There is no word for the opposite of the ad hominem argument,. Is there?
Instead of arguing against the person, what if the speaker praises the person's work because of their occupation or reputation?
You are not evaluating the work itself, merely assuming that if Smith is the creator, and Smith has an important job or a genius then it must be good.
Einstein is a example. He is quoted like everything he said is right regardless of the subject. Physics, all right. So many times critics praise a famous genius or high respected popular person but some of their works don't deserve it.
The Halo Effect is similar. Or argument from authority.
Google, antonym for Argumentum ad Hominem argument, indeed says "Argumentum ad Verecundiam (Argument from Authority)".
Keynes, anyone [for misuse of both]? :-)
Much as it pains me to say it, dismalist is right--it's the appeal to authority. Depending on how you cash it out, it might count as an appeal to emotion, or some other species of association fallacy.
Appeal to authority IS an ad hominem argument. It is replacing a critique of the claims with a critique of the claimant; in this case a positive critique.
Or ab homine?
AR.
I was thinking same as FishProf. its just a different type of ad hominem argument (centered on the person or persons involved instead of the core of the argument).
I always understood that ad hominem is literally against the person. Against in the textbooks.
My question is broader. Not the ones mentioned. Similar to Halo Effect, bias toward person or group favorably, assuming their past great reputation. True in classrooms also. Suppose someone or group's product is hailed, praised, recommended because who they are (identity) NOT
because of the product, book, or the specific comment itself. (Writing, music, wisdom, business. in their field of expertise and/or outside it?
Every Warren Buffet comment is treated with great respect because he is a financial genius supposedly. It doesn't follow that every businesss or other comment is pure gold. Famous poets. Doesn't matter what Auden said (No offense to English profs.)
I guess you are right, since "ad" can mean "against" and that probably is correct by context for how mostly people use the term.
Quote from: Ruralguy on December 29, 2022, 06:05:28 PM
I guess you are right, since "ad" can mean "against" and that probably is correct by context for how mostly people use the term.
The problem with fallacies is that there are literally infinitely many of them, because you could name an informal fallacy for any bad argument (similarly, every single invalid inference is a formal fallacy).
So, what ends up happening is that lots of the named fallacies are extremely closely related. This is especially so for informal fallacies because their fallaciousness is not tied to their formal structure (which means, in turn, that for each one there exist structurally identical arguments which
aren't fallacious).
That's the problem we're running up against here. The fallacy named 'ad hominem' involves an irrelevant personal attack, but it isn't the only one. Tu quoque is another, for example. These are all grouped together as fallacies of relevance, but there's no point trying to be too precise with informal fallacies because in doing so you quickly outrun their utility (which, frankly, is primarily rhetorical).
Para is technically correct (the best kind of correct).
Ad Hominem means "to the man" as in, the critique is directed at the person, rater than to the claim. That is why some philosophers consider it a class of fallacies, as there are sub-types (tu quoque - "you too" - for example).
There is no universally agreed upon classification scheme. If you tried to make one, you'd probably be committing an appeal to authority fallacy ("Well, PLATO says...").
Right. I'll accept that, since its been how I've been using the terms anyway.
Once had a similar discussion with a friend who teaches composition. Situation: student used a pop-icon (like Ariana Grande or Taylor Swift) quote as an essay hook. Broadly, the paper was about fear (student was referencing why they were afraid of something that most people aren't scared of). I said, "what does this popstar know about fear? Wouldn't a quote by Stephen King or Mike Flannagan be more appropriate?" And my friend argued that I was making a certain kind of ad hominem fallacy -- assuming that Ariana Grande can't speak to "fear" because she's an expert in something else. She further said "that's like saying Kevin Costner can't be an authority on environmental issues because he's an actor." I get the point, but I kinda disagree. Maybe this speaks to Para's point about the nature of informal fallacies?
That is not an adhominem, you are right in a way. You did not say that Taylor Swift should be rejected, only that she is not appropriate for speaking about fear. Your friend's assumption is not warranted. As teacher, you have the right to ask for a better example.
However, Taylor may have stage fright, I don't know. Never saw her. Many performers have chronic fears and insecurities. Me? I'd rather have a swift tailor than a taylor swift (Haha) Stephen King knows fear but in real life? We don't know if he is fearful.
Fear, Ithink, is a major motivator of all human behavior.
Quote from: RatGuy on December 30, 2022, 08:09:32 AM
I get the point, but I kinda disagree. Maybe this speaks to Para's point about the nature of informal fallacies?
The especially confusing thing about informal fallacies, for a lot of students, is that because they're informal (i.e. not tied to the argument's structure),
perfectly valid (valid = if the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true)
or even sound arguments (sound = valid + true premises [i.e. true premises + true conclusion])
can be fallacious, and not all instances of a given 'fallacy' are fallacious.In your particular case, RatGuy, I'd say that the more appropriate charge against you was that you were making either an inappropriate appeal to authority, or committing the genetic fallacy. Both of these can be understood as species of ad hominem, however, and all three are fallacies of relevance. But again, that said, some appeals to authority/genesis/personal criticisms are perfectly relevant to the argument at hand, and thus aren't fallacious. It all depends on how we further precisify the claims actually being made, and how they relate to one another.
So, yeah, in the end it doesn't make sense to place too much weight on them.
Two questions:
1) I get that there are several verrrryyy similar fallacies that get subsumed under variations of the name 'ad hominem'-- this fallacy, like many others, is also something which gets named various other things in different texts and other sources. Is there an Oxford English Dictionary-style authoritative list of fallacies and the names thereof somewhere?
2) Am I the only one that wonders whether the ad hominem is always exactly fallacious? IOW, attacking the man rather than the idea is fallacious only when the idea itself cannot be legitimately attacked, so the critic defaults to ad hominem personal attacks, but pointing out various negative things about someone is necessary on occasion-- take the process of voir dire in jury selection: if I am the defense attorney defending a black guy accused of raping a little white girl, I will directly challenge prospective juror X if it is determined he's a KKK member. I need know nothing else to know he should not be seated on this jury. And when I am reading information about religion x, I do need to know what if any relationship the author has had to said religion. Certainly, if he is an excommunicated member thereof.... I need not be able to prove that his claims are false, before I say I will not credit them without independent verification.
Quote from: kaysixteen on January 01, 2023, 05:33:45 PM
Two questions:
1) I get that there are several verrrryyy similar fallacies that get subsumed under variations of the name 'ad hominem'-- this fallacy, like many others, is also something which gets named various other things in different texts and other sources. Is there an Oxford English Dictionary-style authoritative list of fallacies and the names thereof somewhere?
2) Am I the only one that wonders whether the ad hominem is always exactly fallacious? IOW, attacking the man rather than the idea is fallacious only when the idea itself cannot be legitimately attacked, so the critic defaults to ad hominem personal attacks, but pointing out various negative things about someone is necessary on occasion-- take the process of voir dire in jury selection: if I am the defense attorney defending a black guy accused of raping a little white girl, I will directly challenge prospective juror X if it is determined he's a KKK member. I need know nothing else to know he should not be seated on this jury. And when I am reading information about religion x, I do need to know what if any relationship the author has had to said religion. Certainly, if he is an excommunicated member thereof.... I need not be able to prove that his claims are false, before I say I will not credit them without independent verification.
The whole point of ad hominem attacks is that the attacker does not have facts on their own side, so they attack the person. Whether or not a person is a member of the KKK or an excommunicated member of a church does not impact the facts of whether the accused is guilty or the claims are wrong.
A part of ad hominem attacks might be to claim that the speaker does not have the right to opine on a subject. Again, not about what they are saying, just about who they are.
Quote from: kaysixteen on January 01, 2023, 05:33:45 PM
Two questions:
1) I get that there are several verrrryyy similar fallacies that get subsumed under variations of the name 'ad hominem'-- this fallacy, like many others, is also something which gets named various other things in different texts and other sources. Is there an Oxford English Dictionary-style authoritative list of fallacies and the names thereof somewhere?
Not really. Most introductory logic or critical thinking textbooks include a small pile of the more common or important ones (there are tons of free ones out there; I like this one (https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/457) for my own students; the fallacies are in Chs. 3 and 4). A good internet resource is the Fallacy Files (https://www.fallacyfiles.org/index.html) website, which has a good taxonomy (https://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonnew.htm) of quite a few more fallacies than you'll usually see in a textbook (scroll right for the informal ones). (The site is a great source of examples, too.)
Really, though, it's not really worth anyone's time to try to come up with a comprehensive list (as I said, there are infinitely many possibilities, and they're not all going to be useful for thinking about the quality of arguments).
Quote
2) Am I the only one that wonders whether the ad hominem is always exactly fallacious?
It is
only ever fallacious when the attack is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Pointing out a conflict of interest, for example, is an ad hominem--but not a fallacious one.
The only fallacies which are fallacious every time are formal fallacies. That's because they name
invalid arguments (validity is a property of the
structure of an argument, not of its
content). Informal fallacies, on the other hand, are determined based on the content of the argument (and the content, obviously, is going to vary from case to case; incidentally, many informal fallacies are perfectly valid arguments--validity is not the gold standard of argumentation!).
Excellent explanation of the elements needed for an ad hominem or other informal fallacies to be, ahem, actually fallacious, para.
I recall teaching a junior high informal logic class many years ago, and finding it very very useful for the students. IMO, much more so than the corresponding formal logic class for kids that age. I was wondering if you had any strategies for teaching informal fallacies?
To add to Para:
The example of the juror being in the KKK isn't even necessarily an ad hominem. In the example given, the question of whether the juror can be impartial IS an argument about the person. Saying they cannot be impartial in this case because of the bias implicit (or explicit if the robes are on) in being a KKK member is directly addressing the claim (i.e. that this person would make a suitably impartial juror).
The ex-communicated member case IS an ad hominem because the CLAIMS the person makes about the religion stand or fall on their own merits. If an atheist and an ex-pope* make the SAME claim about Catholic doctrine, it doesn't become more or less true depending on who is making the argument.
*assume these are two different people, which isn't automatically true.
Quote from: kaysixteen on January 01, 2023, 10:22:00 PM
I recall teaching a junior high informal logic class many years ago, and finding it very very useful for the students. IMO, much more so than the corresponding formal logic class for kids that age. I was wondering if you had any strategies for teaching informal fallacies?
Not really, except insofar as I think students get more out of them when they understand the basics of validity and soundness, and so understand why the informal fallacies are informal. But I've never tried teaching at the HS level.
I have my students bring in real-world examples of arguments they think are bad, and we pick them apart together. I wouldn't call that a strategy per se, nor is it particular to informal fallacies, but it's fun for everyone.
There are a lot of logical fallacies that behavioral economics can point out. $15 for lunch "feels" better than $10 for lunch and $4 to park. Paying off a 0% loan with a balance earning interest elsewhere "feels" better than continuing to make payments on the loan. Both stem from the fact that we look at the number of transactions vs their magnitude. (People say I have so many bills, not that the net amount is so high.)
A term that I think is very useful is "cognitive error" as opposed to mistake. If I ask what is 7x7 and you say 42, you can recognize it is actually 49 once this is pointed out and "see" it as such going forward. It was a mistake. A cognitive error can be recognized as a mistake ($15 for lunch is NOT better than $10 for lunch and $4 to park) but will never be seen as such. (If in this example "seen" is synonymous with one's intuitive recognition of the situation.)
I bring this up to point out that just because a logical falicy is pointed out does not mean that it ceases to work. It may have no effect at all. An Ad Hominem can likewise be pointed out as such and still remain highly effective.
Fallacies are found everywhere and invented by the hyper-skeptics. We all use ad hominem attacks. I maintain it is only a fallacy when you throw in therefore and try to make a watertight proof.