Argument from overabundance

About

An argument from overabundance is a claim that there are too many arguments to answer, with the implied conclusion being that it is therefore not necessary to answer them in order to maintain one's original position.

The arguer may also claim to have answered a few of the opposing arguments on a given subject, but if this is in response to a particular question, then it is just dodging that specific question. (The arguments previously answered may also have been straw men.)

How to Correct

A more reasonable process, if one truly believes that none of the opposing arguments are valid, would be to suggest that one's opponent should pick a limited number of those arguments, starting with those which they believe to be the strongest. If one can in fact defeat those arguments, then it might be reasonable to conclude that the remaining arguments are just as easily defeated; if one cannot, then this is an indication that many of the others may be valid as well.

Without any such "take your best shot" challenge, however, it is reasonable to assume that the user of this technique is in fact trying to avoid interrogation.

Examples

• "There are actually about two thousand allegations of this kind of which we saw a lot, and we didn't try to knock down every... we took on a few of the most important ones in the report, but there were so many incredible allegations of this kind that [...] it would have taken us hundreds of pages in the report, which was already a pretty long report..." -- Philip Zelikow

Notes

I could have sworn I already wrote an article about this, or possibly a substantial amount of text within another article, but at the moment I can't find it. --Woozle 10:57, 7 August 2011 (EDT)