Straw man

A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by that opponent.

The so-called typical "attacking a straw man" argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and then to refute or defeat that false argument ("knock down a straw man") instead of the original proposition.

This technique has been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly in arguments about highly charged emotional issues where a fiery, entertaining "battle" and the defeat of an "enemy" may be more valued than critical thinking or understanding both sides of the issue.

In the United Kingdom the argument is also known as an Aunt Sally, after the pub game of the same name where patrons throw sticks or battens at a model of an old woman's head.

Straw man (disambiguation)

Straw man is a rhetorical technique (also classified as a logical fallacy) based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.

Straw man may also refer to:

See also

Straw man proposal

A straw-man proposal is a brainstormed simple draft proposal intended to generate discussion of its disadvantages and to provoke the generation of new and better proposals. The term is considered American business jargon, but it's also encountered in engineering office culture. Sometimes "straw dog" is used instead as form of gender-neutral language.

Often, a straw man document will be prepared by one or two people prior to kicking off a larger project. In this way, the team can jump start their discussions with a document that is likely to contain many, but not all the key aspects to be discussed. As the document is revised, it may be given other edition names such as the more solid-sounding "stone-man", "iron-man", and so on.

Origins

The expression was already in use in the United States Department of Defense circa 1975 in their Large Organization Model Building paradigm (LOMB) and was apparently in use with this meaning (initial proposal) in the United States Air Force before that. The succession of names comes from the requirements document for the programming language Ada. In the High Order Language Working Group (HOLWG) the process to define Ada generated requirements documents sporting different names, representing the various stages of development of the Ada language, as described in 1993 by Col William Whitaker in an article ACM SIGPLAN Notices. They are:

Straw Man (comics)

The Scarecrow, later named the Straw Man, is a fictional character, a super hero appearing in the Marvel Comics universe.

Publication history

The Scarecrow was created by Scott Edelman and Rico Rival and first appeared in Dead of Night #11 (August 1975).Gil Kane and Bernie Wrightson provided the cover art. The Scarecrow character originally was scheduled to appear as a feature in Monsters Unleashed and Giant-Size Werewolf but both of those series were cancelled before the Scarecrow feature could appear. It was then rescheduled for Dead of Night and after that series was cancelled as well, the character was to have a self-titled Scarecrow series but it was not published. Edelman and artist Ruben Yandoc produced a follow-up story which appeared in Marvel Spotlight #26 (February 1976), and was eventually concluded by Bill Mantlo in Marvel Two-in-One #18 (August 1976)

Many years later, he was brought back in the pages of Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #31 (July 1991) in which he took on the name "Straw Man" to differentiate himself from the costumed killer the Scarecrow. He subsequently appeared in issues #38 and #40 meeting Daredevil in the latter issue.