Yes. Argumentam ad hominem.
Yes. Argumentam ad hominem.
I can give you lots. I won't, because I needn't bother. One example suffices to show the fallacious nature of the reasoning employed. Look up the technical meaning of "fallacy" sometime.
Please, let us discuss an example that is less personal for you. I don't feel comfortable. Give me a similar one.
Is saying
That is a fascist thing to say! That is anti-democratic! That is not liberal!
A type of ad hominem?
slingblade
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Someone bring in the Great Big Giant Spoon! Hurry!
slingblade
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I can't. I can't ever give you an example that isn't personal to me, because emotions are personal to the person feeling them.
Are you getting a hint now?
With regards to your example, there is a certain probability of feelings after death of mother. A feeling of grief is much more probable than the feeling of lust.
Therefore, just because something is arrogant does not make it wrong -- ergo, "it is arrogant, therefore it is wrong" is a fallacy.
Name-calling by itself is not a fallacy, because it's not an argument (when someone cuts me off in traffic and I call him a ^&*%&^*, I'm not trying to establish the truth of a proposition). But if you say "That is a fascist thing to say! That is anti-democratic! That is not liberal!" as an argument against what someone is saying, then, yes, it is ad hominem.
And fallacious. If Mussolini himself said that the capital of France is Paris, that doesn't make him wrong.
I agree that you don't have to show the nature of the reasoning, but I am quite used to thinking the argument about the arrogance. Your example was a surprise. Due to that, I am asking for some more examples.
Sigh. It's my job. I read "indoor work with no heavy lifting" and decided that having to spoonfeed critical thinking to adolescents was worth it.
Although I must admit it would be a relief to be able to use the Great Big Giant Spoon here. I feel I'm using a coffee stirrer....
I think that when someone says "That is anti-democratic", it implies the sentence "Whatever is anti-democratic is wrong". So that makes it more of an unfounded assumption than an ad hominem. Agree?
slingblade
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That's where this backfires on me, because she isn't dead yet. Unless I am feeling the specific emotions at this moment, it would be disingenuous of me to project my possible feelings and declare them my actual feelings.
However, I think about it all the time, and were she to die today, my chief emotions would be relief and happiness. I am grieving today. I grieved yesterday. But were I to go into the living room right now and find her dead, I'd smile. I'd be so happy. Just thinking about her death brings a smile to my face. That doesn't seem logical, on its face, but its true for me. I want my mother to die soon, so her suffering--which increases daily and cannot be alleviated--will end. And when it ends, I predict I will feel relief and happiness, but not grief. Yet, again, that's disingenuous. I'm predicting, not experiencing.
My point, ultimately, is that logic doesn't often dictate emotional states. Emotions do. And since emotions are subjective and vary from person to person, they can't be used as a foundation for a sound and valid logical argument.
Other people, in my exact place, would grieve horribly. Are they wrong, logically? Am I wrong, logically?
It's impossible to say. Emotions are too personal and too subjective to quantify logically.
Mashuna
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In general, people only use the term anti-democratic when referring to social or political issues. The only person I've seen use it when referring to logic is you. They're different issues.
slingblade
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I know. I understand. We can start a chorus of sighs, if that helps.
The subject is too massive to dole out in tiny portions on a forum thread. I've given him websites to read that deal with logic, but I don't know if he even clicks, much less reads. The evidence seems to point to "not even once," but it's scanty.
I personally prefer it when folks undertake to educate themselves, with a little help from others. I don't like it much when they expect me to do all the hard work, and I don't find it effective for either party.
Oh, well. Let the chorus begin.
No, I disagree. It's still an ad hominem, simply an ad hominem with an implicit step. As you point out, the speaker intends for the listener to react as though the implied statement "whatever is anti-democratic is wrong" were also expressed. The implied sentence contains -- and is intended to contain -- an ad hom.
You're confusing "intelligence" with "knowledge" and "reason." John Nash is arguably one of the smartest people alive today, but he knows less about the best spot for an underage person to buy beer in Ocean City, MD than half the graduating class of Ocean City High.
So he's probably going to get wrong what half the class -- and possibly the dumber half at that -- of seventeen year olds will get right. Is it arrogant for them to recognize that?
Similarly, a lot of people will believe stuff without any actual basis, simply because it's what they've been taught. Half that same clase "knows" that if you put sugar in a gas tank, the car won't work -- and that powered car windows will short out if you drive into water by accident. They're probably even taught the second in drivers' ed class. Well, the Mythbusters tested 'em both, and they're both "busted." Doesn't stop people from believing them. And if John Nash took the same drivers' ed class, he probably believes them, too. Having watched the show, I don't think it's arrogant of me to believe he's wrong if he does.
Very smart people can also simply be deluded. I picked Nash for a reason; he's certifiably schizophrenic. This means that, despite his intelligence, he provably believes things that aren't true.
Religion is like that. Lots of people -- including very smart people -- are taught to believe in God as children. But being taught something as a child doesn't make it true, although in many cases you will spend the rest of your life believing that it is. But what's the actual evidence? In terms of physical evidence, there is essentially none. In terms of logical evidence, there is also essentially none. All there is is a vague emotional "feeling" that some people have -- a feeling of no evidentiary value that we can even reproduce in the lab via brain manipulation.
So it works out to the WMD-in-Iraq issue again. There's just no credible evidence -- no objective reason to believe. And the arguments made by the believers are uniformly unconvincing.
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slingblade
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That's part of what I'm telling you, yes. The other part is that emotions can rarely be quantified and qualified as "right" or "wrong," "correct" or "incorrect," and "logical" or "illogical."
I am aware that, in general, the emotions I anticipate feeling at my mother's death are not the ones usually expected when we lose someone we love. And I do love my mother, very much. But I'm doing my crying over it right now, and daily. I'm feeling my anger over losing her, right now. I'm a mess. She hurts; I hurt. We are both in pain.
When she is gone, that pain will end for both of us, and I anticipate feeling much better. That doesn't mean I'm right. And none of it is or can form the basis for a sound and valid logical argument.
Someone brought in the Not So Big Giant Spoon, so I'll use it. You like examples. That's helpful. Here's one:
Emotions and feelings have their places. Absolutely. But they make lousy reasons for objectivity. Emotions operate for a limited audience. Logic operates for anyone.
Postulating a god that exists because you feel it exists creates a god for only you. In order for it to exist for everyone and anyone, it has to be proven to exist. Your feelings about it are not sufficient.
One of your first few threads--if not the first--formed an argument thusly:
A. I respect and admire the Dalai Lama.
B. I cannot respect and admire anyone who lies.
Therefore, everything the Dalai Lama says is true.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth, so do correct the above statements to better state what you were arguing, if I got it wrong.
Posters here began to respond, trying to show you that the above is not a valid or sound argument. They introduced you to concepts like fallacies and unfalsifiability. You appear to have taken those concepts and are running with them, but with a faulty understanding of them, or how they work.
We've tried to show you, for the above example, that since you cannot have heard or read every single word spoken by (nor been a party to every single thought of) the DL, you cannot ever say, for certain, the man has never told a lie, lied by ommission, or simply has been mistaken and misspoken. That to go on your "feeling" that he's a good man, and good men don't lie, therefore he always speaks truth, is unsound in content (not true), and invalid in form.
We've tried to show you that your feelings are fine for you, and that you have every right to believe what you want about the DL, even if you are wrong. But we don't feel what you feel, and don't believe what you believe. Your argument is illogical to most of us, and would be to most folks who understand the philosophy and concepts of logical argument.
You're taking a dog, and trying to make it a cat by saying, "Look, it has four legs, fur, is a human companion animal, eats food from a can, and loves me. My cat does all that, too, so I believe this dog is a cat."
And we're telling you, "Go ahead and believe it, but it's not."
Studying logic, educating yourself about it, will help you see that. I'm just sure of it.
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