Sophistical Refutations
Aristotle
tr. W.A. Pickard-Cambridge

"Now for some people it is better worth while to seem to be wise, than to be wise without seeming to be (for the art of the sophist is the semblance of wisdom without the reality, and the sophist is one who makes money from an apparent but unreal wisdom); for them, then, it is clearly necessary to seem to accomplish the task of a wise man [tou sophou ergon] rather than to accomplish it without seeming to do so. To reduce it to a single point of contrast, it is the business of one who knows a thing, himself to avoid falsities in the subjects which he knows and to be able to show up the man who makes them..." (165a19-27)

In SE ch 11, Aristotle describes contentious arguments as "deceptive and unfair" (apatetikos kai adikos) and he characterizes people who engage in such arguments as contentious and quarrelsome if they do so merely to win arguments, but if they do so to make money then they are sophistical: "for sophistry is, as we said, a kind of art of money-making from a merely apparent wisdom, and this is why they aim at a merely apparent demonstration; and quarrelsome persons and sophists employ the same arguments, but not with the same motives; and the same arguent will be sophistical and contentious, but not in the same respect; rather, it will be contentious in so far as it its aim is an apparent victory, while in so far as its aim is an apparent wisdom, it will be sophistical - for the art of sophistry is a certain appearance of wisdom without the reality." (171b27-34)

"People do not wish the same things as they say they wish: they say what will look best, whereas they wish what appears to be in their interest; e.g. they say that a man outhgt to die nobly rather than to live in pleasure, and to live in honest poverty rather than in dishonourable riches; but they wish the opposite." (172b36-173a1)

"Some say that of necessity the happy man is just, whereas it is implausible to the many that a king should not be happy. To lead a man into implausibility of this sort is the same as to lead him into the opposition of the standards of nature and convention; for convention represents the opinion of the majority, whereas the wise speak according to the standards of nature and the truth." (173a25-30)

"Moreover, there is anger and contentiousness; for when agitated everybody is less able to take care of himself [phulattesthai)." (174a19-20)

In SE ch 16, Aristotle turns from arguments to answers and solutions, and the usefulness of these; he states that for philosophical purposes they have two uses: "in the first place, since for the most part they depend upon the expression, they put us in a better condition for seeing in how many ways any term is used, and what kind of resemblances and what kind of differences occur between things and between their names. In the second place they are useful for one's own personal researches [kath' hauton zetesis]; for the man who is easily committed to a fallacy by someone else, and does not perceive it, is likely to incur this fate himself also on many occasions." (175a5-12) [PSA: because deliberation is a form of zetesis, this point applies to deliberation as well.]

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