But the Courtier’s Reply isn’t necessarily a logical fallacy. It is when it serves to mask one’s lack of a counterargument; but it isn’t usual for the answer to a simple question to be a long, complicated, and easily screwed-up one. I once raised a pretty straightforward question about identity in the LW IRC channel and was directed to one of the Sequences, and in hindsight that proved a lot more useful to me than trying to replicate the whole argument on the spot (though I still wasn’t persuaded).
I wouldn’t classify the Courtier’s Reply as a fallacy in the same sense as the conjunction fallacy or an ad hominem argument, but it is logically rude.
Funny, I didn’t even realize that was what “courtier’s reply” referred to. The fallacy in the courtier’s reply was that the literature referred to could not possibly demonstrate the proposition claimed, because it dealt only with the consequences of said proposition, and hence it can be ignored without actually reading it; so I took that as the defining characteristic, rather than just the referral to a large and intimidating body of literature.
But the Courtier’s Reply isn’t necessarily a logical fallacy. It is when it serves to mask one’s lack of a counterargument; but it isn’t usual for the answer to a simple question to be a long, complicated, and easily screwed-up one. I once raised a pretty straightforward question about identity in the LW IRC channel and was directed to one of the Sequences, and in hindsight that proved a lot more useful to me than trying to replicate the whole argument on the spot (though I still wasn’t persuaded).
I wouldn’t classify the Courtier’s Reply as a fallacy in the same sense as the conjunction fallacy or an ad hominem argument, but it is logically rude.
Funny, I didn’t even realize that was what “courtier’s reply” referred to. The fallacy in the courtier’s reply was that the literature referred to could not possibly demonstrate the proposition claimed, because it dealt only with the consequences of said proposition, and hence it can be ignored without actually reading it; so I took that as the defining characteristic, rather than just the referral to a large and intimidating body of literature.
Seems I had it right: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/who_says_we_dont_need_bible_sc.php