Most[1] logical fallacies are obvious when arranged in their pattern, but when you encounter them in the wild they are usually transformed by rhetorics to mask that pattern. The “lack of rhetorical skills”, then, may not be bad argumentation by itself—but it does help exposing it. If a pickpocket is caught in the act, it won’t help them to claim that they were only caught because they were not dexterous enough and it’s unfair to put someone in jail for a lack of skill. The fact remains that they tried to steal, and it would still be a crime if they were proficient enough to succeed. Similarly, just because one’s rhetorical skills are not good enough to mask a bad argument does not make it a good argument.
A more important implication of my take on the nature of logical fallacies is that it is not enough to show that an argument fits the fallacy’s pattern—the important part of countering it is showing how, when rearranged in that pattern, the argument loses its power to convince. If it still makes sense even in that form.
Note that in all of Scott’s examples, he never just said “X is a noncentral member of Y” and left it at that. He always said “we usually hate Y because most of its members share the trait Z, but X is not Z and only happens to be in Y because of some other trait W, which we don’t have such strong feeling about”.
So, if we take your first example (the one about eating meat) and fully rearrange it by the noncentral fallacy not only with X and Y but also with Z and W, the counter-argument would look something like that:
It’s true that animal farming (X) is technically cruelty (Y), but the central members of cruelty are things like torture and child abuse. What these things have in common is that they hurt humans (Z), and this is the reason why we should frown upon cruelty. Animal farming does not share that trait. Animal farming is only included in the cruelty category because it involves involuntary suffering (W) - a trait that we don’t really care about.
Does this breakdown make the original argument lose its punch? Not really. Certainly not as much as breaking down the “MLK was a criminal” argument to the noncentral fallacy pattern makes that argument lose its punch. Here, at most, the breakdown exposes the underlying reasoning, and shifts the discussion from “whether or not meat is technically a cruelty” to “to what extent do animals deserve to be protected from involuntary suffering”.
Which is a good thing. I believe the goal noticing logical fallacies is not to directly disprove claims, but to strip them from the rhetorical dressing and expose the actual argument underneath. That underlying argument can be bad, or it can be good—but it needs to be exposed before it can be properly discussed.
I say “most”, but the only exception I can think of is the proving too much fallacy. And even then—that’s only because there is no common template like other fallacies have. But that doesn’t mean that arguments that inhibit that fallacy cannot be transformed to expose it—in this case, to normalize the fallacy one has to reshape it to a form where the claim, instead of being a critical part of its logic, is just a placeholder that can contain anything and still make the same amount of sense.
So, there is still an normal form involved. But instead of a normal form for the fallacy, the proving too much fallacy is about finding the normal form of the specific argument you are trying to expose the fallacy in, and showing how that form can be used for proving too much. I guess this makes the proving too much fallacy a meta-fallacy?
Most[1] logical fallacies are obvious when arranged in their pattern, but when you encounter them in the wild they are usually transformed by rhetorics to mask that pattern. The “lack of rhetorical skills”, then, may not be bad argumentation by itself—but it does help exposing it. If a pickpocket is caught in the act, it won’t help them to claim that they were only caught because they were not dexterous enough and it’s unfair to put someone in jail for a lack of skill. The fact remains that they tried to steal, and it would still be a crime if they were proficient enough to succeed. Similarly, just because one’s rhetorical skills are not good enough to mask a bad argument does not make it a good argument.
A more important implication of my take on the nature of logical fallacies is that it is not enough to show that an argument fits the fallacy’s pattern—the important part of countering it is showing how, when rearranged in that pattern, the argument loses its power to convince. If it still makes sense even in that form.
Note that in all of Scott’s examples, he never just said “X is a noncentral member of Y” and left it at that. He always said “we usually hate Y because most of its members share the trait Z, but X is not Z and only happens to be in Y because of some other trait W, which we don’t have such strong feeling about”.
So, if we take your first example (the one about eating meat) and fully rearrange it by the noncentral fallacy not only with X and Y but also with Z and W, the counter-argument would look something like that:
Does this breakdown make the original argument lose its punch? Not really. Certainly not as much as breaking down the “MLK was a criminal” argument to the noncentral fallacy pattern makes that argument lose its punch. Here, at most, the breakdown exposes the underlying reasoning, and shifts the discussion from “whether or not meat is technically a cruelty” to “to what extent do animals deserve to be protected from involuntary suffering”.
Which is a good thing. I believe the goal noticing logical fallacies is not to directly disprove claims, but to strip them from the rhetorical dressing and expose the actual argument underneath. That underlying argument can be bad, or it can be good—but it needs to be exposed before it can be properly discussed.
I say “most”, but the only exception I can think of is the proving too much fallacy. And even then—that’s only because there is no common template like other fallacies have. But that doesn’t mean that arguments that inhibit that fallacy cannot be transformed to expose it—in this case, to normalize the fallacy one has to reshape it to a form where the claim, instead of being a critical part of its logic, is just a placeholder that can contain anything and still make the same amount of sense.
So, there is still an normal form involved. But instead of a normal form for the fallacy, the proving too much fallacy is about finding the normal form of the specific argument you are trying to expose the fallacy in, and showing how that form can be used for proving too much. I guess this makes the proving too much fallacy a meta-fallacy?