Ad hominems, etc. should be legit

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Agathon
Usually, it is "you're an idiot, so we shouldn't believe you." This is not a fallacy because we do in fact take idiocy as grounds for not believing someone.

However, the point is still the same: you are not attacking his argument.

If he's an idiot, surely you have no problems refuting any arguments he puts forth.

[Boris Godunov]

If someone is an idiot, then the position they're advocating will likely reflect that idiocy, so you should still argue the position, not the person. Simply dismissing the other person as an idiot just makes you look weak and unable to argue the point at hand.

Originally posted by Albert Speer
The racist's plan concerns the schooling in a mainly minority area so there is a relation and one could realistically infer that the racist's education policy is racially based.

The same is true of the racist example. If a racist is advocating something, then his plan will probably reflect that racism, in which case you can argue against the plan without resorting to an ad hominem. If the plan is racist, we don't need to attack the person, that would be redundant.

If, however, the plan happens to be free of racism, despite the person's known bias, then the ad hominem is pointless and does nothing for the debate except include a useless variable.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
a logical position is not self-sufficient. The basic level of being is the level of instincts.

I am amused, AS. You don't even understand the basics of logic, yet you are trying to push a position wrt to debates.

Logical positions are never self-sufficient. They are all based on premeses, which are assumptions or statements taken to be true.

Another thing is, taking about basic level of blah blah blah has nothing to do with logic at all.

[Elok]

Hey, ad hominems are a perfectly acceptable, common technique in debates between presidential candidates. And look how useful and meaningful America's political dialogue has become!

[Whaleboy]

UR: Each argument relies on assumptions and if we don't question those assumptions then we must rely on trust, and or concurrence of those assumptions in the debate. Reputation, so to speak, is merely a question of trust, a wholly rational affair on its own merit. That is of course easily solved by examining the assumptions further and finding a point where you concur, and so you can debate upwards again.

[Urban Ranger]

[threadjack]

Were you trying an MtG on Speer?

[/threadjack]

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Elok
Hey, ad hominems are a perfectly acceptable, common technique in debates between presidential candidates. And look how useful and meaningful America's political dialogue has become!

[Whaleboy]

Were you trying an MtG on Speer?

I've been trying that for months!!

Did it work?

[Elok]

Oh, and in keeping with my ongoing obsession with C.S. Lewis (see how nice I am? I gave you an ad hominem opening!), I invite you to google the word "bulverism." It turns out there are lots of links out there explaining why it's bad to undermine arguments with an amateur psychoanalysis of the person who gave them.

For starters, any such reply is fundamentally flawed because it's based on your own (prejudiced) evaluation of another person's ostensible prejudices. From the point of view that we're all determined in our ideals by innate factors, there is no objective measure of truth. Except maybe a shrink, but he might support his set of beliefs because he was sodomized by a great-grandson of Sigmund Freud as a child, and so on. While it may be true that we believe only what we want to, there's no way to effectively argue from that premise.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
I've been trying that for months!!

Did it work?

He seems... crushed.

It works!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
Picasso may be a hard example what with him being a cubist but take Da Vinci's Mona Lisa... not only do you judge the actual work itself but also the thing from which the work was derived. If Da Vinci chose to paint a woman from the start and not himself... if Da Vinci painted another woman with different characteristics... if Da Vinci chose to not portray the Mona Lisa with her grin... all these are pre-work things from which a different work could have been derived.

Those pre-work things are the emotions to the logical position that is the work. Why would a thourough art criticism include a question of "Why this work this way?" while intellectual debate does not?

Sure it does.

You can always tell that a debator* has already lost when he resorts to logical fallacies (which includes ad hominem) because he cannot construct a proper counterargument


* Used loosely

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


However, the point is still the same: you are not attacking his argument.

If he's an idiot, surely you have no problems refuting any arguments he puts forth.

Sure, but it's still a good inference in the majority of situations. Think about how many times you infer the truth or falsity of someone's claim based on their credibility.

As I was trying to point out above - statements like this are bad debating techniques, but they aren't irrational. Ad hominems are not formal (logical) fallacies, they are informal (useless with reference to the context of debate).

[Elok]

"Useless with reference to the context of debate..."

Like arguing over what kind of fallacy it is in technical terms when you're the only philosophy nut here and it's useless either way?

[Agathon]

No - such inferences are incredibly useful and we use them all the time. Albert seems to be confused because he can't separate a formal fallacy from an informal one.

[Elok]

But if they're bad debating technique, it doesn't matter what kind of fallacy they are for the purposes of the discussion, they shouldn't be respected as "legit," as AS puts it, right?

Don't try to argue with me. I've had several glasses and have become omniscient. Peon.