Richard4 comments on The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ad Hominem - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 November 2008 09:47PM

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Comment author: Richard4 26 November 2008 01:49:57AM 0 points [-]

Hmm, reminds me of a post I wrote two years earlier.

Incidentally, I think one of Bond's "real life examples" exposes an important ambiguity:

A: "I can even handle misplaced apostrophes every now and then. Not excessive amounts of them, [...]" B: "Perhaps double-check your grammar before you write a grammar rant that refers to 'amounts of apostrophes'." C: " ...the ad hominem nature of [B's reply] takes the sanctimonious angle that any who criticize must be without stain."

Bond writes, "B's reply was not ad hominem. It was not a counter-argument to A, but an attempt to point out what B saw as A's hypocrisy."

But actually it is ad hominem, i.e. directed 'to the person', though not (of course) an ad hominem fallacy in the usual sense. See: Ad hominem tu quoque.