Abstract
Arguments ad hominem are common in political debates, legal argumentation and everyday conversations. In this article, we propose a general definition of ad hominem arguments. An argument ad hominem is an argument that makes a claim about the reliability of a person in the performance of a certain function, based on some attribute relating to the person in question. On the basis of this definition, we examine the different ways that ad hominem arguments can go wrong, and classify them as seven different ad hominem fallacies: false attribution, irrelevant attribute, overrated effect, reliability irrelevance, irrelevant person, insufficient degree and irrelevant function. The various fallacies are illustrated with examples from politics, law and everyday life.
The research presented in this article was funded by Torsten och Ragnar Söderbergs Stiftelser. We owe thanks to Niklas Arvidsson, Roberta Colonna Dahlman, Eveline Feteris, Åke Frändberg, Tobias Hansson Wahlberg, Patricia Mindus, Antonino Rotolo, Stefan Schubert, Torben Spaak, Lennart Åqvist and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts.
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- 1.
That the arguments we are interested in are fundamentally about reliability was detected by Bentham. He does not use the term ad hominem at all. Instead he speaks of arguments that commit this kind of fallacy as modifications of the “fallacy of distrust” (1824/1952, 83–92, 100–102).
- 2.
According to Brinton arguments directed at functions which are merely accidentally associated with human beings are not ad hominem. He concludes (1995, 213–214) that only arguments directed at advocacy qualify as ad hominem arguments. Given the structural similarities of arguments about reliability in the performance of functions of all kinds, an account which is applicable to any of these functions is in our view methodologically preferable. Besides, we are not convinced that advocacy is an essential attribute for being a person, as Brinton assumes.
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Dahlman, C., Reidhav, D., Wahlberg, L. (2013). Fallacies in Ad Hominem Arguments. In: Dahlman, C., Feteris, E. (eds) Legal Argumentation Theory: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 102. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4670-1_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4670-1_4
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