Thread by @SamRochadotcom

THREAD ON THE “AD HOMINEM” FALLACIES

The rhetorical use of the informal fallacies of logic online is mostly abuse of what they mean and how they ought to be employed. Of these abuses, none get more badly thrown about than the “ad hominem” fallacies (yes, there are two, not one).

First some provisos: I’m not a logician and am not going to try and offer any *formal* insight into logic. There is reasonable variety of opinion and expression and I welcome all corrections and rebuttals—I will be harsh, though, if they are psychological and not logical replies.

Before we can understand the abuses of the ad hominem fallacies, we need to know what an informal logical fallacy is and, then, what the ad hominem logical fallacies are. Only then can we see how they might be misused or misappropiated.

Informal fallacies do not only refer to falsehoods in the domain of logical arguments, they more specifically refer to falsehoods that are *persuasive* for reasons that are ultimately distracting and ultimately irrelevant, albeit psychologically enticing, to logical arguments.

This first is important and a big part of the “informal” part of informal fallacies in logic. They are not simply false in a generic nor even a technical or formal sense: they are posers in arguments, persuasive things that masquerade as reasons but, in truth, are not reasons.

Having established that informal fallacies are things that are persuasive as reasons that ultimately are not reasons, we should now look at the two types of ad hominem fallacies we can find. One quick thing about these two types: they share some territory with other fallacies.

This shared territory is important because these are, again, informal and even casual aspects of logical argumentation. Or, to be clear: INFORMAL FALLACIES DO NOT, BY DEFINITION, HARM A LOGICAL ARGUMENT *DIRECTLY*. They are indirect distractions, gnats, and annoyances.

Two types of ad hominem fallacies are ones that are abusive and others that are circumstantial. The abusive ad hominem says that argument X is untrue because the author of argument X is unreliable or an idiot. It is the most common understanding because it attacks the person.

Note that this “attack” is less a metaphor of violence as it is a metaphor of missing the mark. It attacks the wrong item, it is swing and a miss. This means that abusive ad hominems are not logically bad because they abuse so much as because they abuse the wrong thing.

Now to the next type of ad hominem: circumstantial. This is less about attacking the author of an argument as it is about trying to use the author or the critic’s “special circumstances” as extra reasons to deny the argument and/or accept the fallacious rebuttal.

These two types are related to each and to a few other kinds of informal fallacies. In fact, if one’s idea of an informal fallacy is entirely unrelated to the rest then I would suggest a lot of caution, since these are more or less a series of informal diagnostic tips.

Now we have established that informal fallacies are indirect falsehoods that seem persuasive presented during logical argumentation and that the ad hominem fallacy can refer to abusive and circumstantial psychological distractions from the logical argument.

It is probably obvious by now how badly abused this informal fallacy and fallacies in general are when they are appealed to as argumentative shortcuts in online discourse. The first thing to notice is that using a Latin name to distract from one’s *logical* reasons is fallacious.

Notice what the terms of eligible distraction entail. If you look closely you can see that all “distraction” means is DISTRACTING FROM LOGIC. In other words, fallacies are only “false” in a limited sense of not being true logic. So this means they could be true in another sense.

I would say that most distractions from logic are appeals to the that sneaky companion of logic, psychology. And, no, I am not going to dive into the real problems with distinguishing between logic and psychology too categorically today, Wittgenstein.

The point is that psychological reasons can be fine reasons AS PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS. They just don’t work as logical ones. The falsehood of an informal fallacy is limited in the extreme, even beyond its informality. People should not put tons of epistemological stock into it.

Online, I see tons of people taking claims that are not strictly or formally logical and trying to import informal fallacies into it. THIS IS ABSURD. We are not constrained to only speak in syllogisms and there are more than purely logical phenomena to talk and argue about.

Regarding ad hominem: The most persuasive ad hominems are always true. When the abusive or circumstantial claim is true, it is psychologically difficult for the defence to admit it and then say it have nothing to do with the argument. It just registers emotionally as morally off.

It is essential that if one is presented with a real ad hominem attack or circumstantial reason that is true, one accepts it wholesale and quickly pivots to the fact that it makes no difference to the logical argument. Insults are weird here because they are emotionally slippery.

In most cases, an insult is not even an informal fallacy at all, but it can function like one if it distracts from the argument in the end. Wit here can really hurt an argument without even touching the logical principles or claims at all.

I am using the word “logic” here in its scientific or systematic sense. In other words, I understand logic to be much narrower than general questions of truth and falsehood, verification and falsification. I see it as a formal language that has enormous limits in application.

Informal fallacies are named and diagnosed within the context of a project of logical science to describe its limits and applications and rules and grammar and so on. The more precise they become, oddly enough, the more generalizable they are as principle—but not as applications.

I fiercely disagree with philosophers who popularizes informal fallacies as “examples of bad thinking.” Developing sophisticated psychological imports into logical arguments is hardly a sign of bad thinking, all things considered. And “bad thinking” is not a problem of logic.

I think all these imprecision and popularizations contribute to EVEN WORSE arguments amongst the very people who supposedly argue from an informed and even expert platform as “good thinkers” and “highly logical.” This includes political commentators and religious apologists.

I hope these tweets lay out my limited understanding of these strategies and also show some of my reasons for being allergic and, I admit it, quite abrasive about them en vivo. I’m sort of distracted now, though; so no use trying to think more about distractions! Thx for reading!