05-06-2021, 02:58 AM
(05-06-2021, 02:06 AM)Dill Wrote: Because anecdotes and anecdotal evidence are no substitute for data, or actual case studies, doesn't mean they can never have a constructive role in arguments, stating hypothesis, providing witness testimony, introducing issues, articulating/illustrating principles (e.g., "constructive possession" in this case) and the like. Most introductory logic/rhetoric textbooks define a role for anecdotes and anecdotal evidence, and teach students the appropriate context for each. That means one could use an anecdotal argument or evidence in one context, and call out its misuse in another, without being "hypocritical" or guilty of a "double standard." But one has to know what constitutes misuse in the first place.
E.g., One typically tests or refutes anecdotal data, like your claim stolen guns are always reported, with statistical data. The quickest way to refute anecdotal evidence like Fred's claim that officers in his state complain because lack of registration has allowed felons to keep stolen guns, is by showing it to be logically inconsistent in its own terms.
I asked you for that kind of refutation when I wrote "Why couldn't a felon's non-felon friend claim a loose gun to protect the felon, if the gun is not registered and there is no law requiring it be? Why couldn't cops confiscate the unregistered gun, taking it off the street, if registration is a requirement?"
A counter anecdote, based on your experience would be admissible here too. But you don't appear to have one which could refute Fred's in principle. (Just telling a story about one time a felon's friend couldn't claim an unregistered gun because of one mitigating factor would not do the trick.)
Unable to establish that a felon's friend could not claim an unregistered gun etc. you assert there is "more to" such situations. And unable to specify any "more to" which would negate Fred's example, you launch into a flailing personal attack, accusing me (ironically) of "childishly simple construction" and hypocrisy and double standards now supposedly "revealed."
And yet, this panic ad hominem follows your concession that registration can indeed help police get guns off the street. You yourself implicitly accept Fred's anecdote in that concession. That's what has been "revealed" here, underneath the desperate name calling.
In the future, I'll probably continue to "attack" you for use anecdotal evidence in place of data. But on another thread. It appears you have run out of arguments here. keeper
Spare me. You've been exposed. All your pontifications won't be able to obfuscate your intellectual dishonesty and blatant double standards.
Keeper.
