Attention Gnus (you too Loftus): The appeal to ridicule is a fallacy

See here.

Feser on Meta-Sophistry

This, among other things, contains an explanation of the conservative "slippery slope" argument against same-sex marriage in such a way that is doesn't come out as a blatant fallacy.

Does the Cosmological Argument commit the Fallacy of Composition?

Bertrand Russell thought so.

R: I can illustrate what seems to me your fallacy. Every man who exists has a mother, and it seems to me your argument is that therefore the human race must have a mother, but obviously the human race hasn't a mother -- that's a different logical sphere.

Do child sponsorship appeals commit the fallacy of the appeal to pity?

You can actually overdo it by identifying things that look like fallacies but really aren't fallacies.

Let's take the appeal to pity, for example, and take those shows that they have on late night television of starving kids who need a sponsor through the Christian Children's Fund. Because it is never pretended that this children merit assistance, but only that the need assistance, there is no appeal to pity. In order to appeal to pity to be a fallacy, there has to be a question of merit that is initially presented, and then resolved by an appeal to pity.

One of my favorite things in the movie About Schmidt was Jack Nicholson's letters to his sponsored child, Ndugu.

Barthism, Bulverism, and Besonianism

I remember a paper written by Hugo Meynell a long time ago which was called Three Sophistical Devices. Barthism is the view of just merely asseting something without providing any reason for believing it, just plumping for your position. Bulverism is, well, Lewis's name for what in logic is called the ad hominem circumstantial. Besonianism the idea that instead of having to face criticisms of your own position, you find out what the other guy's overall position is and attack that. So, for example, if I offer some criticisms of Marxian dialectical materialism, and you find out that I am a Catholic, then somehow criticisms of Catholicism are good reasons for rejecting my criticisms of dialectical materialism, even though the criticisms could have been made by a Muslim or a phenomenologist.

I'm starting to see some Besonianism in the discussion of Feser's views on materialism