Straw man

The "Straw Man" fallacy refers to the practice of refuting weaker arguments than your opponents actually offer. The terminology is based on a combat metaphor -- instead of fighting with your real opponent, you set up a straw man and proceed to knock it down. It is not a logical fallacy to disprove a weak argument; rather the fallacy is declaring the argument's conclusion wrong because of flaws in the argument.

You can set up a straw man in several different ways:

1. Present one of your opponent's weaker arguments, refute it, and pretend that you've refuted all of their arguments.
2. Present your opponent's argument in weakened form, refute it, and pretend that you've refuted the original.
3. Present someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, refute their arguments, and pretend that you've refuted every argument for that position.

Some logic textbooks define the straw man fallacy only as a misrepresented argument. It is now common, however, to use the term to refer to all three tactics.

See also : Logical fallacy