8.3: Straw Man Fallacy

When you are arguing with someone, your goal is usually to create an argument that successfully shows the other person's position to be false. Your argument is then called a refutation of your opponent's position. From a logical reasoning perspective, which is one of fairness to the opposition, you ought not mistreat your opponent, nor should you misrepresent your opponent's position. Here is an example of someone misrepresenting a position:

Lobbyist for the logging company: I'm asking you to help encourage Congress to pass that bill to provide subsidies to Western logging companies for selective cutting of 10,000 acres of federal timber land.

Environmentalist: I don't see how you can seriously ask any of us for our help. You are asking our grandchildren to live in a world in which they will never see a tree, never spot a deer, never smell the sweet scent of pine needles. Do you have any idea how bad it would be to live this way? No trees means bad air. No trees means muddy rivers. No trees means no wildlife. How can you defend the rape of the land? Land is precious; forests are precious; our grandchildren are precious. I don't understand how you can ask us to pick up the banner of desolation.

What an exaggeration! The environmentalist offers all sorts of reasons why there shouldn't be land rape or deforestation of the planet. The lobbyist was asking for logging subsidies, not land rape. The environmentalist has misrepresented the lobbyist's position and then begun to beat up on the misrepresentation. This unfair approach is called the straw man fallacy.

A speaker commits the straw man fallacy whenever she falsely attributes an especially weak position to her opponent that he wouldn't have proposed himself and then proceeds to attack the weak position. The opponent is a real man with a real argument; the weak position is an artificial one held by an artificial person—the "straw man" or scarecrow the speaker has created. It's easier to attack a straw man; nevertheless, the attack is irrelevant. It is a diversion from the main issue.

You are not committing the straw man fallacy simply by drawing a consequence from what the man says that is not what he himself would draw. It must be clear that you are also misinterpreting what he did say. Here is another example of the straw man fallacy, committed by Bob:

Andy: We should liberalize the laws on crack.
Bob: No. Any society with unrestricted access to drugs loses its work ethic and goes only for immediate gratification. We don't want that, do we?
Andy: Hey, I didn't say anything about unrestricted access to drugs. That's not the liberalization I want.

Bob has attacked a position that Andy doesn't hold. So, Bob's attack is an irrelevant smokescreen that commits the straw man fallacy. Bob's argument is ineffective logically, although it may still be effective psychologically, especially when Bob goes on to make other points against Andy and doesn't give him time to come back and defend himself.

To avoid committing the fallacy, Bob could, instead, have said to Andy something like the following:

Bob: What do you mean by liberalize? If you mean unrestricted access to drugs, then society will lose its work ethic and go only for immediate gratification, which we don't want, do we? But if you mean some other kind of liberalization, let's hear it. However, what we need is more crackdown on crack, not more liberalization, because...

When someone criticizes you by using the straw man fallacy, your natural reaction is to say, "Hey, wait a minute, I didn't say that." Unfortunately, you usually receive the criticism at the last second. Your opponent misrepresents your position while you are not around to defend yourself. In politics, this fallacy frequently occurs in leaflets and ads a day or two before the election.