Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Ad hominem


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"Personal attacks" redirects here. For the Wikipedia policy, see Wikipedia:No personal attacks.
An ad hominem (Latin: "to the man"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.[1] The ad hominem is a classic logical fallacy,[2] but it is not always fallacious; in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue.[3]
The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that ad hominem reasoning is essential to understanding certain moral issues, and contrasts this sort of reasoning with the apodictic reasoning of philosophical naturalism (philosophy).[4]

Contents

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[edit] Types

[edit] Abuse

Ad hominem abuse (also called personal abuse or personal attacks) usually involves insulting or belittling one's opponent in order to invalidate his argument, but can also involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent's argument. This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent's personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent's arguments or assertions.
Examples:
  • "You can't believe Jack when he says the proposed policy would help the economy. He doesn't even have a job."
  • "Candidate Jane's proposal about zoning is ridiculous. She was caught cheating on her taxes in 2003."

[edit] Circumstantial

Ad hominem circumstantial points out that someone is in circumstances such that he is disposed to take a particular position. Ad hominem circumstantial constitutes an attack on the bias of a source. This is fallacious because a disposition to make a certain argument does not make the argument false; this overlaps with the genetic fallacy (an argument that a claim is incorrect due to its source).[5]
The circumstantial fallacy only applies where the source taking a position is only making a logical argument from premises that are generally accepted. Where the source seeks to convince an audience of the truth of a premise by a claim of authority or by personal observation, observation of their circumstances may reduce the evidentiary weight of the claims, sometimes to zero.[6]
Examples:
Mandy Rice-Davies's famous testimony during the Profumo Affair, "Well, he would [say that], wouldn't he?", is an example of a valid circumstantial argument. Her point was that since a man in a prominent position, accused of an affair with a callgirl, would deny the claim whether it was true or false, his denial, in itself, carries little evidential weight against the claim of an affair. Note, however, that this argument is valid only insofar as it devalues the denial; it does not bolster the original claim. To construe evidentiary invalidation of the denial as evidentiary validation of the original claim is fallacious (on several different bases, including that of argumentum ad hominem); however likely the man in question would be to deny an affair that did in fact happen, he could only be more likely to deny an affair that never did.
Conflict of Interest: Where a source seeks to convince by a claim of authority or by personal observation, identification of conflicts of interest are not ad hominem - it is generally well accepted that an "authority" needs to be objective and impartial, and that an audience can only evaluate information from a source if they know about conflicts of interest that may affect the objectivity of the source. Identification of a conflict of interest is appropriate, and concealment of a conflict of interest is a problem.

[edit] Tu quoque

Main article: Tu quoque
Ad hominem tu quoque (lit: "You too!") refers to a claim that the source making the argument has spoken or acted in a way inconsistent with the argument. In particular, if Source A criticizes the actions of Source B, a tu quoque response is that Source A has acted in the same way. This argument is fallacious because it does not disprove the argument; if the premise is true then Source A may be a hypocrite, but this does not make the statement less credible from a logical perspective. Indeed, Source A may be in a position to provide personal testimony to support the argument.
For example, a father may tell his son not to start smoking as he will regret it when he is older, and the son may point out that his father is or was a smoker. This does not alter the fact that his son may regret smoking when he is older.

[edit] Guilt by association

Main article: Association fallacy
Guilt by association can sometimes also be a type of ad hominem fallacy, if the argument attacks a source because of the similarity between the views of someone making an argument and other proponents of the argument.[7]
This form of the argument is as follows:
Source S makes claim C.
Group G, which is currently viewed negatively by the recipient, also makes claim C.
Therefore, source S is viewed by the recipient of the claim as associated to the group G and inherits how negatively viewed it is.

[edit] Common misconceptions

Gratuitous verbal abuse or "name-calling" itself is not an ad hominem or a logical fallacy.[8][9][10][11][12]
This is not to be confused with a true fallacy, which would be "X is idiotically ignorant [of politics], so why should we listen to him now?"
Identification of conflicts of interest - see "Circumstantial", above.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "ad hominem: West's Encyclopedia of American Law (Full Article) from". Answers.com. 2007-09-10. http://www.answers.com/topic/ad-hominem. Retrieved 2009-11-08. 
  2. ^ Walton, Douglas (2008). Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach. Cambridge University Press. pp. 190 pp. 
  3. ^ Walton, Douglas (2008). Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach. Cambridge University Press. pp. 170 pp. 
  4. ^ Charles Taylor, "Explanation and Practical Reason", Philosophical Arguments (Harvard, 1997), 34-60.
  5. ^ Walton DN. Ad Hominem Arguments. University of Alabama Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8173-0922-5, pp.18-21
  6. ^ fallacyfiles.org (2007). "Argumentum ad Hominem". fallacyfiles.org. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html. Retrieved September 10, 2007. 
  7. ^ Walton DN. Ad Hominem Arguments. University of Alabama Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8173-0922-5, pp.18-21
  8. ^ "Ad Hominem". Plover.net. http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html. Retrieved 2009-11-08. 
  9. ^ "Logical Fallacy: Argumentum ad Hominem". Fallacyfiles.org. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html. Retrieved 2009-11-08. 
  10. ^ "Logic Fallacies". The Autonomist. http://theautonomist.com/aaphp/permanent/fallacies.php#adhom. Retrieved 2009-11-08. 
  11. ^ "AdHominem". Drury.edu. http://www.drury.edu/ess/Logic/Informal/AdHominem.html. Retrieved 2009-11-08. 
  12. ^ "Logical Fallacies» Ad Hominem (Personal Attack)". Logicalfallacies.info. http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/ad-hominem/. Retrieved 2009-11-08. 

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

Look up ad hominem in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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