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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Logical Fallacy of the Week, Week 20: Argument From Repetition

There are some things about logical fallacies that you should have realized by now.   Many of them are duplicates or partial duplicates.  My assumption has been that similar fallacies were recognized at different times in different locations by different people and then published. Then there are those that are so difficult to understand that they are meaningless to most people, and some of them are so incomprehensible they have little practical value.  

There are around 140 that will be discussed here, but I would be willing to bet that if you dumped those that are virtually incomprehensible, and those duplicates that could be merged, you would end up with about 50 that are worth all of the effort put into this stuff.  There will be one discussed later that is so incomprehensible that even the originator can't explain it properly himself.

Ad nauseam (Redirected from Argument from repetition)
Ad nauseam is a Latin term used to describe an argument which has been continuing "to [the point of] nausea".  For example, the sentence, "This topic has been discussed ad nauseam", signifies that the topic in question has been discussed extensively, and that those involved in the discussion have grown tired of it…..This term is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as:

"Argumentum ad nauseam or argument from repetition or argumentum ad infinitum is an argument made repeatedly (possibly by different people) until nobody cares to discuss it any more. This may sometimes, but not always, be a form of proof by assertion".

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