How do (many) philosophers respond to the logical fallacy "the enemy of my enemy must be my friend"? It is not uncommon if I am having a conversation with someone about a public policy proposal, in which I criticize an idea advanced by one political party, for the other person to respond "how can you possibly favor the idea advanced by the OTHER political party?" when in fact I favor NEITHER party's idea? I'm actually a bit surprised at how widespread this kind of fallacious thinking is. Many times neither "side" of a public policy debate has useful ideas (in my opinion) and I would prefer a third alternative very much over either "side's" position. Any suggestions about how to escape this enforced box would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. PS does this fallacy have a formal name? if it does, then at least in on-line debates I can merely link to the Wikipedia article about the fallacy. Thanks again.

Are there any philosophers who deny that the principle of explosion is a valid principle while at the same time both being not accepting of a paraconsistent logic and being accepting of the Law of Non Contradiction?

I am reading Neitzsch's "Human, All Too Human", in one of his aphorisms he states that logic is optimistic. Does he mean that it would be foolishly optimistic to trust logic or in its truth? Or does he mean something else I just can't seem to understand?

Classical logic says that from a contradiction you can derive anything. I think that depends on how you define a contradiction. If you have two opposing truth values with respect to A, A is true and A is false what can we infer about the truth status of A? Well in one way to look at it you could say that to assert a contradiction means we hold that both statements about A are true regardless of whether they contradict each other. A is true regardless of the contrary position that A is false. Likewise A is false regardless of the contrary position that A is true. If we define a contradiction in this manner then we can separately infer both truth values of A. Given A is true and A is false we can conclude A is true and given A is true and A is false we can conclude that A is false. If you infer A is true from the contradiction then A or B is true. If A or B is true then if A is false then B is true. A is true regardless of whether A is false therefor we can not conclude an explosion occurs. It seems that...

For the given premises P and Not P, is P a valid derivation? Shouldn't the derivation be true for all the premises for it to be valid or is it not sound and yet valid? But aren't we determining its unsoundness by virtue of something other than the content of those premises?

Is there a name for a logical fallacy where person A criticizes X, and person B fallaciously assumes that because A criticizes X he must therefore subscribe to position Y, the presumed opposition of X, although A does not, in fact, take that position? For example, if A criticizes a Republican policy then B assumes that A must be a Democrat and staunch Obama-supporter,even though A is in fact a Republican himself, or else an Undeclared who regularly criticizes Obama as well.

Can paradoxes actually happen?

Is the positing of an infinite regress a legitimate explanation in philosophy respectively are infinite regresses logically possible?

How does one determine which side in an argument must shoulder the burden of proof?

A very common retort when critizising somebody for a reprehensible action (like selling drugs) is that "If I don't do it, somebody else will". Does this kind of bad reasoning fall into any of the classical categories of argument fallacies?