Straw man

A straw man argument ( also: straw man fallacy ) (English straw man fallacy or one straw argument) is a rhetorical technique. In this case, a dispute will be deemed to be in your arguments alleged arguments of the other side compared. Instead of addressing the actual position of the enemy and his arguments is against an absent, fictitious opponent - the " straw man " - argues that while this often distorted and undifferentiated versions of the opposing arguments are put into the mouth. It is then alleged that the refutation of the straw man position would be a refutation of the actual position of the debate opponent. Since the straw man as opposed to a real disputants not go into differentiated objections or she may reject even, but it involves a sophism. In the technique of the devil's advocate a fictional enemy of one's own position is also set up in which, however, the arguments of the other side should be raised as high as possible in order to examine the merits of their own argument and to correct any weaknesses.

The calque formed from the English " straw man " argument was not previously added by the editors of the German dictionaries in the vocabulary of the German language, although its occasional use is detectable in a jargon.

Methods

There are different methods of straw man argument:

• The thesis of the opponent distorted, exaggerated or misrepresent, then refute the distorted thesis and argue that now the original thesis is refuted.
• Describe one who defends the opponent's thesis with shaky arguments to refute these arguments and then claim that by doing any representative of this thesis and thus the thesis itself had been refuted.
• A fictitious person with questionable beliefs or actions describe and claim that this fictitious person represented the group that wants to criticize the speaker.
• To a theory analogous examples invent (which superficially appear analogous to the theory, in which, however, on closer examination shows that the analogy does not fit ), refute these analogies to defend its thesis refuted. So you can lay out analogies that are much easier to refute than the actually be refuted thesis.

Straw man arguments can be successful as a rhetorical technique (that is, people talk about ), but they lead the listener into logical fallacies, as the actual argument of the opponent is not refuted. But straw man arguments are also often the result of errors in judgment of the speaker, who mistakenly assumed his opponent the challenged positions because he misunderstands him or is guided by prejudice.