Stephen Downes

According to Maarten Boudry, the problem with teaching students how to spot fallacies is that they start seeing them everywhere. "They hurled labels and considered the job done. Worse, most of the "fallacies" they identified did not survive closer scrutiny." And the gist of the article as a whole is that "human reasoning is far more sophisticated and subtle than the theory of 'fallacies' suggests." As someone who has taught and written about fallacies, I am inclined to agree with both parts of this. But I never abandoned the teaching of fallacies, though I did adapt my method. Identifying fallacies is a three step process, I said. First, you can learn to recognize the 'signs' that a fallacy is present. But signs are often misleading; you need to reconstruct the reasoning to confirm that there is, indeed, a fallacy present. Finally, you need to show not simply that the fallacy is present, but to use your understanding of the fallacy to show that the reasoning is incorrect. If you name the fallacy in your response, I would say, you're doing it wrong.