On Sat, 2007-06-16 at 17:45 +0100, Ian Betteridge wrote: > No ad hominem attacks there, then. I could, of course, start talking > about arrogant techies who think they know it all - but I'll refrain.
For the record... Ad Hominem (lit. 'against the man'¹) is the logical fallacy where you discount an argument because of (some attribute of) the person who presents it. To say "You smoke crack, therefore your argument is irrelevant" is classic Ad Hominem. To say "Your argument makes no sense, therefore I believe you're on crack" is not -- because it's based on the _argument_ not the crack intake. There's obviously a grey area in between -- especially where the cause-and-effect isn't explicitly stated, but is implied instead. Nevertheless, a lot of what people call 'Ad Hominem' isn't. If you argue that the world is flat, I'll probably call you a muppet. But that won't necessarily be Ad Hominem. -- dwmw2 ¹ or something like that. My Latin is not just poor; it's non-existent. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
