Friday, January 4, 2013

Logical fallacies to avoid when criticizing Ergun Caner

These are few fallacies to avoid when criticizing Ergun or anyone for that matter.  

Ad hominem - An Ad hominem is when you attack the person rather than their argument.  Just because Ergun is dishonest does not mean that he is wrong about other things.  Every argument he makes should be evaluated on its own merit. 

Some might think that accusing Ergun of lying about this or that is an ad hominem attack.  To the contrary when Ergun makes a claim, it is not an ad hominem to evaluate whether or not his claim is true.  For example when Ergun claims:
My mother found out late in her marriage that my father was married to more than one woman. I don’t want anyone else to deal with this.
We are free to point out that to the best of everyone's knowledge, Acar Caner never "was married to more than one woman" at a time.  Ergun's mother never found out late in her marriage about her husband's polygamy.  Further in other examples, Ergun will tell his audiences that in 1978 Acar smuggled in his extra wives across the United States border as his "sisters".  These claims are so impossibly false that it seems impossible that he would accidentally repeat them if these claims were not intentional.  An intentional false claim is generally considered, lies.  Calling his claims lies is dealing with his claims, not his person.

Poisoning the well - Poisoning the well is where you try to taint every argument, because the arguments are connected somehow to unsavory arguments.  For example, if Hitler once embraced a similar point of view, the well is poisoned by fallacious guilt by association.  If the arguer is a Calvinist, the well can be poisoned by ad hominem.  (The Calvinist accused Ergun.)

Guilt by association - It is fallacious to assume anything about anybody that is somehow associated with Ergun.  For example, we have no way of knowing who knew that Ergun was lying to people.

Genetic fallacy - This fallacy is when we assume that things are irrevocably tied to there historical past.  For example, it is fallacious to assume that Ergun will continue to lie, just because he lied previously.

Ad-hoc reasoning - Ad-hoc is when you introduce additional speculation to make the failed conclusion more viable. 

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