If anything automatic labelling of fallacies just risks running foul of the fallacy fallacy.

I'd like to hear some examples.

I don't suggest turning off logic in casual conversation. Rather I suggest that one doesn't put it in autopilot -- as if fallacies (or their lack thereof) are the ultimate judgement of an argument.

So? That's a valid debate technique, not a logical fallacy.

That's why I wrote the comment. arianvanp brought them up, was pedantic, and also wrong about their usage.

I think the value of enumerations -- in addition to creating a vocabulary which is often useful in discussing problems with an argument, even if, as you correctly note, exactly which fallacy is most applicable is a subject of interpretation -- is that it helps recognize instances of potentially problematic arguments. Even if, on a certain level of abstraction, a lot of the named fallacies are just different views of a smaller number of real problems, understanding the different manifestations of those common problems helps to recognize them in practice.

You just don't know what a fallacy is.

> Oh, so you want to jail every offender of X?

This is not what I'm saying. I'm disagreeing, and putting forward a stronger, opposite claim.

Isn't that ambiguous?

You could mean:

> It is not a logical fallacy ever.

or

> It is not always a logical fallacy.

I suspect you mean the latter but some might intepret you as meaning the former.

This is the fallacy of circular reasoning.

True! But I also think that the intent to immediately jump to logical fallacies is a sign of weakness. If you can't dispute the premises (or even understand them) you can jump right to an area that allows a) total victory, he used a fallacy somehow somewhere! or b) the argument breaks down into a subjective analysis of whether someone committed a fallacy thus allowing the argument to continue without having to face the other persons argument.

Maybe it is just me, but I find that even the (few) people without any critical thinking skills don't really commit classical logical fallacies. The problem isn't the surface argument but rather the evidence or the premises that is usually the issue.

Agreed. This is very very common unfortunately.

Generally, I classify any argument in a discussion to consist of two parts - about the central topic and off topic (much like ratio decidendi and ober dictum in case judgments). It is important to ignore "ober dictum" and concentrate on "ratio decidendi" much like in law. Fallacies should be pointed out in on-topic part of the discussion while the fallacies in the off-topic part may be used to point out a general pattern or behavior of the person at the other end of the table. It should be made explicitly clear that off-topic sentence fallacies have no bearing on the content of the on-topic sentences. The best strategy however, is to quote the on-topic part and ignore the off-topic parts.

I think the chances of somebody learning to match the entries without understanding at all are fairly low. Computers could do it of course, but that's a different problem.

> Engaging in productive discourse is not associated with knowing the names of fallacies.

The former is not a necessary consequence of the latter and the latter is not a prerequisite for the former, but I think if your debate only involves people that know about common logical fallacies it's likely to be a better debate.

No, there aren't any fallacies in that sentence and can't be.

The statement expresses a personal preference; to be fallacious there must be some logic that can be unsound. That is, it must start from some premises and then derive a conclusion. To find a fallacy, you have to show that at some point the conclusion does not follow from the premises.

Since it's a simple assertion, it is implicitly sound. (The graph of premises to conclusions is just a single node.) And since the author knows with certainty what his preferences are, we can take it as true. It's fruitless to argue with people about what their preferences are.

> First is the use of the world 'until' which is ambiguous here

Virtually all "fallacies" you see online are just people typing their thoughts in a hurry. Take advantage of interaction and ask them to clarify.

> Lastly, your personally preferred outcome for your personal data is not a measure for all of society, but you grant it that "public service" label as if your preference matters above everyone else's.

And as a member of the public, if it serves my interest, it is a public service to some extent.

Now, fair enough, you're trying to attack it as not being some broader notion of a public service. You have that broader notion in mind, but you don't explain what it is.

Instead you apply your internal definition through "as if..." which puts you in the territory of inventing a claim they simply never made. That's not even fallacious, it's pure fiction.

> A blind deletion of unknown data belonging to unknown people is not a public service.

You do make some claims, mostly coached as questions, that might lead to this conclusion. You never plainly state your premises, nor do you connect them to this conclusion.

So after all that, your conclusion is a non sequitur!

By itself no, but it is often used fallaciously. Such as in this case, when someone is opposing some good thing on the basis that that good thing might, some day, lead to bad things.

Way to slam me without really addressing anything I said. You managed to say I was wrong and attack my character in one fell swoop!

>one can just pattern-match anything they disagree with to a fallacy and cry foul.

Is there anything wrong with this? People should probably try not to argue anything that is obviously a fallacy.

First, deductive reasoning has a role there, though obviously it is combined with inductive reasoning. I've directly addressed how the two interact in my prior post, so I don't feel the need to repeat it.

Second, while there are a class of fallacies that are relevant only to deductive arguments, and certain named fallacies that have different applications in deductive contexts, many named fallacies are specific to inductive arguments, or have specific application to them. Including, as it is actually defined (versus how you have mispresented it) the fallacy of appeal to authority. > As above, that "deductive argument" generally is not going to be a deduction.

Yes, it will.

> Your induction-based premise is only going to get you e.g. "this policy probably will save money in the long run",

The following is a valid syllogism where the major premise states a decision rule, the minor premise states a probabilistic characterization on an issue of fact of the type that would be an natural conclusion of inductive reasoning, and the conclusion follows of necessity from the premises and is not, itself, probabilistic: P1. If more probable than not that a person has committed a tort against another, they should be pay damages P2. It is more probable than not X commit the tort of trespass to chattels against Y, C. Therefore, X should pay damages to Y.

Obviously, there are syllogisms where one of the premises is inductively defined where the conclusions would involve a probabilistic statement, but this is not necessary.

> To the extent that there is a pure syllogism in there ("we should do that that will probably save money; this will probably save money; therefore we should do that") the debate is rarely about its validity

When the syllogism is explicitly stated and structured as a syllogism, there is rarely a debate about its validity, because people rarely explicitly lay out invalid syllogisms. OTOH, in practice, the elements that are presented are only those of an invalid syllogism and that is challenged.

> I most certainly did warn against using "appeal to authority is a fallacy" to ignore the evidential value of exper opinions

Which, is a reference to the fallacy, not a use of the fallacy, first, and second, not something I endorsed, so the fact that you warned against that does not support your claim that I endorsed the use to the fallacy that you warned against, and, finally, the thing you described actually wasn't the fallacy by that name.

OTOH, you endorsed the use of (not reference to) what you explicitly (and inaccurately) described as the fallacy of appeal to authority to support claims.

> That is how fallacy invokers use it in practice

To the extent that thing that you mistakenly describe as the fallacy of appeal to authority is something people reference as the fallacy of appeal to authority for the purpose you suggest, it is an inaccurate and, as such, inappropriate reference to the fallacy. Its also not exclusively how it is invoked in practice, though certainly for every fallacy there is some set of the actual references to it which are incorrect in this way.

> you said the real "appeal to authority fallacy" was an OR of three situations, the last of which was exactly what I said it was: the notion that authorities are only probabilistic evidence.

Actually, no, the last was that the appeal was made in a deductive context, not "the notion that authorities are only probabilistic evidence".

> My point is that it's called a fallacy despite the authority only being used as probabilistic evidence in the first place!

And my point is that (in addition to misusing language in attempting to say this) you are fabricating things when you claim that I have endorsed this.

> Yes you did: you claimed that the debates we're referring to crucially involve deductive rather than inductive logic.

No, I didn't. I said that appeals to authority in a deductive context are fallacious. I did not make the generalization you make here about "the debates we're referring to", nor do I even have any idea what specific debates you think we are referring to.

How is that talking around?

I literally told you where your fallacy resides in your words. Then, I labeled the exact fallacy, providing two common names for the fallacy. Finally, I provided a simplistic rephrasing of the fallacy to help with your identification. What else do you need?