Logical fallacy: "Appeal to the stone"

By Rich Kozlovich

I'm an almost 70 year old autodidact.  The benefit of being self-taught is you aren't taught what to think.  You teach yourself how to think.  The problem with being self-taught is a failure to know what you should learn.  An autodidact kind of stubles on these things by reading extensively.

I think Thomas Sowell is one of the finest thinkers in the nation today - take a look at his articles, especially his "Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene".  I've read a couple of his books and one of them started out saying he was only going to discuss three logical fallacies in this book.  I stopped and said to myself - what the heck is a logical fallacy and it he's only going to discuss three - how many are there?  That was about ten years ago and since I'm a well read person and I never knew anything about logical fallacies I don't look down on anyone who's never heard of them.  However, once we discover these things we should endeavor to undertake a study of them. 

Logical fallacies are a foundational part of any discussion. Did you ever get into an intellectual disagreement with someone where you know you're right but can't explain why they're wrong? Certainly that can make you wonder whether or not you really are right! However, often times it isn't because you're wrong – it's because their arguments are filled with logical fallacies - all of which are easily overcome if you can recognize them.

Lets start with the logical fallacy known as Appeal to the Stone. This fallacy “consists in dismissing a statement as absurd without giving proof of its absurdity.” The name of this fallacy is attributed to Dr. Samuel Johnson, who refuted Bishop Berkeley's immaterialist philosophy (that there are no material objects, only minds and ideas in those minds), by kicking a large stone and asserting, "I refute it thus."

One given example of this fallacy is:

Speaker A: Infectious diseases are caused by microbes
Speaker B: That's rediculous!
Speaker A: How so?
Speaker B: It's obviously ridiculous.

Speaker B gives no evidence or reasoning, and when pressed, claims that Speaker A's statement is inherently absurd, thus applying the fallacy.

Although they don't have an exclusive claim on it - I find this to be a common tactic of all leftists. Start paying attention to Hillary Clinton when confronted with accusations of her misdeeds and lies.