existence or non-existence.¹

In other words, argument ex silentio does not, as you'd surmised, mean requiring that arguments be supported by evidence. Quite the contrary: it means the attempt to support one's argument by the very absence of evidence.

I particularly enjoyed bandwagon fallacy:
concluding that an idea has merit simply because many people believe it or practice it. Simply because many people may believe something says nothing about the fact of that something. For example many people during the Black plague believed that demons caused disease.

¹Another site defines "argumentum ex silentio as an argument based on suppressing something", but this seems to me mistaken.





#66559 04/20/02 09:26 PM
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Appeal to faith

caridea ;) -

I am sure you will like this analysis:

Faith depends on irrational thought and produces intransigence.




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