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by eveningsteps 1420 days ago
Also known as a fallacy fallacy. Related: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/9
3 comments

No. They distinguish the Harry Potter fallacy from the fallacy fallacy.

Students, once they learn the fallacies, just love to spot them and charge others with committing them, and so expect that dropping some Latin name for an opponent’s argumentative move will be a kind of magic that fixes the critical discussion (often in their favor). Call it the Harry Potter problem, thinking that learning a little Latin phrase will paralyze an opponent with its expression. So entirely new kinds of wild and woolly behavior are encouraged with this vocabulary. Without fallacy theory teaching the fallacies, there would be no burden of specious allegations of fallacy. Further, new fallacies are made possible--take for example, the fallacy fallacy, inferring that an opponent’s position is false because it is supported by fallacious arguments.

Or, to be ironic with this post's name, argumentum ad logicam

Or, as most people would understand it, that you can be right for the wrong reasons

If a fallacy is wrong, wouldn't a fallacy fallacy be right
Not at all. You are commiting the fallacy fallacy fallacy: incorrect reasoning about fallacies above first order.
Something is probably whooshing over my head here.

The fallacy fallacy is when you argue a conclusion must be false because of a fallacy in how it was reached.

If a blind person told you that they believed that the sky is blue because someone told them it is, would you respond that that's argumentum ad verecundiam and therefore the sky is not blue?