Argument from derision

The Argument from Derision is a material fallacy which occurs when a proposition is considered confuted owing to the inherent "silliness" or "stupidity" of its content without actually vitiating the argument's logical structure or constitutive evidence. The argument from derision is a species of ad hominem fallacy.

Formal Definition

The argument can be represented schematically as follows:

Person X presents argument A. Person Y responds with counter B, which attempts to stultify the epistemic or doxastic attitudes of person A owing to the putative inanity of the original argument A.

Example

A ready example of the argument from derision can be generated by borrowing from the common "Flying Spaghetti Monster" argument against creationism.

Person X states that they hold the universe to have been created by an eternal entity endowed with all the powers of creation ex chaos or creation ex nihilo, and considers this argument A for God. Person Y then retorts with counter B that they may as well believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a creature with all the same abilities as God, yet a ridiculous concept. This results in a fallacious argument from derision given that counter B says nothing logically, consequentially or substantially valuable against argument A, but rather attempts to cause the presenter of the argument a psychological embarrassment which is fallaciously supposed to be sufficient.

In general, any framing of an analogous argument which only purports to demonstrate the "silliness" of the opposing argument by mock - yet does not expose an inherent logical absurdity or other flaw within the original - is an argument from derision.
 
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