Philosophy Now Forum

There seems to be an element of confusion here.

Whilst it is true that many use the accusation ad hominem when they suffer a personal attack or some insulting remark.
There is a strict difference between an insult and an ad hominem.

If a person says something stupid and are met with insults, that is one thing.
If they are told that they could not possibly be correct because they are - a catholic, or an American, or only a psychologist and not a real scientist; or just a kid, or just a road sweeper, as those kinds of people could not know the answer RATHER THAN addressing the argument itself. Then that is an ad hominem.
An insult is not an logical fallacy. Saying an argument is invalidated by reason of some personal character or experience, that is logically false.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 9:50 pmIt's not irrelevant and fallacious...

Actually, it remains that. Your personal understanding of that fact has no bearing on the question, actually, as your ensuing screed demonstrates.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 04, 2020 12:31 am

Lacewing wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 9:50 pmIt's not irrelevant and fallacious...

Actually, it remains that. Your personal understanding of that fact has no bearing on the question, actually, as your ensuing screed demonstrates.

Your dishonesty precedes you and degrades everything you say. You've been called out on it by others, as well.

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”

Which category does philosophy fit into for you?

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Apr 04, 2020 2:34 am “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”

Which category does philosophy fit into for you?

Let's see... you discuss people all the time. So I guess your point is either about yourself, or it's used out of context.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:42 pm

TheVisionofEr wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:06 pm You simply use the word fallacy to avoid rational critisim.

This is both a factual error, and an outstanding demonstration of the ad hominem fallacy as well. To be rational, you'd have to admit that you actually don't know why "I" do anything, and don't know me at all. Moreover, even if you did, it would not suggest that I was wrong simply because "I" said so.

It is impossible since accusing someone of the falalcy is itself an underminimg of the person.

False again. The criticism here is aimed directly at the fallacy, not at you. So there is no ad hominem there. Your argument here is wrong; about you as a person, I have no opinion.

Ad hominem means "to/at the person."

Arbitrary rules...

This one's not arbitrary. It's rational. You'll find it in any list of fallacies.

"This is both a factual error, and an outstanding demonstration of the ad hominem fallacy as well. To be rational, you'd have to admit that you actually don't know why "I" do anything, and don't know me at all. Moreover, even if you did, it would not suggest that I was wrong simply because "I" said so"

This is a dodge of reasonable critisim into a fantasy world of "you don't get
me." It's also naive. Facts are constructions. Based on interpretation. You are factually inoculating yourself against the need to learn.

There is, I grant, such a thing as mockery. However, reasonble critisim and diagnostic concerning the cause of the error, in the "hominem" named, is hardly mockery. It is the primary manner in which improvments are stimulated in those able to improve.

Your claim that something is true because it is in a list is silly. The claim that critisim is licit is my own.

The scholastics were better educated than we are. They knew how to use such instrumentarium or toolbox for collective research into the Christian truth. They
were not defenses for political debatrers trying to save face.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sat Apr 04, 2020 3:33 am

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Apr 04, 2020 2:34 am “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”

Which category does philosophy fit into for you?

Let's see... you discuss people all the time. So I guess your point is either about yourself, or it's used out of context.

People and minds are ambiguous here. This verbal game of claiming to speak about someone rather than a statement of a "mind" fantastic.

Sculptor wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 11:17 pm There seems to be an element of confusion here.

Whilst it is true that many use the accusation ad hominem when they suffer a personal attack or some insulting remark.
There is a strict difference between an insult and an ad hominem.

If a person says something stupid and are met with insults, that is one thing.
If they are told that they could not possibly be correct because they are - a catholic, or an American, or only a psychologist and not a real scientist; or just a kid, or just a road sweeper, as those kinds of people could not know the answer RATHER THAN addressing the argument itself. Then that is an ad hominem.
An insult is not an logical fallacy. Saying an argument is invalidated by reason of some personal character or experience, that is logically false.

There's a supposed "genetic falacey" in saying "nothing good can come from Nazereth" and the like. Or, the reverse, Aristotle is a sound thinker, therefore whatever he said is true. However, usually there is good sense in listening to such critisim because statements don't have an independant exsistence. They need to be understood, at least by someone. The people who have mastered some subject are more likely to understand the reasons or statements.

People often say things that could have a value if they understood what they were saying. By repeating, without really understanding, what someone who has mastered the subject matter involved says.

Basicly, genetic fallacey is an extreme case. Which should be evoked very frugely and seldom. It should be backed up by good reason.

Often mockery and legitimate critisim flow from an attack on real flaws in the formation and experience or lack of formation, and lack of experience. X talks nonsense, what they say is nonsense, the reasons or statements are nonsense, y attemps to show the flaw, prejudice, faulty thinking behind the bad statement to stimulate improvment or capitulation in a false track of reasoning.

TheVisionofEr wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 6:45 pm
This is a dodge of reasonable critisim into a fantasy world of "you don't get
me."

Hogwash. Complete rubbish.

Here ya go: https://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/person.html
and here: posting.php?mode=quote&f=5&p=450000
and here: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/log ... em-Abusive

Facts are constructions. Based on interpretation.

Is that a fact?

Nope. Your claim is merely a construction. Based on your interpretation.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:00 pm

TheVisionofEr wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 6:45 pm
This is a dodge of reasonable critisim into a fantasy world of "you don't get
me."

Hogwash. Complete rubbish.

Here ya go: https://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/person.html
and here: posting.php?mode=quote&f=5&p=450000
and here: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/log ... em-Abusive

Facts are constructions. Based on interpretation.

Is that a fact?

Nope. Your claim is merely a construction. Based on your interpretation.

Things appearing somewhere on a list or website is no proof of their merit. Or, as in this case, of their reasonble use.

It's not a question of our constructions being "just" or merely constructions. It s the
question of the labour of reason constructing reasonable facts. Which can have no ready-made form but must be thought through, now, by each one able to confront the difficulties originally, which means not being dominated by ghosts and former determinations. I'n fact, all comes only once.

TheVisionofEr wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:40 pm Things appearing somewhere on a list or website is no proof of their merit.

Oh? But your completely unsupported opinion is proof of merit?

I don't think so. You said "ad hominem" didn't appear in such lists. I just showed you were dead wrong, that's all. Whether you like it or not is really of no relevance; it's still done.

It's not a question of our constructions being "just" or merely constructions.

Sure it is.

If it's a "construction" it's a fabrication, an arrangement you're making up or composing yourself, with no objective value. It's not a "fact" by any reasonable description of that term. "Facts" are things that are so in reality, not fictions you make up.

TheVisionofEr wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 7:10 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 11:17 pm There seems to be an element of confusion here.

Whilst it is true that many use the accusation ad hominem when they suffer a personal attack or some insulting remark.
There is a strict difference between an insult and an ad hominem.

If a person says something stupid and are met with insults, that is one thing.
If they are told that they could not possibly be correct because they are - a catholic, or an American, or only a psychologist and not a real scientist; or just a kid, or just a road sweeper, as those kinds of people could not know the answer RATHER THAN addressing the argument itself. Then that is an ad hominem.
An insult is not an logical fallacy. Saying an argument is invalidated by reason of some personal character or experience, that is logically false.

There's a supposed "genetic falacey" in saying "nothing good can come from Nazereth" and the like..... They need to be understood, at least by someone. The people who have mastered some subject are more likely to understand the reasons or statements.

But this attitude is an example of a genetic fallacy. It says that Ptolemy should be trusted that the earth lies at the heart of the universe because he has studied astronomy his whole life.
It is as bad a genetic fallacy as the thought that nothing an Irish man says can be trusted since the Irish are ignorant and stupid.

An ad hominem, whilst it might refer to a genetic fallacy it is not in itself one. It does not refer to the general but the particular "man".

Sculptor wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:23 pm

TheVisionofEr wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 7:10 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 11:17 pm There seems to be an element of confusion here.

Whilst it is true that many use the accusation ad hominem when they suffer a personal attack or some insulting remark.
There is a strict difference between an insult and an ad hominem.

If a person says something stupid and are met with insults, that is one thing.
If they are told that they could not possibly be correct because they are - a catholic, or an American, or only a psychologist and not a real scientist; or just a kid, or just a road sweeper, as those kinds of people could not know the answer RATHER THAN addressing the argument itself. Then that is an ad hominem.
An insult is not an logical fallacy. Saying an argument is invalidated by reason of some personal character or experience, that is logically false.

There's a supposed "genetic falacey" in saying "nothing good can come from Nazereth" and the like..... They need to be understood, at least by someone. The people who have mastered some subject are more likely to understand the reasons or statements.

But this attitude is an example of a genetic fallacy. It says that Ptolemy should be trusted that the earth lies at the heart of the universe because he has studied astronomy his whole life.
It is as bad a genetic fallacy as the thought that nothing an Irish man says can be trusted since the Irish are ignorant and stupid.

An ad hominem, whilst it might refer to a genetic fallacy it is not in itself one. It does not refer to the general but the particular "man".

Gallielo was a dear friend of the Pope. The trouble he got into was chiefly for breaking the old cardinal rule that counts putting too much weight on outlier or unreasenably rare cases.

No on ever comes across a vacuum. It's a crazy case. Though inteligable. In a vacuum, unlike everywhere in human life, feathers fall at the same rate as large blocks granite.

What we are living in is the power of prejudice concerning the rate cases and the reasonble or normal cases. The rate cases are being fetishized. Either way free judgment concerning how to treat the significance of either way of assigning weight or importance to the rule is being coierced by the historical roots.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:18 pm

TheVisionofEr wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:40 pm Things appearing somewhere on a list or website is no proof of their merit.

Oh? But your completely unsupported opinion is proof of merit?

I don't think so. You said "ad hominem" didn't appear in such lists. I just showed you were dead wrong, that's all. Whether you like it or not is really of no relevance; it's still done.

It's not a question of our constructions being "just" or merely constructions.

Sure it is.

It's not a "fact" by any reasonable description of that it's a "construction" it's a fabrication, an arrangement you're making up or composing yourself, with no objective value. "Facts" are things that are so in reality, not fictions you make up.

"Oh? But your completely unsupported opinion is proof of merit?"

It's evidence. If taken as sincere or truly said from the testimony of the one writing. Evidence that a certain human scale weighs the subject matter so.

I never said the phrase wasn't on a list. I've long studyied its abuses. It has four standard meanings. One of urgent concern, another trivial, a third a synonym for a scholastic informal falacey specific to Christian practice in its sensible use, a fourth the common political abuse.


i"t8's a "construction" it's a fabrication, an arrangement you're making up or composing yourself, with no objective value"

So are values a special form of facts? Is the distinction itself factual? Wasn't it devised? By humans. And aren't humans facts in their actions?

TheVisionofEr wrote: ↑Mon Apr 06, 2020 8:54 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:18 pm"Oh? But your completely unsupported opinion is proof of merit?"

It's evidence.

Heh.
No, it's not. Anyone can have an unsupported opinion. But there are good opinions, and bad opinions; and the only way we ever know the difference between those is by the quality of the argument and evidence supplied with them.

...If taken as sincere or truly said from the testimony of the one writing. Evidence that a certain human scale weighs the subject matter so.

"A certain human scale"? What "human scale"? How does this magical "scale" manage to "weigh" opinions that have no support?

Do you mean you think that if a person has a particular opinion, the mere fact that they are human gives some sort of special dignity to that opinion?

It doesn't. There are obviously such things as "bad opinions." For example, I assume you think racists have a "bad opinion," don't you? Or do you think "a certain human scale" makes it necessary that we accept overtly racist opinions?

"It's a "construction" it's a fabrication, an arrangement you're making up or composing yourself, with no objective value"

So are values a special form of facts? Is the distinction itself factual? Wasn't it devised? By humans. And aren't humans facts in their actions?

I'm just calling it what you called it. You said facts are "constructed." If so, they're nothing but fabrications, according to your own claim. So your claim itself is merely a fabrication, an arrangement you're composing yourself...something "constructed," as you put it.

I didn't have to say so. You said so.