What qualifies as a personal attack, name calling, verbal abuse?

What qualifies as a personal attack, name calling, verbal abuse?

insulting one's opponent
belittling one's opponent
using derogatory comments
ridiculing one's opponent
annoying or irritating one's opponent
threatening one's opponent
libel
using vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable comments
questioning in an insincere manner



Any message addressing a person rather then claims that person made is likely to be a personal attack!



Here are a few examples of personal attacks I have seen more then once in this forum, attacks that will not be tolerated any more:


"You are a lier"

"You are stupid/dumb"

"You are ignorant"

"You are desperate"

"You are Big Pharma shill/agent"

"you are paid anti Alternative healthcare misinformant"

"pathguy is a devoted alternative health basher"

"I honestly thought you where going to try to defend this cadaverist"

"You keep repeating yourself like a broken record."

"Yep, more desperation"

"If Mortiz knew what he was talking about then he would have known that"

"This has to be the most laughable part of his claims here."

"As bad as Moritz has been discredited with his false claims"

"I guess the Liver Flush proponents learned well from studying Hitler."

"you, IMO have no credibility at all."

"two dumbest people in the world"

"You can blather on all you like, but this just makes you boring, not right."

"Your ignorance is your problem though, not mine"

"delusional thinking"

"Blah Blah Blah, I can't be bothered"

"what makes me laugh is your attempts to attack the person and not the information"

"Do you make up user names just to come into the debate forum?"

"ROTFLMAO!!!!!!! You really have NO clue what you are talking about!!!!! "


"you made another stupid assumption"

"it is like you and Lisa Marie are trying to outdo each other for the title of World's Dumbest!!!!"

"and the way you make phrases sometimes really make me wonder about your age and maturity. "

"You really are a nasty little person when you don't get your way. "





A personal attack is committed when a person substitutes abusive remarks for evidence when attacking another person's claim or claims. This line of "reasoning" is fallacious because the attack is directed at the person making the claim and not the claim itself. The truth value of a claim is independent of the person making the claim. After all, no matter how repugnant an individual might be, he or she can still make true claims.



Ad hominem abuse (also called personal abuse) usually involves insulting or belittling one's opponent in order to invalidate his or her argument, but can also involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent's argument. This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent's personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent's arguments or assertions.





Guilt by association (Association fallacy)

Guilt by association can sometimes also be a type of ad hominem fallacy, if the argument attacks a source because of the similarity between the views of someone making an argument and other proponents of the argument.

This form of the argument is as follows:

Source A makes claim P.
Group B also make claim P.
Therefore, source A is a member of group B.



Classic "Guilt by association" fallacy:

Anyone who questions claims of Liver Flush is automatically a Big Pharma paid agent/shill, because Big Pharma paid agents question Liver Flush.



LFModerator




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