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United States24772 Posts
Aside from a Philosophy 100 course, I never studied logical fallacies (and the course I took didn't focus much on them). One fallacy I learned purely from the internet (in communities such as this one) is Ad Hominem. Of course, I learned this many years ago, but only got to thinking about it again recently because it is mentioned in an article I was reading, in passing. I realized something about the way the term gets used is bothering me, and has been for a long time... note that this was not necessarily the case with the article I was reading... I'm not sure why it suddenly occurred to me to explore this, to be honest.
To be clear on definitions, a fallacy in general is "an argument that uses poor reasoning" as per wikipedia (which I think will suffice for my purposes). An ad hominem is not a formal fallacy because it does not "stem from a poor logical form." It is informal.
According to https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem:
Example: After Sally presents an eloquent and compelling case for a more equitable taxation system, Sam asks the audience whether we should believe anything from a woman who isn't married, was once arrested, and smells a bit weird.
Sam has neither proven nor dis-proven Sally's argument with his response to the audience. I question whether or not his response is inherently fallacious, though. As awful as it is to say we shouldn't accept the argument of an unmarried woman, or one who smells weird, it doesn't seem to me like the comments are an effort to say that her case for equitable taxation is necessarily wrong. If smelly women really are bad at making logical cases for things (doubtful), then it is logical to focus attention on arguments made by other parties, instead. I'll try to create my own, more extreme example to illustrate this point I'm going for.
Example: Orcdude the orc is captured by human forces and brought before the king. While Orcdude, a well-known orc loyal to his war chief, is waiting for the king to finish a conversation with his military advisers, he overhears a plan being discussed to assault the main orc encampment from the East, near the dark portal. Orcdude jumps up and yells to the king that this is ill advised: the orc hordes are being equipped with new magical armor which is passively empowered by the energy emanating from the dark portal, making equipped warriors in the vicinity nearly invincible on the battlefield. It would be much wiser for the humans to attack the main orc encampment from the West, further from the dark portal. The king responds "I won't do that; you are an orc loyal to the war chief, and also smell bad. I certainly won't heed your advice, no matter how compelling you claim your logic is."
The king dismissed Orcdude's argument because of who he was, rather than using any logic. Is this an ad hominem? It is most likely possible for the king to consult with his magicians to determine how viable Orcdude's story is, and possibly find evidence, rather than circumstance, which proves the orc is (most likely intentionally) wrong, or possibly even right. It would certainly be fallacious for the king to claim he has disproven Orcdude's argument, but that's not what he did. Similarly, in the first example and many other cases of the term 'ad hominem' being thrown around, a person is not necessarily claiming they are disproving an argument when they dismiss it. The circumstances sometimes warrant it. How is it fallacious to do the right thing?
I know TL has some logic/philosophy fans who have probably studied this topic extensively and can, based on my thinking, come up with an explanation for how the term ad hominem should and shouldn't be used. It seems to me like people often dismiss arguments based on characteristics of the arguer when it is inappropriate to do so (like claiming smelly women are wrong) but that would make them wrong without being fallaciously wrong, from what I see, since there are also cases where it is necessary or reasonable to dismiss arguments such as those made by a randomized magic 8 ball with complex suggestions that may or may not be correct; it would be foolish to try to apply them to a specific situation as though the 8 ball has some knowledge of which suggestions would or wouldn't apply.
 
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ad hominem is not really a logical category, it is a rhetorical one. There are times when it is perfectly appropriate to mount an ad homimen attack (e.g. "rush limbaugh is an idiot, so who cares what he thinks') and times when it is not. Mostly it depends on your audience and what you hope to accomplish.
it also depends on what you are arguing about. if you are arguing about something that is objective, an argument ad hominem is fallacious. if you are arguing about something that is inextricably subjective, it may be appropriate. Many people (especially on TL and in internet culture more generally) make the mistake of trying to argue about something subjective as though it were objective, and so they throw around "ad hominem" because they think it makes them sound very educated and logical.
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You seem to be on the right track. For instance, the whole idea of appointing impartial judges is a sort of ad hominem - your judgement is not trustworthy because you are the victim's father. Asking for credentials and references when hiring is a sort of ad hominem - having no experience with computers whatsoever, you probably won't do as our lead programmer. Having an opinion about people - their trustworthiness, abilities and so on and so forth - is the only sensible alternative.
If ad hominem is to be a fallacy, it is only for those cases where character judgements are superfluous - when there are other, sounder standards to judge their arguments or claims by. If two students have both presented their calculations of an integral and have different answers, then Well, girls obviously can't do maths seems like an ad hominem; a placeholder for pointing out why her way of doing it is wrong.
The problem here is that there is no clear cut difference between where there's a fallacy and where there's sound judgement. When a tenured professor points out that the quantum healing charlatan has zero formal education and failed maths in high school and that all the resonance frequencies he's talking about is utter bogus - call it whatever you want, but he does have a point.
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good posts and yes, I absolutely hate how ad hominem is thrown around in internet arguments often disregarding context. Very few logical fallacies actually apply in real arguments.
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United States15275 Posts
Ad hominems are not necessarily fallacious in nature. The usage of them is somewhat justified in cases where both parties do not share access to the same information. One can use the other's character as a barometer to approximate their veracity of the other person's argument.
The example with Sally is an ad hominem argument as Sam is using superfluous standards to dismiss the argument altogether. The fact that is not married, was arrested, and smells are not related to the context of the argument. They do not indicate that she has a personal stake in the argument and may have twisted logic to conform to her biases. They do not indicate that she lacks understanding of the subject. Back in the seventeenth century the ad hominem would have more weight as all those factors would be interpreted by an audience as evidence of being unreliable.
The Orcdude example is also an ad hominem except it is rooted in a reasonable conflict of interests. Orcdude is supposedly loyal to his war chief; he lacks any apparent motivation to make an argument that will hurt the people he is loyal to. All of a sudden he yells out an argument that involves information that the king is not privy to, one that is sensible but requires a leap of faith to two ways. The king must take his tale at face value and in doing so, believe that Orcdude is deliberately trying to help them. Of course the king rejects it based on the assumption that no orc would ever betray his people, which is a generalized assumption instead of being one based on previous knowledge of Orcdude's character. This is where I believe the illegitimacy of ad hominem arguments start to become fuzzy. We are starting to use character judgments as shortcuts which may or may not result in the same conclusions as a proper examination of the argument.
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The term you're looking for is ad hominem circumstantial.
"Ad hominem circumstantial points out that someone is in circumstances such that they are 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).[9]
The circumstantial fallacy applies only 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.[10]"
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My biggest pet peeve with people referring to fallacies is that they almost never explain exactly how the fallacy applies to the situation. How many times have you seen someone say that someone is strawmanning and then never make the connection? (It rather reminds me of The Argument Clinic.) It's usually an attempt to psychologise their way out of having to give an actual argument.
It seems that there could be some use for ad hominems, but it's almost always a poor decision when actually engaging with an argument. Its only real usefulness is as a filter, you could say, of content. When sam!zdat makes his ad hominem towards Rush Limbaugh, he is not really discussing any argument, he is simply predicting that the source will not posit any new or interesting ideas and so he will save himself the effort of rehashing tired discussions. While you may occasionally draw some interesting conclusions on the attitudes of proponents of certain arguments (like sam!zdat is clearly an ideologue because he can't write 5 lines without spewing some vitriol), I'd encourage anyone to assiduously avoid the temptation.
Ideas are interesting; people are not.
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United States15275 Posts
On November 21 2013 12:09 Jerubaal wrote:
My biggest pet peeve with people referring to fallacies is that they almost never explain exactly how the fallacy applies to the situation. How many times have you seen someone say that someone is strawmanning and then never make the connection? (It rather reminds me of The Argument Clinic.) It's usually an attempt to psychologise their way out of having to give an actual argument.
It seems that there could be some use for ad hominems, but it's almost always a poor decision when actually engaging with an argument. Its only real usefulness is as a filter, you could say, of content. When sam!zdat makes his ad hominem towards Rush Limbaugh, he is not really discussing any argument, he is simply predicting that the source will not posit any new or interesting ideas and so he will save himself the effort of rehashing tired discussions. While you may occasionally draw some interesting conclusions on the attitudes of proponents of certain arguments (like sam!zdat is clearly an ideologue because he can't write 5 lines without spewing some vitriol), I'd encourage anyone to assiduously avoid the temptation.
Ideas are interesting; people are not.
People on the Internet use the phrase "you're arguing semantics" incorrectly all the time. It's really tiring to explain what the term actually means.
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On November 21 2013 12:09 Jerubaal wrote:
Ideas are interesting; people are not.
Uh. I think some people are pretty interesting. But what is a person outside of oneself but an idea? HM.
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On November 21 2013 12:09 Jerubaal wrote:
sam!zdat is clearly an ideologue because he can't write 5 lines without spewing some vitriol
the humoural critique of ideology :D
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On November 21 2013 12:25 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 12:09 Jerubaal wrote:
sam!zdat is clearly an ideologue because he can't write 5 lines without spewing some vitriol
the humoural critique of ideology :D
Your ideology is the incorrect one.
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How's this?
Claim: Since my family has 3 sons, all families must have 3 sons.
Ad hominem: That statement is wrong because you're nothing more than an idiot.
Valid counterargument: That statement is wrong because it's a non sequitur. You're an idiot.
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On November 21 2013 12:59 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
How's this?
Claim: Since my family has 3 sons, all families must have 3 sons.
Ad hominem: That statement is wrong because you're nothing more than an idiot.
Valid counterargument: That statement is wrong because it's a non sequitur. You're an idiot.
Thus railed Thersites, but Ulysses at once went up to him and rebuked him sternly. "Check your glib tongue, Thersites," said be, "and babble not a word further. Chide not with princes when you have none to back you. There is no viler creature come before Troy with the sons of Atreus. Drop this chatter about kings, and neither revile them nor keep harping about going home. We do not yet know how things are going to be, nor whether the Achaeans are to return with good success or evil. How dare you gibe at Agamemnon because the Danaans have awarded him so many prizes? I tell you, therefore—and it shall surely be—that if I again catch you talking such nonsense, I will either forfeit my own head and be no more called father of Telemachus, or I will take you, strip you stark naked, and whip you out of the assembly till you go blubbering back to the ships."
On this he beat him with his staff about the back and shoulders till he dropped and fell a-weeping. The golden sceptre raised a bloody weal on his back, so he sat down frightened and in pain, looking foolish as he wiped the tears from his eyes. The people were sorry for him, yet they laughed heartily, and one would turn to his neighbour saying, "Ulysses has done many a good thing ere now in fight and council, but he never did the Argives a better turn than when he stopped this fellow's mouth from prating further. He will give the kings no more of his insolence."
Thus said the people.
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On November 21 2013 13:06 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 12:59 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
How's this?
Claim: Since my family has 3 sons, all families must have 3 sons.
Ad hominem: That statement is wrong because you're nothing more than an idiot.
Valid counterargument: That statement is wrong because it's a non sequitur. You're an idiot. Show nested quote +
Thus railed Thersites, but Ulysses at once went up to him and rebuked him sternly. "Check your glib tongue, Thersites," said be, "and babble not a word further. Chide not with princes when you have none to back you. There is no viler creature come before Troy with the sons of Atreus. Drop this chatter about kings, and neither revile them nor keep harping about going home. We do not yet know how things are going to be, nor whether the Achaeans are to return with good success or evil. How dare you gibe at Agamemnon because the Danaans have awarded him so many prizes? I tell you, therefore—and it shall surely be—that if I again catch you talking such nonsense, I will either forfeit my own head and be no more called father of Telemachus, or I will take you, strip you stark naked, and whip you out of the assembly till you go blubbering back to the ships."
On this he beat him with his staff about the back and shoulders till he dropped and fell a-weeping. The golden sceptre raised a bloody weal on his back, so he sat down frightened and in pain, looking foolish as he wiped the tears from his eyes. The people were sorry for him, yet they laughed heartily, and one would turn to his neighbour saying, "Ulysses has done many a good thing ere now in fight and council, but he never did the Argives a better turn than when he stopped this fellow's mouth from prating further. He will give the kings no more of his insolence."
Thus said the people.
That's probably the weirdest reply I've ever been greeted with... and this is TeamLiquid.
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On November 21 2013 12:25 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 12:09 Jerubaal wrote:
sam!zdat is clearly an ideologue because he can't write 5 lines without spewing some vitriol
the humoural critique of ideology :D
Sorry, was that too ad hominem?
On November 21 2013 12:19 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 12:09 Jerubaal wrote:
Ideas are interesting; people are not.
Uh. I think some people are pretty interesting. But what is a person outside of oneself but an idea? HM.
I'd like to respond to this in two ways:
1. It isn't really the person that's interesting, though. It's the ideas they have or to which they subscribe and implement.
2. Your face is interesting.
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This is really just an instance of a much more general problem with "logical fallacies" as typically conceived. As stated in the OP, there are two types of logical fallacy, formal and informal.
For the formal ones, you're better off just learning some formal logic so that you can easily spot every one of infinitely many instances of invalid arguments rather than memorizing a few random schemas. It's pretty damn rare that either of these will be useful on the internet though since no one uses formal deductions here.[1]
The informal ones are even more dumb though. They're a completely arbitrary list of pet peeves with little to say for them. If you want to know actual, common inference patterns that often lead people astray, read up on the heuristics and biases literature. If you want sound smart without having to think through the problems with someone's argument, read about logical fallacies.[2]
+ Show Spoiler +
[1] There's a worry here of inexperienced people learning about deductive logic then calling good non-deductive arguments fallacious, but that's a problem with memorizing the schemas too.
[2] Ok, some concepts that are occasionally grouped as informal fallacies can be worthwhile. Knowing about begging the question or strawmen can be good so long as you spell out exactly what the problem with the other person's argument is when applying them.
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On November 21 2013 13:06 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +
Thus railed Thersites, but Ulysses at once went up to him and rebuked him sternly. "Check your glib tongue, Thersites," said be, "and babble not a word further. Chide not with princes when you have none to back you. There is no viler creature come before Troy with the sons of Atreus. Drop this chatter about kings, and neither revile them nor keep harping about going home. We do not yet know how things are going to be, nor whether the Achaeans are to return with good success or evil. How dare you gibe at Agamemnon because the Danaans have awarded him so many prizes? I tell you, therefore—and it shall surely be—that if I again catch you talking such nonsense, I will either forfeit my own head and be no more called father of Telemachus, or I will take you, strip you stark naked, and whip you out of the assembly till you go blubbering back to the ships."
On this he beat him with his staff about the back and shoulders till he dropped and fell a-weeping. The golden sceptre raised a bloody weal on his back, so he sat down frightened and in pain, looking foolish as he wiped the tears from his eyes. The people were sorry for him, yet they laughed heartily, and one would turn to his neighbour saying, "Ulysses has done many a good thing ere now in fight and council, but he never did the Argives a better turn than when he stopped this fellow's mouth from prating further. He will give the kings no more of his insolence."
Thus said the people.
Wow, Ulysses needs to chill out. I know Thersites talks a lot of shit, but that just seemed way too overboard, even if he was flaming Agamemnon. Just lock his account for 30 days.
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On November 21 2013 12:09 Jerubaal wrote:
My biggest pet peeve with people referring to fallacies is that they almost never explain exactly how the fallacy applies to the situation. How many times have you seen someone say that someone is strawmanning and then never make the connection? (It rather reminds me of The Argument Clinic.) It's usually an attempt to psychologise their way out of having to give an actual argument.
It seems that there could be some use for ad hominems, but it's almost always a poor decision when actually engaging with an argument. Its only real usefulness is as a filter, you could say, of content. When sam!zdat makes his ad hominem towards Rush Limbaugh, he is not really discussing any argument, he is simply predicting that the source will not posit any new or interesting ideas and so he will save himself the effort of rehashing tired discussions. While you may occasionally draw some interesting conclusions on the attitudes of proponents of certain arguments (like sam!zdat is clearly an ideologue because he can't write 5 lines without spewing some vitriol), I'd encourage anyone to assiduously avoid the temptation.
Ideas are interesting; people are not.
Strawman happens to be one of the most used fallacies both online and in conversation. It's such a common tactic that has been around for probably as long as language. The best part is, usually the person using the strawman argument knows that they're wrong, and they're angry about it because they feel foolish. So they attempt to save face in front of the crowd by pulling out a false deus ex machina. They know that part of the crowd will not have been following the argument closely enough to determine when the strawman has been presented, and so, being the loud people that they sometimes can be, their loud and proud display of the strawman and instant personal recognition that they have won the argument is enough to win the more easily distracted part of the crowd to their side. Thus, they have fans to celebrate their victory with, instead of the difficulty of admitting they were wrong (and the honor that comes with it -- which is usually an alien concept for them).
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On November 21 2013 11:17 sam!zdat wrote:
ad hominem is not really a logical category, it is a rhetorical one. There are times when it is perfectly appropriate to mount an ad homimen attack (e.g. "rush limbaugh is an idiot, so who cares what he thinks') and times when it is not. Mostly it depends on your audience and what you hope to accomplish.
it also depends on what you are arguing about. if you are arguing about something that is objective, an argument ad hominem is fallacious. if you are arguing about something that is inextricably subjective, it may be appropriate. Many people (especially on TL and in internet culture more generally) make the mistake of trying to argue about something subjective as though it were objective, and so they throw around "ad hominem" because they think it makes them sound very educated and logical.
I think people throw "ad hominem" around so much because many of the arguments on the internet are ad hominems. It's the simplest and easiest form of argument along with straw men, and I see them both everywhere.
It's also quite telling that you think "Rush Limbaugh is an idiot" is actually an appropriate argument. It would perhaps be more appropriate to make a statement such as "Rush Limbaugh has shown himself to be disingenuous in these situations" etc. But leaping straight to calling someone an idiot is never appropriate no matter how strong your conviction is. Excessive conviction is part of the problem with debates in general, and certain posters in particular.
On November 21 2013 12:10 CosmicSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 12:09 Jerubaal wrote:
My biggest pet peeve with people referring to fallacies is that they almost never explain exactly how the fallacy applies to the situation. How many times have you seen someone say that someone is strawmanning and then never make the connection? (It rather reminds me of The Argument Clinic.) It's usually an attempt to psychologise their way out of having to give an actual argument.
It seems that there could be some use for ad hominems, but it's almost always a poor decision when actually engaging with an argument. Its only real usefulness is as a filter, you could say, of content. When sam!zdat makes his ad hominem towards Rush Limbaugh, he is not really discussing any argument, he is simply predicting that the source will not posit any new or interesting ideas and so he will save himself the effort of rehashing tired discussions. While you may occasionally draw some interesting conclusions on the attitudes of proponents of certain arguments (like sam!zdat is clearly an ideologue because he can't write 5 lines without spewing some vitriol), I'd encourage anyone to assiduously avoid the temptation.
Ideas are interesting; people are not.
People on the Internet use the phrase "you're arguing semantics" incorrectly all the time. It's really tiring to explain what the term actually means.
What people think terms mean and what they actually mean is at some point synonymous. Once a degree of consensus is reached the meaning has simply changed no matter how stubborn a vocal minority chooses to be.
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EPT
