I have been lax with our fallacy fun, but suddenly some good'uns are thrown in my face. Reductio ad absurdum is not really a logical fallacy but, at its worse, a fallacy support and, at its best, a fairly compelling logical argument, eg (from Wiki):
- Father- Why did you start smoking?
- Daughter - All my friends were doing it.
- Father- You're saying that if all your friends jumped off a cliff, you would do that too?
Reductio can serve the purpose of truth or the purpose of fallaciousness. Example:
"If we can go into Iraq to take out a murderous dictator, then we should take out every murderous dictator on earth."
As with the Slippery Slope Fallacy, some credibility is obtained via the logical thread, but the germ of logicality is rendered trivial by the reality and the context.
Attack Machine invented the entirely reasonable and useful notion of Dilatare ad Absurdum: Expansion to Absurdity. He presents a beautiful example of expansion to absurdity in a piece on the equating of basic human needs with human rights. In his example, both reality and context support the dilatare. It begins:
LA Mayor Antonio recently gushed, “Healthcare is a basic human need, and it ought to be a basic human right.”
If healthcare is a right, then:
- Food must be a right, too. After all, you cannot be healthy if you don’t eat.
- Clothing is a right because you cannot be healthy and naked (in most parts of the world.)
Read the whole thing. I like it. It's similar to the arguments I use to crush all of my commie friends, such as "People need cars to get to work. So why can't we all get free cars and free car insurance?" Or "Legal representation is a basic human right in a free country, so why don't we all get free lawyers?"
