…versus Victor Davis Hanson. It’s no contest. In theory, they invented the mercy rule for things like this, but Sachs is undeserving. As a commenter notes, it’s rare to see such a pure, nasty, unadulterated version of ad hominem, but when you do it generally comes from a clueless leftist.
Which brings up a general gripe, sustained for years both at blogs and, before them, Usenet, on the general lack of understanding of what an ad hominem argument is. Here’s what it is not. It is not a mere gratuitous insult tossed into the middle of an otherwise strong argument, whether accurate or not (I’ve often been accused of ad hominem for this — it might well be rude, but it’s not ad hominem). It is not saying “so and so is on the take by the Evil Corporation X, so we should take with a grain of salt things that so and so says in defense of Evil Corporation X,” at least when one has made a strong case against ECX and the defender has made a weak one, or lied about it, and this is pointed out. An ad hominem argument would be to say simply that you should not believe what he says for no other reason than this (and even then it’s not true ad hominem, because the information is relevant to the topic at hand), but stated properly, it is rather an explanation for why such a poor/mendacious argument is being made. For an example of this non-example of ad hominem, see my post yesterday about Loren Thompson. Note that I eviscerated his foolishness — the fact that he’s on the payroll of major aerospace corporations who favor the status quo was simply lagniappe for the benefit of readers who might wonder why he was making such absurd, unfactual and illogical arguments.
But as I said, what Sachs did to Hanson was a pure, logic-free, irrelevant and false attack on his character as an excuse to avoid having to deal with the substance of his comments, and I point it out as an example of the real deal.
The other type of technique that is overused is the “appeal to authority.” And it ties together with the ad hominem predictably and relentlessly.
Leftist: “Expert A says gravity is offline!”
Other: (drops paperclip, observes) “Um, I don’t think that’s true.”
Leftist: “He’s an expert… and you’re a moron.”
A complete inability to perform independent analysis.
It’s a bit disturbing that Sachs claims to be an academician yet makes obviously flawed arguments like the above. I guess he’s crossed whatever flimsy barrier exists between the world of knowledge (assuming generously that he’d ever been there) and the entertainment/propaganda world.
Yes, appeal to authority is sort of the flip side of ad hominem. And it’s prevalent in the “climate change” debate.
Sachs is another example of the worthlessness of a soft-curriculum Ivy League degree for anything other than prestige and networking ability (not to imply, of course, that all people with such degrees are like this).
I stopped subscribing to Scientific American shortly after Sachs started his column there. The magazine has become a mouth piece for Leftist rants.
And see Beck’s Razor:
n. The practice, on an internet discussion thread, of making substantive comments in a confrontational and insulting manner as a means of sorting the other participants into those who can understand the substance and those who only see the tone and the form.
Regarding Sachs: Somtimes you just have to call a dick a dick and Sachs is 100% flaccid penile matter through and through.
Hey Sachs, if the condom fits, wear it you worthless piece of crap!
I choked off ‘Scientific’ American when they used sordidly antiscientific methods in their attempt to smear Bjorn Lomborg.
Just wondering — in the 7th line of the 2nd paragraph you open a quote, and I’m still waiting for it to close.
Is it on the horizon?
I find your ECX example to be confusing. An argument should stand on its own merits, regardless of who is making it, and regardless of how the proponent stands to gain.
If I say “space elevators are more efficient than rockets”, and you reply “you’ll have to take Bob with a grain of salt – he’s betting his whole retirement on The Space Elevator Company”, isn’t that a circumstantial ad hominem argument against my claim about efficiency, and if so, how is that different from the ECX example?
I think your answer will be of the form: “It is not ad hominem if I say “space elevators have a hundred hidden inefficiencies such as [relevant claims 1-100], and besides, you’ll have to take Bob with a grain of salt since he invested with The Space Elevator Company.”
One hundred relevant claims might create a devastating counter-argument but they don’t have any bearing on the 101st ad hominem claim.
I wish I could delete my previous comment, because I thought of a more succinct way to say what I want to say:
My concern is that someone following your ECX example will make an ad hominem argument and then excuse it by calling it a “lagniappe”, or “just an explanation”, even though it will have the same effect as any ad hominem argument.
I think Sachs says “sorry” and admits his comments are a “side point” because he knows what he is offering is just a “lagniappe” foolishly offered first. The lagniappe is nonetheless an example of the ad hominem fallacy.
In the ECX example, the lagniappe is withheld until the end of the transaction, as is customary, bu it is still just an ad hominem argument.
cause no commentator has done more harm to the American people actually than that guy who led us into all these disastrous wars.
Then…
Sorry, that’s a side point, but that man — that guy’s done a lot of damage.
Bob, please indicate the lagniappe in the first item, and cogently support your assertion that had he not foolishly offered it first, but wisely withheld it until the end of the transaction (as a side point), it would not now be used as an example of his asininity.
Curt,
No problem. First and foremost, Sach’s ad hominem argument would and should be used as an example of his asininity regardless of when he said it, since it was an ad hominem argument — unless you believe in the lagniappe excuse that Rand suggests, or if you think that different standards should apply to the ECX example and to Sachs.
As for the assertion that he used an ad hominem argument first, before he said anything else, watch the tape here or read the transcript here:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2010/12/23/sachs-calls-victor-davis-hanson-extremist-who-has-done-more-harm-a
Sachs says “Anything that Hanson says I’m likely to disagree with, cause no commentator has done more harm to the American people actually than that guy who led us into all these disastrous wars. But aside from that –”
“Aside from that” indicates that he is going to say something else, presumably a non-ad-hominem response to Hanson’s actual argument.
Sachs continues his ad hominem attack but interjects “I didn’t mean that”, and he finally winds it up with “sorry” and says his comment is a side point, again indicating that he is going to respond to Hanson’s actual argument.
The tape ends at this point, so I don’t know if he did give a better argument or not.
==
I think it was an ad hominem argument, but a reasonable person could disagree with me and say that it wasn’t a logical argument at all – just a
little “lagniappe” – a little something extra Sachs wanted to share. As I said, I found Rand’s ECX example confusing. It seems to apply different standards to Sachs and to, well, everyone else.
No, it is not; an ad hominem argument is one that is irrelevant to the discussion.
If I say, “Professor X beats his wife, and therefore his work cannot be trusted”, that can be an ad hominem argument as, whether it be true or not, it is irrelevant…unless Professor X holds himself out as an expert on marital harmony, at which point, it is revealed as relevant to the discussion.
Akatsukami, I disagree with you.
See http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumstantial-ad-hominem.html
Although the subject is distateful and I’d prefer to talk about hypothetical space elevators instead of hypothetical violence against women, I’ll reply to your example. It doesn’t matter whether Professor X is a marriage expert and it doesn’t matter whether Professor X beats his wife when it comes to assessing his argument on what makes a marriage harmonious — you must judge the argument on its own merits.
Hmm, I just noticed that the Nizkor definition focuses on personal gain, which is not sufficiently general. The definition here is the more general case: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html
“A Circumstantial Ad Hominem is one in which some irrelevant personal circumstance surrounding the opponent is offered as evidence against the opponent’s position. ”
I suspect we’re ultimately going be debating the meaning of the word “irrelevant”‘, in which case I’d say you can safely substitute the phrase “logically irrelevant” whenever you see the word.
unless you believe in the lagniappe excuse that Rand suggests
Which was:
the fact that he’s on the payroll of major aerospace corporations
Which you’re comparing to:
cause no commentator has done more harm to the American people actually than that guy who led us into all these disastrous wars.
Can you sense your wheel(s) starting to wobble?
Curt,
Both items you put in italics are logically irrelevent to the argument. Both refer only to the circumstances surrounding the person making the argument, not the argument itself. No wobbling detected.
Both items you put in italics are logically irrelevent to the argument.
Which would be(?):
An argument should stand on its own merits
Seems to me factuality should be in there somewhere. “Merits” and all that. Guess you’re not up to addressing “no commentator has done more harm to the American people actually than that guy who led us into all these disastrous wars.” S’ok, maybe next time.
Oh, I think I see the source of the confusion! Yes, the truth of an assertion may not matter at all when considering whether the assertion is an ad hominem argument.
To use the example above, if Professor X says “the secret to a happy marriage is to wish your wife a merry Christmas once a year, and kiss her once a day”, it simply isn’t relevant whether he beats his wife or not, and so the truthfulness of the assertion “he beats his wife!” doesn’t matter — the assertion is an ad hominem attack regardless.
Sachs’ assertion about Hason might be untrue, while Rand’s assertion about the ECX guy might be true, but both assertions are ad hominem arguments when considering whether, in Sach’s case, if Obama flip-flopped, and in Rand’s case, whether ECX really is an evil company.
I hope this was fun for you, it was for me. Merry Christmas!
If I say “space elevators are more efficient than rockets”, and you reply “you’ll have to take Bob with a grain of salt – he’s betting his whole retirement on The Space Elevator Company”, isn’t that a circumstantial ad hominem argument against my claim about efficiency, and if so, how is that different from the ECX example?
No, the fact that you bet the farm on the technology that you advocate is relevant information because it is a conflict of interest. We already know that conflicts of interest can, but not necessarily do lead to all sorts of bias and deception. The advice is also to take your words “with a grain of salt”, not to discount them entirely. In other words, a relevant issue was raised with respect to your argument and a recommendation made which was both rational and appropriate.
If I had said, “Bob bet his whole retirement on The Space Elevator Company, therefore, he’s lying and you shouldn’t pay attention to him,” then that would be an ad hominem attack on you.
To use the example above, if Professor X says “the secret to a happy marriage is to wish your wife a merry Christmas once a year, and kiss her once a day”, it simply isn’t relevant whether he beats his wife or not, and so the truthfulness of the assertion “he beats his wife!” doesn’t matter — the assertion is an ad hominem attack regardless.
I disagree on relevance here. Beating up one’s wife (presumably on an ongoing basis) is not a sign of a happy marriage. Hence, we have someone who is willing to give advice on what makes a happy marriage yet is either unable to follow their own advice or worse, doesn’t understand the issues of marriage well enough to give useful advice.
Why doesn’t it surprise me that you pretend to omniscience?
Ha! Akatsukami, I hope that wasn’t supposed to be some sort of counter-argument to what I’m saying!
Akatsukami’s comment raises an interesting point. Was he engaging in an ad hominem argument or just sharing his thoughts about me. If it is the latter, why was Sach’s comment an ad hominem argument?
Karl,
When philosophers speak of “relevance”, they mean “logical relevance”. A person may be a hypocrite or have a conflict of interst that is topically relevant, but their circumstances are logically irrelevant to the soundness of their argument (with the obvious exception of when their circumstances are the subject of the argument).
—
Who disagrees with the following definition? I believe the definition is correct, but it is inconsistent with what Rand, Karl, and Akatsukami have to say about the ad hominem fallacy.
Argumentum ad Hominem (abusive and circumstantial): the fallacy of attacking the character or circumstances of an individual who is advancing a statement or an argument instead of trying to disprove the truth of the statement or the soundness of the argument. Often the argument is characterized simply as a personal attack.
The personal attack is also often termed an “ad personem argument”: the statement or argument at issue is dropped from consideration or is ignored, and the locutor’s character or circumstances are used to influence opinion.
The fallacy draws its appeal from the technique of “getting personal.” The assumption is that what the locutor is saying is entirely or partially dictated by his character or special circumstances and so should be disregarded.
I mention the following not to attack your general point, but as a defense of proper terminology in logic and rhetoric. Calling an argument “ad hominem” does not mean that it is not legitimate. An argument ad hominem is simply one that is directed against the person, and such arguments can sometimes be quite on point.
In the most obvious example, if a witness in a court of law says, “Joe could not be the murderer because I saw him at my home 100 miles away from the murder at the time of the murder”, then it is a perfectly good ad hominem argument for the prosecutor to point out that the witness is Joe’s mother, rendering her testimony less reliable.
In general, any time that person A says P and the fact that A says P is a part of the reason for a hearer to believe P, it is a good and reasonable form of argument to give a reason that A has a motivation to say P even if P is not true.
Doc, the definition of the ad hominem falacy that I recommended makes a special note about testimony — see http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html But that’s testimony – not a logical argument.
I’m not sure about your general case. If the hearer foolishly believes in the authority of the speaker, it is still a fallacy to try to undermine the speaker’s argument by addressing his character or his personal circumstances, just as it is a fallacy for the speaker to appeal to his own authority to support his argument. In general, an argument’s soundness must not depend on who the speaker is.
“In general, an argument’s soundness must not depend on who the speaker is.”
That may be true in the idealized world of formal logic and mathematics but in the real world, with our imperfect knowledge, the persuasiveness of an argument very often depends on who the speaker is. In the real world, arguments are never sound (which is a technical term in logic that means that, assuming the premises are true, the conclusion must be true). In real life, arguments are at best inductively strong, meaning that although the argument gives a good reason for believing the conclusion, it is logically possible that it starts from true premises and ends with a false conclusion.
When you hear an argument that is not sound, you have to make a judgment on how inductively strong it is. Such judgments almost inevitably are influenced by who is making the argument. Even if you know nothing at all about who is making the argument, that has some influence on how you judge the argument’s strength, depending on whether you are the trusting sort or the cynical sort.
If you find out that the person making the argument is being paid to argue for one side, doesn’t that change how you will value his argument? It should. You don’t know what data he has left out, what alternative theories he is ignoring; you don’t know how many times he did the experiment to get an outcome that favors his client or whether he tried several statistical analyses to get the result he wanted.
Now, ideally, you would get another expert with access to the same data who could spell out all of the shaky areas and alternative theories. If you have that, then the ad hominem argument becomes less and less relevant because you have better information. But in the absence of full information and an opposing expert, knowing the incentives of the person making the argument is critical for deciding how much trust to put in his argument.
Bob, you seem to have demonstrated your bullheaded obtuseness more on this thread than most. Go reread what I wrote.
When philosophers speak of “relevance”, they mean “logical relevance”. A person may be a hypocrite or have a conflict of interst that is topically relevant, but their circumstances are logically irrelevant to the soundness of their argument (with the obvious exception of when their circumstances are the subject of the argument).
Sounds to me like you are wasting our time again. Any such philosophers pushing that argument would be irrational. You admit that there are things which are relevant, but you chose to claim are not. That means you have already defeated your argument.
Rand, I did, and the most problematic thing you wrote was this: ” An ad hominem argument would be to say simply that you should not believe what he says for no other reason than this (and even then it’s not true ad hominem, because the information is relevant to the topic at hand) […]”
The validity of his defense of ECX does not depend on whether or not he receives money from ECX. The information that he receives money from ECX is not logically relevant. I think the mistake you are making is that you are confusing logical relevance with topical relevance or some other sort of relevance.
“Relevance” is a rather ambiguous word, and this problem is discussed here: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/redherrf.html
(And note the abstraction hierarchy: ad hominem is a type of genetic fallacy which is a type of red herring.)
What I’d really like to know is this: using your interpretation of the ad hominem fallacy, why was Sachs offering an ad hominem fallacy? Using your interpretation of the fallacy, why wasn’t Sachs just adding a little extra opinionated commentary (a “lagniappe”) before he got to his actual argument?
—–
Doc, thanks, you make some great points about real world inductive logic, but I think you are underestimating how often deductive logic and logical fallacies can be quite helpful in “the real world”. Real world decisions often begin with arguments containing sweeping generalizations and value judgements such as “supply side economics is always a bad idea” and “the crew’s safety must be the paramount consideration in all human spaceflight endeavors”. Such claims invite counter-examples, the counter-examples invite the questioning of certain premises, pretty soon you’ve got circular arguments, ad hominem attacks, etc. The deductive logic tools that can be used to analyze “All men are mortal, etc” can also be used to analyze these real world arguments as well.
Karl, please reread the definitions of circumstantial ad hominem given above. Of course the circumstances are topically relevant! That’s why they are brought up! But the validity of an argument doesn’t depend on who the speaker is, regardless of his circumstances.
Rand, I did
Apparently not for comprehension.
The validity of his defense of ECX does not depend on whether or not he receives money from ECX.
I never said it did.
Pleae explain what you meant by ” (and even then it’s not true ad hominem, because the information is relevant to the topic at hand)”.
Karl, please reread the definitions of circumstantial ad hominem given above. Of course the circumstances are topically relevant! That’s why they are brought up! But the validity of an argument doesn’t depend on who the speaker is, regardless of his circumstances.
Bob, I have a solution here. I’ll grant you this only in arguments where logic is the only factor determining validity. That isn’t the case with the arguments given in this thread.
Doc Rampage gave a good example of validity in the more general sense. In an adversarial system, such as a courtroom, one expects arguers to back the interests that they represent or profit from. If the defendant’s lawyer deliberately harmed the defendent’s case, then that is rightly considered a dereliction of duty.
If an avid lunar proponent discusses an argument that is obviously favorable to lunar development, then it is reasonable to discount that argument to some degree. But suppose they back an argument that isn’t so obvious, say, that Mars exploration is needed, even though it hurts, at least in the short term, the case for lunar development. That has more weight because the case where the argument is counter to the interests of the arguer is a less frequently occurring situation and more likely to have merit.
Second, there are an infinite number of possible arguments to chose from. But only a small, finite number of those will be expressed. Logical validity doesn’t help you handle the bias inherent in expression of argument.
What’s going on here is that argument in the real world has context. In addition, those who have to consider the arguments have only a limited amount of resources at their disposal. Merely considering the logical validity of the argument takes scarce resources and doesn’t give you heuristics for deciding whether to consider the argument at a deeper level. And to the contrary, even a logically invalid argument can have the seeds of a logically valid argument.
I suppose what I think should apply here is empirical validity not logical validity.
Karl (and Doc), I think you’re right. That said, lets not swing too far in the opposite direction and throw out logical deduction and logical fallacies altogether. As I said to Doc, even when the argument is taking place in the real world involving all sorts of inductive reasoning, reasoning from analogy, etc, logical fallacies can still be useful tool.
There is a really interesting conversation to be had about the limits of logical deduction and the appropriateness of various informal logical fallacies to different situations. There is also a vast literature on this subject discussing this unresolved set of issues.
But I’m replying to Rand’s lecture on what and what is not an ad hominem fallacy, in the context of his castigation of Jeffery Sachs. I wanted to point out Rand’s post appears to me to be first, an incorrect definition of the ad hominem fallacy and second, an example of a double standard when using it to criticize Sachs but to excuse his even worse (albeit hypothetical) behavior.
Correction: I shouldn’t have said Rand’s ECX example was “worse”, I should have said it is less of judgement call, in that it is certainly an example of an ad hominem argument, while Sachs’ behavior can be explained as a conversationall “something extra” that was intended to precede a more valid reply.
Bob-1, I agree with you that Rand’s definition of “ad hominem” was lacking –that’s why I posted originally. I don’t agree that his characterization of Sachs was wrong. On the contrary, that outburst by Sachs was a fine example of the ad hominem fallacy (as opposed to the mere argument ad hominem).
Sachs was presented with a particular set of observations that undermine his views and his response was to throw irrelevant and ridiculous insults at the person who made the observations rather than addressing the observations on substance. It doesn’t help to say that maybe he planned to address the substance afterward. His outburst was his first answer and it represented a classic ad hominem fallacy.
Hi Doc, I’m not saying Rand’s characterization of Sachs was wrong either — there is a strong case to be made that it was a classic ad hominem fallacy.
Since you don’t think it would help Sachs case if he had offered a better argument later, what do you think about the idea that a gratuitous insult interjected into an otherwise strong argument does not constitute an ad hominem fallacy?
I think any insult directed at a participant in a debate constitutes an ad hominem fallacy,regardless of whether it comes in the beginning, the middle,, or at the end of an argument, since it is a response in the context of the debate. What do you think?
I think an alternative view is that the insult must be connected explicitly to the argument: “You are wrong because you are an idiot” versus “you idiot!”. But I think both responses are ad hominem fallacies.
I don’t think a gratuitous insult inserted into an argument counts as an ad hominem fallacy, but given the specific context in which Sachs was speaking and the larger context of political debate in this country where the preferred argument for progressives is always “Don’t listen to him, he’s evil”, it is pretty clear that Sachs was making just such an argument.