Chapter 3 【Introduction】

Next, we briefly talk about a few issues about sophistry. A sophistry is a logical error, but not every logical error is a sophistry.Although both sophistry and general logical errors violate the laws and rules of correct thinking, there is a difference between the two. First, the violation of the former is usually conscious and intentional, while the latter is unconscious and unintentional; Second, the former is an attempt to justify an absurd point of view or wrong behavior, while the latter has no such motive. For example, some people deduce the conclusion that all equiangular triangles are equilateral triangles from the premise that all equilateral triangles are equiangular triangles. This reasoning is a general logical error due to lack of logical knowledge and cannot be called sophistry.

Sophistry often involves wrong judgments, but not every wrong judgment is sophistry.An isolated erroneous judgment that does not contain logical contradictions, even though it does not conform to objective reality, cannot be called sophistry.But a sophistry is constituted when a false judgment is taken as a thesis in an attempt to prove it to be true, or when it is used as an argument to justify another judgment.At this time, the wrong judgment becomes an integral part of the whole sophistry, and even becomes the core basis of the sophistry. Regarding what sophistry is, the German philosopher Hegel once gave a brilliant explanation.He said that sophistry is to use false grounds in any way, or to negate and shake a true truth, or to make a false truth very beautiful, as if it is true ("Lectures on the History of Philosophy") , Vol. II, p. VII).

What Hegel said in an arbitrary way means that the sophists violated and trampled on the laws and rules of logic arbitrarily, and by relying on false grounds means that the sophists deliberately use false judgments in their arguments.This actually summarizes two basic features of sophistry.Lenin exposed sophistry from the perspective of dialectical logic.He pointed out: the comprehensive and universal flexibility of the concept, which achieves the flexibility of the unity of opposites, is the essence.Eclecticism and sophistry in this flexibility employed subjectively. (Volume 55 of "The Complete Works of Lenin", 1990 edition, p. 91)

There are so many types of sophistry that no one can list them all.Moreover, with the progress of society, the atmosphere of free discussion among people is getting stronger and stronger, especially with the great development of the commodity economy, the increase of advertisements, lawsuits and public debates will inevitably produce many new sophistry techniques, This remains to be studied and summarized by us.This book only describes some of the most common sophistry techniques. Through the logical analysis of sophistry examples in many specific and vivid stories, readers can gain a basic understanding of the characteristics and essence of sophistry.

There are profound cognitive and social reasons for the emergence of sophistry and the fact that it still exists today.From the perspective of epistemology, sophists all exaggerate and inflate a certain feature or aspect in the process of human cognition one-sidedly, and arbitrarily extract a certain aspect from the diverse and unified things as the basis for their argument.Isolation, one-sidedness, and subjective arbitrariness are the fundamental characteristics of the cognition of sophists.From a social point of view, conflicts of interest often occur among people. Some people have no truth in their hands and no masses around them. For their own self-interest, they have no choice but to resort to sophistry.Since the birth and continuation of sophistry have the above-mentioned causes, our struggle against it will be a long-term and arduous task.

In order to fight against sophistry, we must first establish a scientific world view, that is, a world view of dialectical materialism, only in this way can we deeply expose the subjectivism of sophistry.Philosophical foundations of relativism and metaphysics; secondly, knowledge of formal logic, dialectical logic, and linguistics, so as to be able to show concretely how the tricks of sophistry are conjured; finally, learn as much as possible about the relevant science Knowledge.Otherwise, even if you know that the other party is sophistrying, you will not be able to make a convincing reason.

Historically, logic, as a study of the forms and laws of human thinking, was developed in the struggle against sophistry, so one cannot truly understand what logic is without understanding sophistry. Some people in real life, in order to defend their wrong words and deeds, they pursue the principle of seeking victory and not seeking truth in debates. They obviously refuse to admit that they are wrong, but they just want to stir up three points unreasonably and tell lies. Reasonable, unreasonable, or even unreasonable; in terms of language, they are full of foul language, and even use despicable methods of intimidation, abuse, and humiliation of the other party's personality to replace debate on issues.The above performance not only seriously violates the laws and rules of logic, but also is an extremely uncivilized behavior. Therefore, we must fully expose and criticize all kinds of bad sophistry, and consciously act as an ideal, moral, and Cultured and disciplined people.

In a word, researching sophistry, exposing and criticizing sophistry has important theoretical and practical significance.