Creative Argumentation: When and Why People Commit the Metaphoric Fallacy

Abstract

This article aims to understand when and why people accept fallacious arguments featuring metaphors (metaphoric fallacy) as sound arguments. Two experiments were designed to investigate, respectively, when and why participants fell into the metaphoric fallacy. In the first experiment, participants were provided with a series of syllogisms, presented in natural language, containing in their first premise either a lexically ambiguous, literal middle term or a metaphorical middle term, i.e. the term that “bridges” the first premise with the second premise, and ending with a true, false or plausible conclusion. For each argument they were asked to evaluate whether the conclusion followed from the premises. Results show that the metaphoric fallacy is harder to detect in case of arguments with plausible conclusion with a conventional metaphor rather than a novel metaphor as middle term. The second experiment investigated why participants considered the metaphoric fallacy with plausible conclusion as a strong argument. Results suggest that participants’ belief in the conclusion of the argument, independent from the premises, is a predictor for committing the metaphoric fallacy. We argue that a creative search for alternative reasons justifies participants’ falling into the metaphoric fallacy, especially when the framing effect of a metaphor covertly influences the overall reading of the argument. Thus, far from being a source of irrationality, metaphors might elicit a different style of reasoning in argumentation, forcing participants to find an alternative interpretation of the premises that guarantees the believed conclusion. In this process, conventional metaphors are revitalized and extended through the second premise to the conclusion, thereby entailing an overall metaphorical reading of the argument.

Exploring metaphor’s effects in reasoning on vaccination

“…The metaphorical frame does not directly influence reasoning (as instead was found by Thibodeau and Borodisky [66,67]), but provides a more nuanced set of communicative effects. While metaphor was found to influence participants' acceptance of the conclusion in the case of syllogisms in narrow contexts [17], this effect seems lost in the case of wider contexts, where the persuasive effects of the text prevail over the argument evaluation. Also, metaphor use is not a predictor of higher vaccination intentions, as instead was found by Scherer and colleagues [54].…”

“…Still, it is an open question whether and how the reasoning process and the metaphorical framing might creatively interact. For instance, in simple deductive tasks, Ervas and colleagues [17] showed that conventional metaphors, whose meaning is lexicalized and so familiar that goes unnoticed by participants, can be revitalized to hold a plausible conclusion of the argument, while novel metaphors, whose meaning is so new and creative that are fast recognized as metaphorical, rather lead to think about alternative conclusions.…”

Exploring metaphor's communicative effects in reasoning on vaccination

“…Still, it is an open question whether and how the reasoning process and the metaphorical framing might creatively interact. For instance, in simple deductive tasks, Ervas et al (2018) showed that conventional metaphors, whose meaning is lexicalized and so familiar that goes unnoticed by participants, can be revitalized to hold a plausible conclusion of the argument, while novel metaphors, whose meaning is so new and creative that are fast recognized as metaphorical, rather lead to think about alternative conclusions.…”

Categorías emergentes de las habilidades retóricas y argumentativas en derechos de petición

“…De igual forma, la retórica moderna, si bien se desliga desde su teleología de la clásica, centra su interés en el ámbito jurídico (Feteris, 2017) y en otros entornos más cercanos a la ciencia (Erduran et al, 2015); así, se traza una ruta que parte del raciocinio y cumple con elementos garantes y descriptivos o explicativos que encajan con aceptación en las ciencias exactas, naturales e ingenieriles (Charwat et al, 2015), pero que no son asumidas discursivamente por las comunidades en sus actos comunicativos de interacción y socialización (Ervas et al, 2018).…”

“…Por consiguiente, las comunidades fortalecen las tradiciones discursivas propias y aprendidas de sus entornos sociales y las relacionan con lo que entienden por retórica y argumentación (Rodríguez, 2019); es decir, no hay una diferencia significativa entre estos dos conceptos, pues los asumen como sinónimos (García et al, 2018) y, además, los resemantizan con sus apreciaciones sobre lo que significa argumentar (Ervas et al, 2018).…”