Talk:Irrelevant conclusion

A Sultan Says: "Who has curl hair must be perished." A smart guy with curl hair said to defend hiself:"Our pubic hair is a form of hair which is curl. Therefore all who have pubic hair must then also perished..."

-Can anyone check this out?

I'm not sure of the fourth example given. True, the subjects are unrelated, but it's not necessarily a red herring to suggest that the minister's affair is more newsworthy than his tax policy. A better example might be "it may be a good policy, but how can you support the bill of a man who cheated on his wife?" Also, I worry that it might violate the NPOV policy by being a jab at the media coverage of Clinton. I'm hesitant to change it without hearing others' thoughts, though. Twin Bird 06:28, 15 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The statement appears to oversimplify so much as to be untrue. Part of the lawyers job is to show that the state did not meet its standard of proof, and the statement attributed to the lawyer in this example, could be an attempt at jury nullification.--Silverback 03:49, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

"Tax fraud is not much of a crime, and it is unfair for my client to be subjected to this lengthy and stressful trial over such a minor offense." (This is irrelevant; the lawyer's job is to show the client to be not guilty, not to legislate.)

While the claim that "tax fraud is not much of a crime" may be false, the idea that it's not the lawyer's job to challenge the fairness of a law is absolutely false. When the Supreme Court decided that laws against sodomy were illegal, it was not because the accused individuals were innocent but because the law was unconstitutional. If a law is unconstitutional, it may very well be the lawyer's job to establish that fact in a court of law.

If anything, the red herring here is the claim that challenging a law constitutes an attempt to legislate.

--204.6.208.76 02:37, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"When Ex- Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau legalized homosexuality and sodomy, many opponents asked why he considered these activities tolerable. He responded that "the government has no business in the bedrooms of it's people." 'This is true, because the Canadian government is in fact not in anybody's bedroom. What he fails to answer, however, is that homosexuality and sodomy are not immoral activities.'"

This isn't a very good example. While very strictly speaking it may qualify (I'm not even sure it does) it doesn't with this wording, and hardy illustrates the fallacy clearly. John.Conway 01:45, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the fact that it's in widespread circulation, "ignoratio elenchi" does not mean "by ignoring the issues" in Latin. It means "ignorance of what a refutation is" ("ignoratio" means "ignorance": it is in the nominative case and cannot mean "by ignoring"). "Elenchi" is the genitive singular of "elenchos", "refutation". The phrase is a translation of Aristotle's phrase tou elenkhou agnoia. In effect, Aristotle defines this as "not knowing what a valid argument is," and he argues (in his On Sophistical Refutations) that all fallacies can be reduced to this one fallacy.

The phrase "ignoratio elenchi" has developed a life of its own over the intervening two and a half millennia, and a range of meanings has been assigned to it. In my own opinion, some of the unclarity and confusion associated with this term result from ignorance of its rather narrow historical context.

--Robin Smith

I delete the red herring part, because this fallacy (although very similar) is not equivalent to or a case of ignoratio elenchi.

"Both the red herring and straw man fallacies are susceptible of being confused with missing the point, because all three involve a similar kind of irrelevancy. To avoid this confusion, one should note that both red herring and straw man proceed by generating a new set of premises, whereas missing the point does not. Straw man draws a conclusion from new premises that are obtained by distorting an earlier argument, and red herring, if it draws any conclusion at all, draws one from new premises obtained by changing the subject. Missing the point, however, draws a conclusion from the original premises. Also, in the red herring and straw man, the conclusion, if there is one, is relevant to the premises from which it is drawn; but in missing the point, the conclusion is irrelevant to the premises from which it is drawn." (A Concise Introduction to Logic, Hurley, 7th Edition)

DasAuge 03:40, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]