Logically Fallacious vs Ethically Dishonest

[Lord MJ]

What are the criteria for evaluating where someone's use of logical fallacies to make arguments is so egregious that it crosses the line between simply being logically fallacious to fullblown ethically dishonest?

For me the biggest examples of full blown ethical dishonesty come when:

- Using emotionally charged blanket label words to describe actions that can potentially be valid or invalid to make an argument that those actions are wrong. For example the word "bullying" is one of the most ethically dishonest words someone can use because it can describe behaviors that are perfectly valid in addition to wrong actions. By using that word you are painting your opponent and defending or justifying bullying which would turn a third party audience against him and give you a platform to dismiss what he is saying.

- Intentional Strawmans - I can't say that anyone that makes a Strawman argument is dishonest because there are times where reasonably take strawman positions without any ill intent or even realizing that there argument is a strawman. But when people deliberately decide to strawman, for example attacking socialized medicine in general because a particular implementation of it is flawed, that steps into ethical dishonesty.

- Omitting Decision Steps - Basically anytime someone tries to reduce an issue to A->Z when the reality is that A->B->C... Z. An example of this an argument of action Z is justified because of action A. That omits evaluating decision steps B, C, etc. Which are much more important to justifying Z than A is. I have to believe that anyone that engages in this kind of reasoning is ethically dishonest. There is simply no way to attribute that kind of thinking to reasonable logical mistake.

That's all that I can think of for now. Anymore examples?

[Darth Wong]

No matter how dishonest someone appears to be, there is always the possibility that he does not realize he's dishonest. I've even had people argue right to my face that it's unreasonable to expect logical consistency from people, so it's OK for them to use an argument for subject A which totally contradicts the argument they use for subject B.

[Patrick Degan]

When a person continues to make the same flaws after they've been pointed out to him why they are logical fallacies and it becomes clear that it's to simply flood out any rational counterargument, he's crossed the line into outright dishonesty. Our more infamous trolls and village idiots are examples of this sort of behaviour.

[Darth Wong]

Technically, it's also possible that they are so stupid that they don't realize they're ignoring certain things. But we generally discount that possibility, as such a person would have to be mentally retarded.

[Junghalli]

I think it also depends on what's being argued over.

I mean if you're arguing Star Wars vs Star Trek, dishonest debating tactics may be egregious, but "unethical"? To be unethical I think you'd have to be causing suffering in some way. What sort of suffering is caused by the outcome of a debate like this? I suppose you could argue that he's causing suffering by causing the people who are debating him anger and frustration, but that seems sort of thin. Plenty of people get angry and frustrated when encountering logical arguments too. You could argue the suffering is less necessary, but for something this trivial is there even such a thing as "necessary suffering". The possibility of getting flustered just seems like something you accept going in.

On the other hand if you're debating stuff that can actually effect people's lives, then in my mind that's different. The greater the possibility the outcome of the debate will effect people's lives, the more unethical dishonest debating tactics get.

That's my personal take on it anyway.