From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Look up straw man in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.^[1] To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. Often, the straw man is set up to deliberately overstate the opponent's position.^[1] A straw man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact a misleading fallacy, because the opponent's actual argument has not been refuted.^[2]

Its name is derived from the practice of using straw men in combat training. In such training, a scarecrow is made in the image of the enemy with the single intent of attacking it.^[3] It is occasionally called a straw dog fallacy, scarecrow argument, or wooden dummy argument.

A straw man argument can be set up in the following ways, by:

1. Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent's position and then refuting it, thus giving the appearance that the opponent's actual position has been refuted.^[1]
2. Quoting an opponent's words out of context -- i.e., choosing quotations that are not representative of the opponent's actual intentions (see contextomy and quote mining).^[2]
3. Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender and then refuting that person's arguments, thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position, and thus the position itself, has been defeated.^[1]
4. Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are criticized, such that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.
5. Oversimplifying an opponent's argument into a simple analogy, which can then be attacked.

However, carefully presenting and refuting a weakened form of an opponent's argument is not always itself a fallacy. Instead, it restricts the scope of the opponent's argument, either to where the argument is no longer relevant or as a step of a proof by exhaustion.

An example of a straw man fallacy:

Person A: I don't think children should play on busy streets.

Person B: I think that it would be foolish to lock children up all day.

By insinuating that Person A's argument is far more dramatic than it is, Person B has side-stepped the issue. The straw man person B has set up is the premise that "The only way to stop children running into the busy streets is to keep them inside all day", which is not person A's position.

Another example:

Person A: We should maintain marijuana as a controlled substance.

Person B: No! Any society which locks up all drug users is unjust.

The proposal was to control marijuana. Person B has exaggerated this to a position harder to defend: "lock up all drug users".^[1]

• List of fallacies

• The Straw Man Fallacy at the Fallacy Files
• Straw Man, more examples of straw man arguments