I think that’s a good point. Being able to spot fallacies is a subset of logical thinking, not a precursor to it.
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What do you think it would take to have elementary schools teach about logic, rhetoric, and cognitive bias? This has always seemed quite fundamental to me (when I was in elementary school I used to argue this in the classroom, principal’s office, and finally superintendant’s office), I find it horrific and impractical to have most formal reasoning saved for college “liberal arts” courses that most people apparently don’t ever hear of apply themselves toward.
But if someone isn’t a logical thinker, then their “logic” is logic-theatre that they think they are supposed to perform when asked to justify their position. Presenting yourself as a person who is ready to be sympathetic will get at the real reasons they are unhappy, which have everything to do with their kids and lunch and nothing to do with the first lady. Actual reasons a person would be unhappy with healthy school lunches might include: they are sick of hearing their kids complain; their kids stopped eating lunch at school and are totally berserk at the end of the day; they feel like they are being judged or looked down upon for the food they feed their kids at home. All of those things are understandable. At the same time they may well agree that children have certain nutritional requirements and have to eat healthy food (even if they distrust experts who say what is healthy and what is not).
Obviously you are talking about someone you know, and I’m just speculating about different motivations people have. My broad point is that you can’t argue logic with someone who doesn’t do logic in the first place. Their logic is a veneer that can be easily replaced by other, equally good “logic.” Try to understand their position on an emotional level and you actually know what you are dealing with, and by “on an emotional level” I mean how it emotionally affects them.
I think the “cognitive bias” construct is probably a lot more useful than the “logical fallacy” construct for improving your own thinking. Honestly, formal logic is good for two things: solving problems in formal logic; and sneering at people you perceive to be less educated than yourself. (I don’t mean to downplay the first, as an application of it is mathematics and through that virtually all contemporary knowledge.)
I think for the majority teaching formal logic too early isn’t useful. Small children are frequently in the grips of runaway emotions, and they are better off figuring out how to articulate those emotions than they are mastering a system for slyly justifying those emotions (which is how the majority of people apply logic). I don’t know, maybe I’m heavily biased by my own experience.
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Yep, formal logic’s been handy for me for some programming-related topics, but not so much elsewhere. Understanding cognitive biases, learning to research to develop a better understanding of the germane facts relating to a topic (and understanding that cognitive biases can keep anyone from facing germane facts) help much more. Just trying to understand why someone believes something rather than deciding to play stomp-the-fallacy will get you much further along in clarifying things.
Nice ad hominem mate.
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Or 4), you’re annoyed by that one fallacy, or perhaps more of them, being used over and over and relied on.
Naming them is good. The argument itself, if available, should be also scrutinized; but its fallaciousness should not be left unnamed.
I just listened to the podcast this morning, and this is pretty much the entire point of the whole thing!
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Professional educators willing to waste their time on subjects beyond the developmental state of the vast majority of their students?
but they can be shields you use when people are swinging fallacies at you.
(Keeping in mind this might be a joke, I’m going to continue ranting anyway)
This is exactly how people use the term “ad hominem” because they don’t know what the fallacy actually is. An actual ad hominem fallacy works like this: Person A makes an argument, person B says it’s not true because A is a poopy-head. Ad hominem is predicated on Person A making an argument. If person A says, “That’s a strawman” with no further explanation they have not made an argument of any kind. They have stated their opinion. I am not trying to attack their logic by saying that they are a cowardly, arrogant person-mimic. I am simply sharing my opinion as well.
I don’t disagree. It’s only really shielded you if it allowed you to articulate what the problem with the argument was.
Well, I’m as entitled to my pet peeve of people-naming-logical-fallacies as anyone else is to their pet peeve of people-using-fallacies-and-those-fallacies-not-being-named.
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I shield my strawmen with it. 
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Personally I am the sort of arrogant that considers someone who uses objective fallacies very regularly not likely to say something interesting. Subjective fallacies are pretty common, but people who can reconsider their opinion - or change their style much - on the internet are few. More rare than IRL maybe.
FWIW you don’t fallacy, as far as I can tell, and you seem to be one of the people on the internet who can reconsider their opinions.
I probably come acrros as arrogant, which is funny because I try hard to not arrogate a thing. Arrogation itself is the basis of most fallacies, as I see it.
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sparked by
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It’s much more satisfying to shout “ad hominem, you cock!” at the top of your lungs, and then flounce off.
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So maybe I shouldn’t have been so insulting and dismissive.
But really, if you throw “that’s a strawman” in someone’s face in the hopes of ending the discussion because you don’t care to have a discussion with them, I’d say that makes sense. I don’t see naming fallacies as part of a constructive discussion, but I’m not going to say that a constructive discussion is always what is desired.
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