The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ad Hominem

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Stephen Bond writes the definitive word on ad hominem in "the ad hominem fallacy fallacy":

In reality, ad hominem is unrelated to sarcasm or personal abuse. Argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of attempting to undermine a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker instead of addressing the argument. The mere presence of a personal attack does not indicate ad hominem: the attack must be used for the purpose of undermining the argument, or otherwise the logical fallacy isn't there.

[...]
A: "All rodents are mammals, but a weasel isn't a rodent, so it can't be a mammal."
B: "You evidently know nothing about logic. This does not logically follow."

B's argument is still not ad hominem. B does not imply that A's sentence does not logically follow because A knows nothing about logic. B is still addressing the substance of A's argument...

This is too beautiful, thorough, and precise to not post. HT to sfk on HN.

Stephen Bond writes the definitive word on ad hominem in "the ad hominem fallacy fallacy":

In reality, ad hominem is unrelated to sarcasm or personal abuse. Argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of attempting to undermine a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker instead of addressing the argument. The mere presence of a personal attack does not indicate ad hominem: the attack must be used for the purpose of undermining the argument, or otherwise the logical fallacy isn't there.

[...]
A: "All rodents are mammals, but a weasel isn't a rodent, so it can't be a mammal."
B: "You evidently know nothing about logic. This does not logically follow."

B's argument is still not ad hominem. B does not imply that A's sentence does not logically follow because A knows nothing about logic. B is still addressing the substance of A's argument...

This is too beautiful, thorough, and precise to not post. HT to sfk on HN.

I think "ad hominem" reasoning makes a great deal more sense when you're dealing with someone citing alleged facts not readily verified. It makes a lot less sense when you're dealing with moral arguments, steps of reasoning from facts already known, etc. Then you want to just say - "If my opponent is flawed, let me prove it by finding the specific flaws in the argument."

No, it's not like this in theory, but the practice makes a good deal of sense. I had to give someone this advice just recently. It's extremely important to folks like us who've learned a large catalog of flaws that other people can potentially have.

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The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ad Hominem

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The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ad Hominem

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