Question It often happens that authors or speakers criticize an opponent's supposed position, only for that position, upon closer inspection, to turn out to be a straw man, blown out of proportion and robbed of nuance. Generally, we agree that arguing against straw men is not particularly intellectually admirable, at least not if that's all one does. Yet sometimes, in everyday life, you meet people who are, in a sense, walking straw men. They espouse exactly the inaccurate, misrepresented beliefs that pass as straw men in more rigorous circles, yet these beliefs are their own. I can well imagine that, for some people, they have met so many walking straw men that it is these straw men, and not the thinkers behind them, who seem to be the real opponents; yet since their opinions are the theme-park versions of their favored sources (be it Derrida, Marx, Nietzsche or even religious texts like the Bible), criticizing them is considered bad sport in a debate. So where do these people fall in debates? Arguing against their positions seems generally past the point, because no well-known actual philosophers/thinkers have actually espoused their views - and yet they, too, are thinkers in a broader sense. So how do philosophers go about dealing with these walking straw men in their debates and arguments?

Accepted:

April 6, 2011