Yeah, I think everyone's opinion counts on moral matters like that, but that Lila sleeps around with anything.
I know of at least one marriage she's broken up, so why should her opinion count on anything, much less morality? Of course Marx' theories about the ideal society are bunk. The guy spent all his time in the library. We cannot approve of this recycling idea. It was thought of by a bunch of hippie communist weirdos. There's no reason to take seriously Nietzsche's ideas about the Superman.
Weak and sickly all his short life, of course he found this concept captivating. Learn more about elements of a good rebuttal. Ad hominem attacks can be extremely persuasive. The truth is, if you want to be a part of debating this type of opponent, then you need to be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get into the trenches with a group of people that will attack first.
By Jarrod Atchison, Ph. Their character, judgment and personal lives are used against them to disprove their knowledge of an issue. How can you avoid committing or suffering one? Source Credibility is Key In many debates, the credibility of your source—your author or study—is relevant for an argument. Q: Which is an example of an ad hominem attack? Q: Is ad hominem ever valid? Q: How do you counter ad hominem? All rights reserved. The charge of mistaken reasoning is supported by any resulting logical inconsistency.
In Biblical scholarship, for example, the use of argumentum ex concessis is used to evaluate consistency between the Old and New Testaments. Also, note that the argument does not prove anything with respect to the object of the dispute i. Revealing an inconsistency in an opponent's claims in a dialectical exchange is, of course, in itself, a legitimate argument. This form of the argumentum ex concessis occurs when someone is accused of being hypocritical and is personally accused of not believing in, or not acting in accordance with, commitments he has taken on another occasion.
And he took him , and healed him, and let him go; 5 And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightaway pull him out on the sabbath day? The practice is seen as acceptable to the Pharisees , but not proved to be acceptable in itself. The ex concessis variety of the ad hominem fallacy occurs when the previous commitment or position is not specifically germane to the specific subject under consideration.
The ex concessis form of the fallacy is committed when an interlocutor states that his opponent's argument must be mistaken because his opponent has previously given an argument or taken a position which is inconsistent with the present argument or position.
But the fact that the opponent might, at one time, have believed something different from what the present argument provides, does not necessarily imply the present argument or claim is mistaken as a matter of fact. Obviously, even if the opponent concedes the view, the view has not been proved to be the case. In this form ex concessis , the argument is directed to the opponent, but the opponent is not being attacked.
For example, W. The personal attack fallacy is often regarded as a harsh ad hominem abusive fallacy, but it can also occur as an ad hominem circumstantial fallacy. Hence, these deceitful vacuous writings belong in the dustbin of history! The fallacy of name calling , also often a variant of the ad hominem abusive fallacy, occurs on those occasions where loaded or negatively-slanted epithets or appellations characterizing a speaker are used to cast doubt on the worth of the speaker's beliefs.
Often such insults are used to devalue the opposition's arguments or beliefs. For the name-calling fallacy to occur, the critic must have used irrelevant name calling as a reason for doubting the advocate's argument or conclusion. Thus, any evidence of the name's propriety is not necessarily evidence against the argument or conclusion itself. Not about gay marriage, of course. Scalia is so antediluvian he has trouble forcing himself to call it by its proper name.
Note that simply using abusive names to belittle a person is not fallacious in itself. Occasionally name calling is done in order to divert attention away from the argument under discussion.
The following passage seems fallacious, but it is an instance of nonargumentative name calling. Lexically, the example can be properly termed an ad hominem , but, logically, not an ad hominem fallacy. They feed off others, while creating no wealth of their own. The fallacy of poisoning the well is, in a sense, a kind of preemptive ad hominem argument. In poisoning the well, a disputant claims that an adversary's arguments cannot be trusted to be credible because of an adversary's prior fixed opinion or previous commitment.
Such a person is said to be untrustworthy in present assertions because, it is claimed, that person has always been prejudiced and narrow-minded. In nearly all poisoning-the-well examples a person's motives are used to attempt to discredit the claims of that person and so are instances of the ad hominem circumstantial fallacy. Since we normally assess the truth of a claim by a body of existing beliefs, if the existing belief-set is suspect, then our ability to assess the claim is seriously undermined.
So in the fallacy of poisoning the well, odious information about an adversary is preemptively adduced in order to discredit any possible response made by the opponent.
These examples are clearly imparted as examples of the syllogistic formal fallacy of the undistributed middle term. Chase formalizes an example which was used by the real estate lobby during the McCarthy era in the U. Taft is in favor of government housing. The source of how evidence is obtained is often irrelevant to logical significance of the evidence.
The correctness of a conception should be judged on its own basis rather than judged on the basis of its sources or adherents. If the origin of an argumentative claim arises from an agent or person of some kind, the cogency of that claim or belief is not justified when the source is not logically related to the claim. A claim is to be justified on the basis of its own merit. Postmodernists who reject scientific claims to knowledge on the grounds that those claims emerged from the hegemonic discourse of a powerful elite are likewise guilty of the genetic fallacy.
A second type of genetic fallacy occurs often in the sciences where an entity, state, or activity is reduced to, or identified with, the phenomena or physical processes which occasion it.
A third type of genetic fallacy is the presumption that a descriptive historical account of the origin of biological, psychological or ethical aspects of organisms is always sufficient for a logical understanding or a normative justification.
This is a demand, though, that no evolutionary account needs to meet. But it is not the logician's task to account for scientific discoveries; all he can do is to analyze the relation between given facts and a theory presented to him with the claim that it explains these facts.
In other words, logic is concerned only with the context of justification. This latter is concerned not with question of fact … but on with questions of justification or validity. Reichenbach and Popper, notwithstanding, in some arguments factors in the context of discovery are relevant to the import of the conclusion. Often discoveries are made solely by logical reasoning in mathematics and the theoretical sciences.
As well, justification in various modes of inquiry often evolves as addition data is adduced. Falsification by means of further discovery can alter theoretical conclusions. In such cases, a premise stating a relationship between discovery and theory can be correctly part of the context of justification.
Obviously, such genetic arguments as these require valuation on a case-by-case basis. This includes using the historical origins of fields of inquiry such as the varieties of conflicting religious beliefs, and interpretation of doctrines; altered states of consciousness and mystical, out-of-body, and deja vu experiences; varieties of conflicting political systems; as well as biological origins of some ethical and epistemological intuition. His arguments indirectly indicate that a genetic epistemology is possible; hence, Kitchener effectively shows the possibility of the relevance of discovery or genesis of an idea to its justification.
The mistake of the genetic fallacy is in the denial of the truth of an issue on the basis of the irrelevancy of its historical origins. Not all genetic accounts are defective arguments, and many are controversial. In some cases cognizance of the origins of a viewpoint or conclusion is in fact an inference to the best explanation in inductive argumentation.
An evolutionary account of the development of the origin of religious or logical thinking is not always an irrelevant consideration in assessing its trustworthiness even though such an account is not deductively certain. A causal account of the origins and maintenance of belief can undermine that belief's rational warrant. Sometimes the understanding of a conception is constitutively reliant on the circumstances of its discovery and development.
Thus, a historically descriptive account of how a judgment commences is sometimes essentially relevant to the epistemological status of that judgment.
In general, if the argument involves a justification for a person's belief, then how that person arrived at that belief can be relevant. However, if the argument is about the truth of the belief, then how that person arrived at that belief is unlikely to be relevant. Evaluating Ad Hominem Arguments for Relevance Several considerations for evaluating ad hominem passages deserve comment: In the examination of scientific, literary or philosophical works, looking at the author's character or circumstance can sometimes provide insight into that individual's standpoint.
In other words, ad hominem considerations can show motives and can sometimes provide a frame of reference for deeper comprehension. However, these perspectives do not ordinarily demonstrate the truth or falsity of the ideas. No fallacy occurs here because no argument is present. The character of a person is often relevant for an evaluation of the sincerity of views being offered and so can be relevant for pragmatic decision-making.
Said's origins and political activism as an Arab-American intellectual can hardly be left out of analysis. A fallacy might occur in passages such as these if the work were to be considered misguided and discredited solely because of the degenerate character and circumstances of the author. The essential question in judging whether or not an ad hominem argument is a fallacy is whether or not the author's character and circumstances are logically relevant to the assertions or the arguments in the work itself.
Non-Fallacious Uses of Ad Hominem Arguments Non-fallacious uses of the ad hominem can occur in diverse descriptive and rhetorical contexts. When evidence about a person's character or circumstances is adduced to disclose the motive for that person's assertion, rather than to dispute the assertion itself, such instances often involve the presence of a causal explanation rather than the presence of an argument.
In arguments where the character or circumstances are relevant to the substance of the argument, no fallacy occurs. Jefferson's stated reservations about ending slavery included a fear that emancipation would lead to racial mixing and amalgamation. His own interracial affair now personalizes this issue, while adding a dimension of hypocrisy. Cragan and Craig W. Cutbirth argue when Adalai Stevenson was called a wimp in the Illinois gubernatorial Election, the ad hominem charge is relevant to the issue of his fitness for office and so is not a fallacious appeal.
Cragan and Cutbirth rightly conclude that adducing evidence of unfitness for office is not always a fallacy. However, Cragan and Cutbirth mistakenly proceed to criticize a number of logicians for proclaiming that any attempt to show a candidate's personal unfitness for office is an ad hominem fallacy. They cite this typical example from S. Rather than discuss political issues soberly, rivals may find it easier to discuss personalities and engage in mudslinging.
Attacking one's opponent is by definition a fallacy. Moreover, if a speaker merely responds to an accusation pertaining to his character or circumstances by retorting that the accuser also has the same or similar character or circumstances, no fallacy necessarily occurs if there is no logical argument present. In other words, if a disputant's rejoinder of the same non-argumentative accusation exhibits the rhetoric of tu quoque , it is not necessarily an instance of the tu quoque fallacy unless the claim is implicit that the rejoinder is intended to disqualify some sort of argumentative criticism from the accuser.
The truth or falsity of a what is said does not depend on the character of the person saying it, unless what is said is directly applicable to the person saying it. Under the U. Federal Rules of Evidence and Case Law there are seven proper methods of impeachment in cross-examination: Bias, interest, and motive Prior inconsistent statements Contradictory facts Prior convictions Character for untruthfulness Conduct probative of untruthfulness Learned Treatises other admissible statements, e.
In brief, if the characteristics of a person constitute a disconfirming instance of what that person claims, then an argumentum ad hominem is not a fallacious.
If the person making a claim individually embodies a counterexample which disproves that person's own claim, then it is not a fallacy to point out this fact to that person. At the same time, many ad hominem arguments provide some evidence and in those cases cannot be considered completely irrelevant arguments. The Ad Hominem Argument in Rhetoric A number of logicians have argued that the argumentum ad hominem is never a fallacy.
They argue the ad hominem has been thought fallacious since its instances do not meet the conventional logical standards of deductive validity or inductive correctness of probability. On this view, in most everyday contexts of reasoning, validity or formal inductive plausibility is thought out of place. Nevertheless, ad hominem considerations, it is argued, do render some evidence, however weak, and so should not be thereby presupposed to be impertinent. As mentioned before, when the character or circumstances of an individual are relevant to what that person advances as a claim, the fallacy of ad hominem does not occur.
For this reason, Douglas N. Walton has proposed re-naming the ad hominem abusive as the ad hominem direct to reflect the fact that the argumentum ad hominem describes both fallacious and non-fallacious arguments.
It is most obviously although not exclusively in deliberative contexts that the ad hominem has a place and should be regarded as an acceptable form of argument. These are contexts in which there is a concern with matters of policy and practice. Ad Hominem Examples with Explanation The following examples of the argumentum ad hominem are fairly straight-forward and suggested answers are explained. We all know that. Rumsfeld's criticism, Ms.
Rice ignores the question, imputes ill-temper to him, and thereby commits the ad hominem fallacy. Unlike Rosen, who had to adopt kids, Ann raised 5 of her own. Russell Barkley … Barkley is on record saying that although behavior therapy behavior modification can be a useful supplementary treatment, no approach to ADHD has ever or is probably ever going to completely replace pharmaceutical therapy.
In this regard it is significant to note that Barkley has had ties to … the developer of the popular ADHD drug Strattera. Barkley's past connections. However, Dr. Barkley's expertise cannot be entirely disregarded since his testimony and experience is relevant to the issue being discussed. Although biased innuendo is expressed against Dr. Barkley in the original dialogue, this does not necessarily result in an informal fallacy being committed since the fact of much of Dr. Barkley's background is relevant.
Nevertheless, this consideration does not entirely justify Dr. Barkley assessment. The best that can be said is that calling attention to Dr. Barkley's association with the developer of an ADHD drug is uncharitable without explaining what those ties are. Make that everything. Given that his father went to jail for crimes including tax evasion, and that his boss declared four businesses bankruptcies, we can only hope Kushner looks far afield for role models.
Hence, the ad hominem circumstantial fallacy guilt by association is committed. Butler] was cross-questioning a witness in his characteristic manner with him politeness, or even humanity, was out of the question. The judge interrupted to remind him that the witness was a Harvard professor.
Butler argues that his rude cross examination of a Harvard professor is unexceptional since a Harvard professor was hanged recently — implying the witness' character is determinable by association with other Harvard professors. Again, the ad hominem circumstantial fallacy guilt by association is committed. Paid child care, free higher education, free health care, a mandatory five weeks of paid vacation, monthly government payments for each child … There comes a point when ideology has to be put aside and what's good for the country must be embraced.
France is a selfish nation that is going down the drain economically because the folks there want stuff and economics be damned. O'Reilly, provides cogent reasons that government regulation and high taxes are part of an unsustainable economy, assessing reasons for this conclusion by attacking the character of the French people as wanting stuff, not caring about economics, and being selfish, is not directly relevant: ad hominem abusive.
As he sees it, consumers willing to pay more for better — and American — made clothes will remain a definite minority. The vast shopping public demands basement-scraping prices on two-for-one deals. Patriotism ends at the cash register. He's seen it happen. Also the reasoning is based on one group of workers to a conclusion about all Americans and the fallacy of converse accident is suggested.
Nevertheless, the implicit argument qualifies as a weak inductive argument rather than a clear fallacy. Most of its members are serious scientists. But reporters don't realize that those scientists, like bird flu specialists, have every incentive to hype the risk. If their computer models which so far have been wrong predict disaster, they get attention and money. Stossel ignores the empirical issues relating to global warming by claiming that the conclusions of the scientists on the Intergovermental Panel are not as much based on empirical evidence as they are based upon scientists attempting to secure recognition and government funding.
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