Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote: >From the website: "A person's interests and circumstances have no bearing >> on the truth or falsity of the claim being made. While a person's interests >> will provide them with motives to support certain claims, the claims stand >> or fall on their own." >> > > In a strict sense, this is true. But people are inherently intuitive, and > intuition goes beyond cut-and-dry logic. . . . >
> It is (or should be) a logical fallacy to hew too strictly to whether a > conclusion is based on a logical fallacy. > This is not quite right. What you are saying is that when a person makes an assertion X, such that if the public believed X this would benefit that person, we have reason to doubt the assertion. The person may be lying, because people often lie in their own interests. The person has a motive to lie. So it would be wise to check the veracity of the statement. That is not a logical fallacy. The fallacy would be to state that: "we know this is a lie because it serves the speaker's best interests." That would only be true if people invariably, automatically lied whenever it was in their best interest to do so. We know they do not. - Jed
