Can we impeach Bush for stupidity?

[DinoDoc]

It doesn't in and of itself constitute a cogent arguement. Dressing it up as such constitutes a fallacy.

[Dauphin]

It lacks a certain comprehensiveness. Who in the right mind can afford to ignore the President of the US?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Dauphin
Even if yes, there are more pertinent fallacies being commited.

It was simply the most convenient quote I could use in my quest to bring enlightenment to Sava.

[Sava]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
It doesn't in and of itself constitute a cogent arguement. Dressing it up as such constitutes a fallacy.

Not so... I can lay out a logical and sound argument, but add, "you're a ****head" at the end... and I would not be commiting an ad hominem fallacy.

[JohnT]

No, but you debase your argument and, by extension, yourself and peoples opinions of you. Not that that is any concern of yours, I'm sure.

[Sava]

Correct on both counts, JohnT.

[MrFun]

I can beat everyone's fallacies with one little finger and with my other hand tied behind my back.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You can't even beat your meat (due to it's smallness ), nevertheless everyone's fallacies .

[Last Conformist]

Arnelos:

and I'll now go back to posting on-topic, too.

Heretic! Kill him!

[Agathon]

I'm going to make a claim now. You guys are idiots (see below for why this is not necessarily an ad hominem attack). You don't even know what an ad hominem fallacy is. Yet you throw around the term and commit the cardinal sin of referring to a dictionary for a definition of a philosophical term.

I'll tell you - it is using an attack in place of reasoning, or it is attempting to infer something from someone's character. There are other variants.

Making the argument:

Bush is an idiot
We should not listen to idiots
Therefore: We should not listen to Bush

Is a perfectly valid argument (in the logician's sense of valid). That's because "Bush is an idiot" can be a claim about Bush's intelligence, an insult, or both. If it's used in the first sense, then the argument is by no means a fallacy. If there is good reason to think Bush an idiot, then the argument is sound.

You guys just don't know what you are talking about,

[MRT144]

your attempts to make yourself relevant have failed agathon.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
We need more Reagan stuff, pronto!

It's slightly amusing that US conservatives view Ronald Reagan as the high point of US history in the last 100 years or so.

Poor sods.

[Agathon]

Really? Because I know what an ad hominem fallacy actually is?

The two main types are attacking someone's character in lieu of argument. That means calling someone a bad person as a means of refuting their claim, it does not mean questioning their intelligence. The argument I gave above is a chain of reasoning that everyone uses. In fact we probably couldn't get through the day without using similar lines of reasoning.

Another form is simply throwing out an insult to change the subject. This is probably more of a rhetorical ploy than a fallacy.

Another is the one JohnT used when he said that we should discount something just because Al Franken wrote it in his book. He needed to supply better reasons for considering Franken a fraud or an idiot in order for the argument to go through.

On the other hand, making a claim that Bush is stupid is not giving an argument, any more than saying "It is raining" is an argument. It's just a claim. One could offer reasons or evidence in support of it, but there's nothing illogical about stating it. Logic pertains to relationships between propositions, not to their truth values per se.

[MRT144]

no, because every time something about philosophy or logic or apple comes up you feel you need to interject with your "expertise" which is shoddy at best. Ive seen you humiliated in debates with people as low Asher...

I would say stick to what you know but im not sure of what that is.

[Urban Ranger]

Aggie is correct, that was not an ad hominem. It's only one when you attack your opponents in a debate or discussion. Or rather, it is an ad hominem unquestionably.