Ad hominem
This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion often using a totally irrelevant, but often highly charged attribute of the opponent's character or background.
Other uses of the term ad hominem are more traditional, referring to arguments tailored to fit a particular audience, and may be encountered in specialized philosophical usage.
[2] His description was somewhat different from the modern understanding, referring to a class of sophistry that applies an ambiguously worded question about people to a specific person.
The proper refutation, he wrote, is not to debate the attributes of the person (solutio ad hominem) but to address the original ambiguity.
[3] Many examples of ancient non-fallacious ad hominem arguments are preserved in the works of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus.
In the mid-19th century, the modern understanding of the term ad hominem started to take shape, with the broad definition given by English logician Richard Whately.
According to Whately, ad hominem arguments were "addressed to the peculiar circumstances, character, avowed opinions, or past conduct of the individual".
[5] Over time, the term acquired a different meaning; by the beginning of the 20th century, it was linked to a logical fallacy, in which a debater, instead of disproving an argument, attacked their opponent.
While Hablin's criticism was not widely accepted, Canadian philosopher Douglas N. Walton examined the fallaciousness of the ad hominem argument even further.
[6] Nowadays, except within specialized philosophical usaɡe, use of the term ad hominem signifies a straight attack at the character and ethos of a person, in an attempt to refute their argument.
[14] Tu quoque appears as: An example given by professor George Wrisley to illustrate the above is: A businessman and a politician are giving a lecture at a university about how good his company is and how nicely the system works.
[17] Circumstantial ad hominem' points out that someone is in circumstances (for instance, their job, wealth, property, or relations) such that they are disposed to take a particular position.
To illustrate this reasoning, Walton gives the example of a witness at a trial: if he had been caught lying and cheating in his own life, should the jury take his word for granted?
[21] This form of the argument is as follows:[21] Academic Leigh Kolb gives as an example that the 2008 US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin attacked Barack Obama for having worked with Bill Ayers, who had been a leader in the Weather Underground terrorist group in the 1960s.
An example is a dialogue at the court, where the attorney cross-examines an eyewitness, bringing to light the fact that the witness was convicted in the past for lying.
These kinds of attacks are based on the inability of the audience to have a clear view of the amount of false statements by both parts of the debate.
[31] Walton has argued that ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, and that in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue,[32] as when it directly involves hypocrisy, or actions contradicting the subject's words.
