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  • Kettle Logic (la logique du chaudron in the original French) is a type of informal fallacy wherein one uses multiple arguments to defend a point, but the arguments themselves are inconsistent.

    The name derives from an example used by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams and in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Freud relates the story that a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition offered three arguments.

    That he had returned the kettle undamaged;

    That it was already damaged when he borrowed it;

    That he had never borrowed it in the first place.

    (Wikipedia)

    January 3, 2012