Talk:Motte-and-bailey fallacy

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Not a fallacy per the person who invented the term

"Some people have spoken of a Motte and Bailey Doctrine as being a fallacy and others of it being a matter of strategic equivocation. Strictly speaking, neither is correct." http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/09/motte-and-bailey-doctrines/ 98.114.130.5 (talk) 17:10, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks—Shackel's opinion was already in a footnote, but now it is mentioned in the article body as well. As Shackel noted in the same piece, many people speak of it as a fallacy. Biogeographist (talk) 17:57, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Contrast with steelmanning

What about adding a contrast between this and steelmanning, where the opponent instead of the proponent only attacks the more defensible position? Themumblingprophet (talk) 11:47, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure that's a useful contrast. For Motte and Bailey, the more defensible position is often a universally accepted platitude like "Women are people too", so even when steelmanning, you wouldn't attack that. Contrasting the two would probably do more to confuse the idea of Motte and Bailey than to clarify it.