ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors introduce a family of pseudo-arguments that they call pushover arguments; they identify three members of this broad family: the straw man fallacy, the weak man fallacy, and the hollow man fallacy. Betty's strategy employs a second kind of pushover argument, what the authors call the weak man fallacy. Generally, pushover arguments depend not only on a speaker's misrepresentation of her opponents' commitments and arguments, but also on her audience's inexperience or ignorance. What's interesting about the pushover family is that in every case the arguments just by themselves are, in a way, perfectly fine. Proper argument requires a minimal background of cooperation between arguers, and one feature of that background is that in arguing, the discussants must be exchanging reasons. In short, by earnestly responding only to Dopey, Betty shows herself to argue earnestly, but she fails at argumentative responsibility.
