Attempting to redirect the argument to another issue that to which the person doing the redirecting can better respond. While it is similar to the avoiding the issue fallacy, the red herring is a deliberate diversion of attention with the intention of trying to abandon the original argument.

Example:

Mike: It is morally wrong to cheat on your spouse, why on earth would you have done that?
Ken: But what is morality exactly?
Mike: It's a code of conduct shared by cultures.
Ken: But who creates this code?...

Explanation: Ken has successfully derailed this conversation off of his sexual digressions to the deep, existential, discussion on morality.

Red herring is a noun that means: something, especially a sign / clue that is misleading / incorrect and that distracts from a really important / relevant issue. As can be seen in the example shown in the question above, where Ken, diverts from the subject and distracts Mike, so that Ken's morality is not the main topic of conversation.

The expression red herring, came about because, red herrings were old and fetid fish whose blood was used to distract the dogs from the actual location of the fish to other more distant locations. An alternative etymology points out that the meaning of this expression came from prisoners who escaped from the dogs in pursuit by throwing the spicy fish to lose them.

alejandrahpsi alejandrahpsi · Answer 2 · 2020-02-04T21:26:02+01:00

Answer:

The red herring is a fallacy as explained, the example given in here is explain in it's logical form as followed:

Argument A is presented by Mike (person 1).

Ken (person 2) presents argument B.

The consecuence is that the argument A is abandoned.

Explanation:

This example shows how the argument is abandoned thanks to the change of subject. This causes a distraction by presenting another argument that does not involves the original argument presented.