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::My understanding of a tautology is that it states the obvious out of formal necessity, usually as a prelude to the real argument. Things like "all triangles have three sides". I must be missing something here: can you give an example of an argument which is really a statement of a tautology? [[User:Eoinc|Eoinc]] 18:58, 7 May 2008 (EDT)
::My understanding of a tautology is that it states the obvious out of formal necessity, usually as a prelude to the real argument. Things like "all triangles have three sides". I must be missing something here: can you give an example of an argument which is really a statement of a tautology? [[User:Eoinc|Eoinc]] 18:58, 7 May 2008 (EDT)
:::What you seem to think a tautology is, is actually an ''axiom''. An axiom (from the [[Greek]] ''axios'' worthy, deserving) is something that all sides can agree upon. It is also something that ''deserves'' to have all sides agree upon it.
:::A fallacious tautology is either a ''redundancy'' (a statement of the obvious in a manner suggesting that another case could obtain that would violate the definition) or an attempt to assert a definition that ''not'' all sides can agree upon. The way one does this is usually to couch a definition in a manner that tries to make it more than it actually is. I've seen it used to mask proof by assertion, and also circular reasoning, another common fallacy.--[[User:TerryH|TerryH]]<sup>[[User talk:TerryH|Talk]]</sup> 21:00, 7 May 2008 (EDT)