[Kriminal99]

Person A: "2 + 2 = 4"
Person B: "Your argument is unsupported and without references or Wikipedia links"

I have a number of ideas on how best to categorize such behavior, but what do you guys think?

[Qfwfq]

Kriminal99, on 31 August 2010 - 03:29 AM, said:

"Your argument is unsupported and without references or Wikipedia links"

Mob Rule.

[JMJones0424]

Perhaps I am missing something, and if I am and it is not too much of a sidetrack, I would appreciate an explanation. It does not seem to me that there is a fallacy here. Presumably, person B does not have the knowledge necessary to judge whether or not person A's statement is true. Person B does not claim the statement is false, nor does he acknowledge that the statement is true, but rather makes the accurate statement that person A has not provided support for his claim. Is it a logical fallacy to be ignorant?

Or are you literally referring to people who claim that 2+2=4 is an argument that must be supported by evidence? I have unfortunately run into one or two of this sort.

[Ken]

Kriminal99, on 31 August 2010 - 03:29 AM, said:

Person A: "2 + 2 = 4"
Person B: "Your argument is unsupported and without references or Wikipedia links"

I have a number of ideas on how best to categorize such behavior, but what do you guys think?

As presented one could state that Person A's statement, without any logical proof, fits the definition of an Appeal to Authority fallacy.

Person B's statement is really non-responsive to the argument of A. It appears to be a Red Herring, i.e., an irrelevant appeal.

[Knothead]

Kriminal99, on 31 August 2010 - 03:29 AM, said:

Person A: "2 + 2 = 4"
Person B: "Your argument is unsupported and without references or Wikipedia links"

I have a number of ideas on how best to categorize such behavior, but what do you guys think?

I'm a little confused by the question but having just spent the last couple of weeks on a message board defending anthropogenic global warming, a term that I was previously ignorant of. Here's what I think about "supporting arguments".
I started a thread because somebody turned me on to the film "Home". I thought it was beautifully done and wanted to share it. I never said a thing about global warming and before I knew it I was being called a tree hugging moron that wanted to stand in the way of progress and take away peoples rights. Who'd have thunk.

I discovered that on that and I suspect most issues, if you Google long enough you can find something to support your side of an argument as can your counterpart. You can find something to refute the something that they found to refute you.
My scientist versus your scientist.
Who has the most to gain? Who has the most to lose? Who do you believe?
I ended up dropping out of the discussion because the fruitlessness of continuing to argue became apparent.

I learned a lot (if any of it's true) by digging and googling. But the main thing I learned it that it's pointless to try to convince anyone of anything if their minds are already made up.

That and the "greenies killed millions of Africans by banning DDT" line of crap is bogus. I was able to shut them up on that one.
Thanks Google.

[modest]

Kriminal99, on 31 August 2010 - 03:29 AM, said:

Person A: "2 + 2 = 4"
Person B: "Your argument is unsupported and without references or Wikipedia links"

I have a number of ideas on how best to categorize such behavior, but what do you guys think?

I'd hope person B supported "Your argument is unsupported and without references or Wikipedia links" with academic support and references to wikipedia...

Wikipedia -- two plus two makes four

~modest

[CraigD]

Kriminal99, on 31 August 2010 - 03:29 AM, said:

Person A: "2 + 2 = 4"
Person B: "Your argument is unsupported and without references or Wikipedia links"

I have a number of ideas on how best to categorize such behavior, but what do you guys think?

A’s statement is not fallacious, because it can be proven true from standard, Peano arithmetic postulates.

B’s statement is ambiguous, because it’s missing an object of a reflexive verb. Assuming it means “your argument is unsupported by statement and without references or Wikipedia links [within your statement]”, it’s not fallacious, because it can be proven true by simple analysis of A’s statement. It might, however, be discourteous, because B almost certainly knows that A’s statement is true, and is thus asking A to provide what he does not need. It might not, however, be discourteous, if, for example, A and B are friends engaging in good-natured repartee.

I can’t think of a common euphemistic name for such a discourtesy, so will hazard to invent one: “pointlessly demanding t-crossing and i-dotting”.

Of course, if we make no assumptions about the numeral, number, or arithmetic system used, many strange but reasonable true statements beginning “2+2=” can be true, including: 2+2=0; 2+2=1; 2+2=10; 2+2=11; and 2+2=22.

[Qfwfq]

I totally disagree with Craig's grammatical dissertation.

It is a mighty stretch (although formally possible) for B to call the statement of A unsupported. It's a statement, not an argument, it could be supported by a trivial argument starting from Peano's axioms but that is nitpicking.

Objecting that no link to wikipedia is given is a request for something between appeal to authority and appeal to majority. Strictly, the latter but wiki is increasingly considered an authoritative source so it is somewhat like the former. I tend to take wiki with much caution and hence, in a case as ludicrous as this, I called it mob rule.

P. S. Speaking of the devil, now that I looked at that wiki on 2 + 2 I notice that it bears an all too common misconception of "which math" vs. "which notation" because a choice of numeration base is the latter and not the former. One could say the same about [tex]\mathbb{Z}_5[/tex] and higher, which is more than just notation. It is of course obvious that the numeral 4 doesn't exist in any of the cases where the proposition isn't true; this is why I had decided not to even mention this example of nitpicking.

This post has been edited by Qfwfq: 31 August 2010 - 10:23 PM
Reason for edit: post scriptum

[athinker]

I'd call it argumentum ad infinitum. There's no limit to that kind of argument. It argues all posible arguments. Allowing no support for the "argument" to be "supported" without further support. Kind of like the set of all sets. A set that includes all possible sets cannot contain all sets as the set of all sets is a set and therefore must be included ad infinitum in any set of all sets. I'd probably think the arguer was a cranius impervious.

[sigurdV]

Since no preceeding argumentation is given I hesitate to call B:s argument "rude and besides the point" ... Perhaps all A ever does is saying things like "Chairs are chairs", then B perhaps is trying to force A to form some frame for his statements.
Hmm... Why did you ask, are you making a list of fallacies and have you got any wiser by the replies?

[Rade]

imo,

Person B commits the following logical fallacy:
Appeal to a Lack of Evidence (Argumentum Ad Ignorantium, literally "Argument from Ignorance"):

Person B is appealing to a lack of information given by Person A [e.g. references, Wiki links] to prove a point [that Person A has provided an unsupported argument, namely that 2 + 2 = 4]. Logicians classify this as a logical fallacy by Person B because no competing argument by Person B has yet revealed itself, only an appeal to lack of evidence by Person A, nor can Person B compose such an argument to show that the argument of Person A [2 + 2 = 4] is logically false.

[Kriminal99]

JMJones0424, on 31 August 2010 - 07:44 AM, said:

Perhaps I am missing something, and if I am and it is not too much of a sidetrack, I would appreciate an explanation. It does not seem to me that there is a fallacy here. Presumably, person B does not have the knowledge necessary to judge whether or not person A's statement is true. Person B does not claim the statement is false, nor does he acknowledge that the statement is true, but rather makes the accurate statement that person A has not provided support for his claim. Is it a logical fallacy to be ignorant?

Or are you literally referring to people who claim that 2+2=4 is an argument that must be supported by evidence? I have unfortunately run into one or two of this sort.

I look at fallacies from the point of view of implied rules of debate. I believe that for something like a logical fallacy to have meaning, it must have a driving context.

So from that point of view, the problem is that person B opened their mouth despite their ignorance. Well not really that they opened their mouth, but that they assert something intended to be perceived as participation in the debate. This part of it is along the lines of Red Herring fallacy.

Of course, the original Appeal to Authority fallacy was also a type of Red Herring, and many fallacies overlap... The scaling down of the difficulty in terms of reasoning skills required was to allow other people to share in the perception that people with superior reasoning skills often have in dealing with self styled experts and their followers.

[JMJones0424]

Person B made no argument, just a factual statement. His statement cannot be an argument from ignorance, because it is an observation, not an argument. Had he instead said something along the lines of, "You have provided no evidence, therefore you are incorrect." this would then change the matter entirely. Apparently this was meant to be implied in the opening post, and if so, this was the source of my confusion. In that case, I agree with Rade, it appears to be an argument from ignorance.

[Kriminal99]

JMJones0424, on 04 November 2011 - 11:22 AM, said:

Person B made no argument, just a factual statement. His statement cannot be an argument from ignorance, because it is an observation, not an argument. Had he instead said something along the lines of, "You have provided no evidence, therefore you are incorrect." this would then change the matter entirely. Apparently this was meant to be implied in the opening post, and if so, this was the source of my confusion. In that case, I agree with Rade, it appears to be an argument from ignorance.

An irrelevant factual statement, that diverted attention from the argument...

The person need not say "therefore you are incorrect". The fact that he said it in response implies that it is relevant to the argument, when it is not.

[phillip1882]

i dunno, does B really commit a logical fallacy?

if the argument went like this instead:
person A: God exists.
person B: please point me to a credible source that can verify the existence of God.

would this be an argument form ignorance? i mean, by the same logic, person B hasn't really refuted person A's statement, nor is it clear how he could do so.