Logic for Beginners: Ad Hominem

Quote: This is a piece from my readings: Critical Thinking: Learning to recognize fallacies is an important part of becoming a critical thinker. Fallacies are counterfeits of legitimate arguments, shoddy imitations comparable in quality to the imitation Seiko watches or phony Gucci luggage offered for sale by sidewalk vendors in New York and other cities. At first glance they may look good, but they don’t hold up. Fallacies invite an audience to bypass critical thinking and accept faulty claims, dubious assumptions, and deceptive generalizations. (1)Avoid argument to the person (in Latin, ad hominem): The strategy of focusing on the personality or character of an opponent rather than on the issue that is supposed to be under discussion. Used negatively, ad hominem arguments become smear attacks, and when political or ideological debates become heated, the tactics gets all too common. Speakers and writers abandon rational debate and descend to personal attacks, trying to discredit their opponents by attacking their integrity, their intelligence, or their family connections or even by attributing unproven and often damaging beliefs and attitudes to them. 1. A legislator arguing for her bill that would raise taxes on alcohol to provide low-cost housing claims that those who oppose the bill are heartless people concerned more with keeping down the price of their evening cocktail than they are with the welfare of others. 2. A candidate for city council suggest that anyone who opposes his proposal to establish an agency he claims will help minority women is automatically sexist and racist. Such attacks are abusive and irresponsible, and you should suspect that the person who resorts to them want to avoid the real issues. Strategies such as these, while they seem benign enough, do nothing to advance genuine argument—they are just diversions.