The 2024 Legal Defense Fundraiser has ended early due to the Board's decision to settle the suit. Donations will go towards the creation of a legal defense fund. Discussion on the matter can be found at the RationalMedia Foundation noticeboard. Thank you for your generous support.

Information icon.svg Campaigning is open for the RationalWiki 2024 Board of Trustees election.

Bulverism

From RationalWiki
Revision as of 08:01, 15 July 2019 by Bongolian (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Cogito ergo sum
Logic and rhetoric
Icon logic.svg
Key articles
General logic
Bad logic

Bulverism is the logical fallacy of assuming without discussion that a person is wrong and then distracting his or her attention from this (the only real issue) by explaining how that person became so silly, usually associating it to a psychological condition. The fallacy deals with secondary questions about ideas rather than the primary one, thus avoiding the basic question or evading the issues raised by trains of reasoning. It is essentially dodging your opponent's argument by treating them like a psychiatry patient who needs your evaluation to explain why they came up with such a ridiculous argument in the first place.

The fallacy was coined by C.S. Lewis in his essay, First and Second things.

Strict usage

The form of the Bulverism fallacy can be expressed as follows:

You claim that A is true.
Because of B, you personally desire that A should be true.
Therefore, A is false.

or

You claim that A is false.
Because of B, you personally desire that A should be false.
Therefore, A is true.

Examples

See also

References