How to Make an Argument

[Zylark]

Originally Posted by Liquidtruth

*Waits patiently for Zylark to answer him*

Come on man, sway me over to your way of thinking with logic!

Umm, but I have, even before you posted!

The magic of prophecy. Or post-hoc as I like to call it...

Originally Posted by Zylark

fishism is not a good manner to make an argument, even though it makes you feel good afterwards. Infact, fishism is just a kneejerk response to a body of argument you can not handle as a whole without some effort. Or in other words, it is the lazy way to do an argument, not the proper.

Yes, fishism feels satisfying. Yes, it is a method to jerk yourself off in an argument. Not very constructive though. If for no other reason than only one gets satisfied by it. The one who does it.

Though you _can_ win an argument by fishism, you can only do so if it is the last argument, the final stab. When you got the opponent cornered with no escape. And only if your intention is confrontational and not congenial. Even then you need to make really damn sure every argument you make is correct in every sense. That is a hard task, and not always achievable.

Fishism will backfire on you, if for no other reason than it is a demonstration of the red-herring fallacy, and also that it is hard to make a good argument when divided into many small parts.

That is unless you want to make your opponents argument look silly. But again, employing fishism to that effect will (again) backfire as you are trying to cover too much ground in one post, rather than focus on one or two contentious arguments that you are sure of and not just knee-jerking to.

Fishism makes you loose focus, and thus not do the proper research before making a claim. Maybe not always, but more often than not. That translates to giving the opposition a way out. Never a smart move.

[Sam_Spade]

Alright, another thing came to my attention.

I think we need a follow-up thread entitle; "How to Respond to an Argument"; specifically the one point I feel would need to be stressed is that in order to maintain some kind of consistency and intellectual honesty, a response needs to actually acknowledge all points made before making new claims.

I find that many individuals, when being demonstrated incorrect will instead invoke a series of new claims instead of acknowledging error and attempting to re-formulate a thesis.