Ad Hominem Attacks by John Cullison Blog entry

Blog: John's Blog
by John Cullison

Ad Hominem Attacks

What they are, why they're bad

Date: 12/12/2005 3:26:47 PM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 3621 times

Since 86.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot, let me just say that a massive majority of all logical fallacies committed in debate in public forums stem from ad hominem attacks.

An ad hominem attack is one that is directed toward a person. In other words, instead of attacking the message, someone attacks the messenger.

This kind of attack often occurs by questioning the motives of the messenger. Person A says something that Person B disagrees with. Person B knows that Person A is a member of Group C, which Person B also disagrees with. Person B then dismisses Person A's message, accusing Person A of relaying the message to support Group C, and either implying or accusing the message of being false, solely because the message supports Group C.

Notice that the truth or falsity of the message is never addressed, which is the problem with accepting such a counter-argument.

It comes down to questioning motive, and Person B might be exactly right, that Person A is supporting Group C by forwarding the message. But the reason why Person A is forwarding the message does not mean that Person A's message is necessarily false. Maybe, heaven forbid, Person A -- and Group C -- actually has a valid point.

I don't have to be a member of Group C to agree with something Group C says. I can, for example, have quotes from the Bible that I really like, and yet still not be Judeo-Christian.

I, as an opponent of vaccination, am more likely to forward messages about the dangers of vaccination. That's hardly surprising. The messages that I forward may or may not be true. Some of them might be true, others might be false. If you are a supporter of vaccination, you are more likely to reject my messages, knowing that I'm an opponent of vaccination, simply because you know I'm an opponent of vaccination, rather than because what I'm telling you is false. If you're an opponent of vaccination, you're more likely to accept my anti-vaccination messages, even if the messages are stretching the truth or outright lies.

Is this fundamentally "human nature"? I don't know. But it never really gets us anywhere. If we never consider that our own opinions and beliefs might be wrong, or not quite accurate, or not completely true, and we simply reject any message which opposes our beliefs without inspecting the message and determining whether or not it is false, how can we possibly grow or improve?

A big one is the money topic. The moment monetary gain becomes an option, a lot of folks assume that the speaker is intentionally lying just to increase his sales. This is undoubtedly true in some cases -- there are snake oil salesmen running around out there, and there might even be a few running around CureZone. More often than not, however, what I have observed is that folks tend to get excited when they find something they think works, and they naturally want to share it, and some even make businesses out of it.

Whether or not the miracle cure X actually works is the debatable subject. Sure, Person A might be telling everyone about cure X and hoping to sell a product, but if the product works, who cares? Just because person A is selling something doesn't mean that he's lying to you. He might or might not be. What matters is whether or not the message is true, which is an (almost) independent fact from whether or not the messenger is trying to sell something.

I say "almost" because, if the messenger weren't selling a product, would he be forwarding the message? Probably not. So it's not completely an independent coincidence, but it's not fundamentally different from Person A belonging to Group C and wanting to "help the cause".

There is another side to the coin, however, and that is "Crying Wolf". The best of example of this is with QuackWatch. Anything QuackWatch prints, we're likely to dismiss, just because we know that QuackWatch's motives are injurious. Barrett's group is fully out to destroy anything but allopathic medicine, and QuackWatch make no apologies about that fact. So we ignore QuackWatch.

This doesn't, however, mean that everything QuackWatch says is false. It might be so, but how would we know without finding out for ourselves?

QuackWatch would be the first to offer damning information about an alternative health practitioner. We know why QuackWatch would forward that information, but... is the information true or not? Well...

See, dismissing something QuackWatch says just because QuackWatch said it is also an ad hominem attack. Yeah, we know the motivation behind it. But the truth or falsity of the statement can be addressed independently of the motivation.

QuackWatch's credibility is zero among CureZone regulars, and I'm not advocating seeking out counsel from QuackWatch, but it is worth noting that few of us is completely innocent of using ad hominem attacks and feeling completely justified in doing so.

And that's probably how Republicans and Democrats feel about each other -- completely justified in using ad hominem attacks to dismiss each other's points in debate, no matter how true the arguments might be, particularly if the alleged fact(s) are unflattering to their respective groups.

Do we all think we're completely perfect or something?

It seems to me that our collective recognition and rejection of this sort of behavior would be a major improvement in human consciousness and awareness, since it is one of the most, if not simply the most, often used method of enforcing ignorance upon ourselves, and that's why using an ad hominem attack is A Bad Thing®. We short change ourselves and opportunities for uncovering new truths by invoking (or accepting) ad hominem attacks against others.

To avoid shortchanging ourselves, we need to recognize an ad hominem attack as we make it -- the feeling associated with it is what someone might feel when telling a sibling, "You're just jealous!" -- and demand better from ourselves, assuming we're going to reply. "Better", in this case, means using facts to attack the message, instead of accusations to attack the messenger.

And if you don't agree, then you're just a doody-head, so why should I listen to what you have to say?