Nice catch, Gawain.
Posted on 03/18/2002 8:12:30 AM PST by Brookhaven
Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person."
An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:
The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).
Nice catch, Gawain.
You pinnipeds are just prejudiced against carnivores.
Which pinnipeds are herbivores?
A 'logic thread' that gets medieval and then goes nuclear : Logic and Rhetoric: Misadventure in the Search for Truth at Free Republic
An instructive and fun read.
Count me in as a proud member of the seal club - especially the cute li'l baby ones ;)
...damn self-hating sea mammals...
Don't take this personally, we are discussing technique. So long as logic is kept separate from aesthetics, the argument cannot contain emotional values. The practice of using made-up or misinterpreted numbers or anecdotal evidence is an attempt to argue by emotion or aesthetics, and must lose the argument [even while winning the case] due to failure of logic. Arguments are a logical construction; emotions are expressed in art. Of course, lawyers are as much performing artists as logicians, some are highly entertaining in court, but they don't win arguments, they persuade juries.
There's gotta be a logical fallacy in there somewhere...
</ad hominem>
(How'd I do?)
As a proud carnivore who jsut happens to have a great love of sea food I can not fathom why physicist would have made that remark. Maybe he is quarking up?
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown (Maybe for physicist I should have said relatively for each of thos conditions?:^) )
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R3. Argument Ad Hominem
The phrase ad hominem translates into "against the person." It names a fallacious attack in which the thrust is directed, not at a conclusion, but at the person who asserts or defends it. This fallacy has two major forms, because there are two major ways in which the attack can be personalized.
A. Argument Ad Hominem, Abusive
Participants in strenuous argument sometimes disparage the character of their opponents, deny their intelligence or reasonableness, question their integrity, and so on. But the character of an individual is logically irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of what that person says, or to the correctness or incorrectness of that person's reasoning. To contend that proposals are bad, or assertions false, because they are proposed or asserted by "radicals" or "extremists" is a typical example of the fallacy ad hominem, abusive.
Abusive premisses are irrelevant; they may nevertheless persuade by the psychological process of transference. Where an attitude of disapproval toward a person can be evoked, the field of emotional disapproval may be extended so as to include disagreement with the assertions that person makes. A bitter controversy among several contemporary American philosophers illustrates this fallacious attack. One of the disputants wrote:
It is one thing to be attacked by an honorable opponent in an honorable way. This happens all the time in philosophy. But in my view Sommers's intellectual methods are dishonest. She ignores the most elementary protocols of philosophical disputation.
The target of this accusation replied:
One dishonest and unworthy tactic used by several of my detractors is to attribute to me complaints I never made and then to dismiss the "complaints" as "irresponsible and evidence of my reckless unfairness."
The merits of the positions of the conflicting parties are not illuminated by argument of this character.
Ad hominem abuse has very many variations. The opponent may be abused for being of a certain persuasion, an "isolationist" or an "interventionist," a member of the "radical right" or of the "loony left," or the like. When an argument ad hominem, abusive, takes the form of attacking the source or genesis of the opposing position--not relevant to its truth, of course--it may be called the "genetic fallacy." A conclusion or its proponent may sometimes be condemned simply because the view defended is also defended by persons widely believed to be of bad character. Socrates was convicted of impiety at his notorious trial partly because of his association with persons widely known to have been disloyal to Athens and rapacious in conduct. From his day to ours there have been countless cases of such "guilt by association" in which persons are unfairly accused, and sometimes convicted, because they have been associated with other persons in disrepute.
In legal proceedings it is sometimes appropriate to exhibit the unreliability of the person giving testimony, to "impeach the witness." If dishonesty in other matters can be shown and credibility thus undermined, such impeachment, in that context, may not be fallacious. But it is never enough simply to assert that the witness lied; a pattern of dishonesty or duplicity must be exhibited, or inconsistencies with past testimony revealed. And even in this special context, the attack on character cannot establish the falsehood of the testimony given; that inference would be fallacious.
B. Argument Ad Hominem, Circumstantial
In the circumstantial form of the ad hominem fallacy, it is the irrelevance of the connection between the belief held and the circumstances of those holding it that gives rise to the mistake. The circumstances of one who makes (or rejects) some claim have no bearing on the truth of that claim.
Thus it may be argued fallaciously that consistency obliges an opponent to accept (or reject) some conclusion merely because of that person's employment, or nationality, or political affiliation, or other circumstances. It may be unfairly suggested that a clergyman must accept a given proposition because its denial would be incompatible with the Scriptures. Or it may be claimed that political candidates must support a given policy because that policy is explicitly propounded in the platform of their party. Such argument is irrelevant to the truth of the proposition in question; it simply urges that some persons' circumstances require its acceptance. Hunters, accused of the needless slaughter of unoffending animals, sometimes reply by noting that their critics eat the flesh of harmless cattle. Such a reply is plainly ad hominem; the fact that the critic eats meat does not even begin to prove that it is right for the hunter to kill animals for amusement. The Latin term tu quoque (meaning "you're another" or, more loosely, "look who's talking") is sometimes used to name this variety of circumstantial ad hominem argument.
While the circumstances of the opponent may not be the issue in a serious argument, calling attention to them may be psychologically effective in winning assent, or in persuading others. But however persuasive it may prove, argument of this kind is essentially fallacious.
Circumstantial ad hominem arguments are sometimes used to suggest that the opponents' conclusion should be rejected because their judgment is warped, dictated by their special situation rather than by reasoning or evidence. But an argument that is favorable to some group deserves dis cussion on its merits; it is fallacious to attack it simply on the ground that it is presented by a member of that group and is therefore self-serving. The arguments in favor of a protective tariff (for example) may be bad, but they are not bad because they are presented by a manufacturer who benefits from such tariffs.
One argument of this kind, called "poisoning the well," is particularly perverse. The incident that gave rise to the name illustrates the argument forcefully. The British novelist and clergyman Charles Kingsley, attacking the famous Catholic intellectual John Henry Cardinal Newman, argued thus: Cardinal Newman's claims were not to be trusted because, as a Roman Catholic priest, (Kingsley alleged) Newman's first loyalty was not to the truth. Newman countered that this ad hominem attack made it impossible for him and indeed for all Catholics to advance their arguments, since anything that they might say to defend themselves would then be undermined by others' alleging that, after all, truth was not their first concern. Kingsley, said Cardinal Newman, had poisoned the well of discourse.
Between the abusive and the circumstantial varieties of argument ad hominem there is a clear connection: the circumstantial may be regarded as a special case of the abusive. When a circumstantial ad hominem argument explicitly or implicitly charges the opponents with inconsistency (among their beliefs, or between what they profess and what they practice), that is clearly one kind of abuse. When a circumstantial ad hominem argument charges the opponents with a lack of trustworthiness by virtue of group membership or conviction, that is an accusation of prejudice in defense of self-interest and is clearly also an abuse. Whether of one form or the other, ad hominem arguments are directed fallaciously at the person of the adversary.
Sure. You can always use truth as a last resort.
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