My question arose: How best to remember them and have them at the ready during conversations on the Internet? Reading Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument, I gradually came to realize there were approximately 50 +major fallacies used in arguments. (See my comment at the end of the chart below about the best way to enter the labyrinth.) The Minotaur, half-human and half beast, is the storied opponent who must be confronted in the center of the labyrinth. Two visuals help me remember these points: the photo-shopped beauty below is split and we viewers become double-minded when we encounter her. Until a decision is made I came to understand, there is a definite sense in which the person trying to decide the issue is split and quite double-minded. Moreover, until one gets to the cause of such a split, the double-mindedness at the center of the issue and its consequences can be nearly insurmountable. This approach became particularly helpful in dealing with decision-making. There was a way of uncovering truth from the fallacies that supported the Truth as well. By working with an issue in such a way that objections could be clearly stated first before Master Thomas answered and finally met with appropriate replies, I came to discover that there was much more to dealing with fallacies than simply dismissing them in the face of Truth. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologicae showed me a way of concentrating on the real objects of communication: truth as a way of glimpsing Truth. But that alone was not a good enough explanation. Obviously there was the effort to persuade me with rhetoric, throwing whatever against the wall and wishing something would stick. True enough, but I found myself alone quite often wondering why such arguments were being offered in the first place. One of the most important ones was based on Chesterton\’s keen observation about fallacies: \”Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.\” Needless to say, but probably prudent to do so, I learned many lessons by the mistakes I made. As an administrative law judge or hearing officer for over three years in the middle of my career in law that spanned over 40 years, I had to sort out countless arguments offered by lawyers on behalf of their clients who were seeking my recommendations of approval for their projects. This post in the result of that offer and many years of coping with fallacies in arguments. It would allow me to express some of my thoughts after reading Mortimer Adler\’s Truth In Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth and Truth In Aquinas by John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, two books which I highly recommend. It would be a way of seeing how even in face of the worst fallacies, truth is present and emerging, somewhat like the way one learns more by trying to teach about something. In an early email, I told her I wanted to write about truth in a way that would be a bit different than others may have provided in the past. No, that became abundantly clear from a retort or two of hers. But as I observed her facility with handling commenters arguing with fallacies, I began to wonder what more could be done in response to them. But I noticed how Stacy seemed not to worry about the trouble-makers and kept right on blogging, engaging her wanna-be tormentors even more positively rather than less. I am not suggesting she is or ever was and certainly will not be a pushover. Given my background in law, I was often and happily drawn into the fray. Often their fallacious quality was readily apparent, but sometimes the fallacies were more subtle. Early on in my encounters with Stacy Trasancos, through her blog called Accepting Abundance, I often found myself troubled by some of the arguments being hurled her way.
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