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Re: SUGGESTION: No more ad-hominem attacks.

2004-10-28 07:13:24
On Wed, 2004-10-27 at 10:42 -0700, Jonathan Gardner wrote:
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Ad hominem attacks are attacks directed at a person's character.

Not quite. Ad Hominem is a very specific term used to describe a logical
fallacy; an attack against a person's character may not be an Ad
Hominem, and an Ad Hominem may not be based upon a person's character,
but rather their circumstances or actions.

A response in an argument may be insulting without being an Ad Hominem.
An example of this may be "If you think that, then you're evidently
smoking crack". That's _not_ an Ad Hominem. This kind of thing is
usually accompanied by at least some form of answer to the technical
argument which was being made.

And Ad Hominem makes an attack against the person, and then attempts to
use that attack as evidence that the victim's original argument is
false. An example of this would be "You smoke crack, therefore your
argument cannot be valid and I won't even bother to answer your
technical points".

You don't actually see much Ad Hominem. You do see a lot of insulting
behaviour though. 

-- 
dwmw2


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