The Fallacy Challenge

Thanks Pro. I. Preface Voters, forgive us, for what we are doing. II. Morgan Freeman Pro makes the following argument in his opening round: P1) ???P2) Morgan Freeman has cotton candy C) Your argument is invalid As you can clearly see, the conclusion doesn’t immediately deductively follow from the minor premise given. I will agree that P2 is true, Morgan Freeman indeed was holding cotton candy. But additional reasons are required to get to the conclusion.[1] If Pro was going for a modus ponens then we can easily fill in the missing premise, or a very close approximation: P1) If Morgan Freeman holds cotton candy, THEN your argument is invalid P2) Morgan Freeman is holding cotton candy C) You argument is invalid For a BARBARA syllogism, the missing premise would be “Everytime Morgan Freeman holds cotton candy, your argument is invalid” In either case, support for the missing premise is absent from Pro’s opening round, and hence should be treated as a bare assertion fallacy until he has done so. III. “I won't be able to resist the pull of making fallacies” I am not sure I fully understand Pro’s argument here, he seems to assert that 24 days of debate time is going to make me angry and impatient, and hence make a fallacy, or fall into a trap. This is yet another bare assertion fallacy by Pro, given he has provided zero evidential support for that statement being true.[2] Is there a significant relationship between debate length (timewise) and the number of fallacies, or likelihood of fallacies? I can’t say I know, but the burden of proof is on the proposition to justify this. IV. Everyone will vote for me Again, I am not sure what the argument is here. If we assume that I have knowledge that everyone will vote for Pro, how does this translate to me being more likely to commit logical fallacies? P1) If the debate is difficult, I am more likely to use fallacies P2) The debate is difficult C) I am more likely to use fallacies Even if we assume P2 is true, I see no reason to accept P1. If the use of logical fallacies is going to make me more likely to lose (as per the rules of this debate), then it follows that I am going to avoid using them at all costs as the difficulty level increases since I know my opponent and voters will easily spot them. My opponent makes very interesting contentions. I was half-expecting him to fall for the "trap" imposed in round one and find a clever loophole just to troll me. But--never mind that--onto the real arguments. V. Counter Rebuttals Pro accuses me of committing logical fallacies in 4 different points. I will deal with them in order. 1. “Envisage has grounding in basic logic” -Genetic fallacy. First let’s find the definition of a genetic fallacy as per www.yourlogicalfallacyis.com “You judged something as either good or bad on the basis of where it comes from, or from whom it came. This fallacy avoids the argument by shifting focus onto something's or someone's origins. It's similar to an ad hominem fallacy in that it leverages existing negative perceptions to make someone's argument look bad, without actually presenting a case for why the argument itself lacks merit. Example: Accused on the 6 o'clock news of corruption and taking bribes, the senator said that we should all be very wary of the things we hear in the media, because we all know how very unreliable the media can be.” To relate this to my “grounding in basic logic”, the only way it can apply is if I am making the case my arguments are valid on the virtue that I said them (with the assumption I am a logical debater). However my claims were empirical claims, and not made by virtue that I gave them my own endorsement. I presented my debate record and highlighted significant instances where if logical fallacies were common on my behalf, that they would have been detected (and they were not) by the likes of Wylted or Toviyah. 2. “I'm unlikely to spot fallacies” Pro also claims a genetic fallacy, but the genetic fallacy only applies to the arguments themselves, and not specific claims within the arguments. I made the claim that Pro is unlikely to spot fallacies, but the only way that could be a genetic fallacy is if I endorsed the validity and soundness of the argument because of the origins of the argument (say for example, Chuck Norris made the argument that Pro is unlikely to spot fallacies, and Chuck Norris is virtually a god, therefore the argument must be valid and sound). 3. “Reducio ad hitlerum” Pro makes two fallacy claims: “He commits the ad hominem fallacy. He compares me to Hitler in an attempt to shoot me down. “ “He commits the no true scotman fallacy. He appeals to "purity", because Hitler is so goddarn impure that seemingly nothing is right about him, including his propaganda, and he applies Hitler to be like me and because I'm so darn impure my arguments appear to lose. “ To dismiss the first claim, note that I gave my argument in a syllogism, recall from my first round: P1. Pro’s false arguments are similar to Hitler’s propaganda P2. Hitler’s propaganda loses C. Pro’s arguments appear to lose Note that I am attacking the ARGUMENTS directly, and not the source of the arguments, which by definition is the only way it can be ad homenum. Ergo the claim fails. To dismiss the second claim… I will give the definition of the no true Scotsman fallacy: “In this form of faulty reasoning one's belief is rendered unfalsifiable because no matter how compelling the evidence is, one simply shifts the goalposts so that it wouldn't apply to a supposedly 'true' example. This kind of post-rationalization is a way of avoiding valid criticisms of one's argument. Example: Angus declares that Scotsmen do not put sugar on their porridge, to which Lachlan points out that he is a Scotsman and puts sugar on his porridge. Furious, like a true Scot, Angus yells that no true Scotsman sugars his porridge.”[3] Note this fallacy only applies to categorical claims, and my claim was a propositional one. A correct version of this fallacy is to for example, have Pro present an example of Hitler’s propaganda that ‘wins’, and my in turn replying ‘Well no TRUE Hitler’s propaganda wins’ I emplore Pro to show where this fallacy was specifically made by me. VI. Summary Only 2 rounds to go, thank God. VII. References 1. http://www.oakton.edu... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org... 3. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com...