ad hominem (VI)

While “ad hominem (V)” was the only path by which I could get a few things spoken out the way I had hoped, it is problematic in severals ways. Many ways, I think, but relevenat here, it does not help us in the analysis of a debate between two third parties.

Mr A: Mr. X is a jerk.

Mr B: It’s not nice to call people names.

It seems as-if it would be pretty simple to analyse such a statement. On the face of it, Mr. A may be, himself, a jerk, as he is apparently the type of man that results to name-calling.

But there are facts that can easily sway this interpretation, and more importantly, beliefs about those facts, and relations to those facts. A simple example … it could be the case that Mr. X is a modern incarnation of Moloch. He may beat women and steal bread from orphans just to amuse himself. Calling him a jerk may be being nice. And, moreso, Mr. B might be in league with Mr. X. The point of his critique has nothing to do with really being nice, but only to get people like Mr. A to not criticize Mr. X, out of fear that the Mr. X gravy-train could come to a standstill.

In everyday parlance, of course, this is rarely the case. Probably Mr. X and Mr. A are simply having some disagreement, or Mr. X made some decision that affects Mr. A. Mr. B could be the voice of reason.

How do we go about determining which case is which.

To make matters more difficult, I’m not sure it matters whether or not Mr. X is, in actuallity, all that bad. So long as Mr. A believes he is Moloch re-incarnate and Mr. B agrees but is okay riding the gravy-train, the analysis still holds. So not only would we like to know the facts of the matter (who is Mr. X and what are the social relations between the three characters: Mr. A, Mr. B and Mr. X), and we would also like to know the belief states of the characters of Mr. A and Mr. B.

Within these variances we could produce scenarios of the basic statement and response that show Mr. B’s reation to be ad hominem in either the political or in the basic name-calling version of the ad hominem attack, but I can not think of an interpretation of the dialogue that would classify Mr. B’s reply as an “ad hominem fallacy” as it was described in previous posts. That is … it is not the case that Mr. B. is trying to defeat Mr. A’s claim that “Mr. X is jerk” by generaically calling into question Mr. A’s authority to speak.

But this is not the same scenario as was faced back in originating quote ont Tom Terrible’s web log. Something closer to that would look like this …

Mr. B: Mr. X has suggested that he is intervening for this reason … yadda yadda yadda

Mr. A: Mr. X is a liar, and he doesn’t really believe in that proposition as stated anyway.

Mr. B: That would be an ad hominem fallacy, and further, there is no need for name-calling attacks.

The first thing we would need to know to analyse this exchange is where Mr. B stands in relation to Mr. X. Again, does he benefit from Mr. X’s successes? Or, is he merely stating what Mr. X’s argument is for a specific intervention? The case that started this whole thing is ambiguous in this regard. We simply do not know to whom TT is replying.

When I step into the argument I am going to assume, however, a non straw-man position. Somewhere in the dialogue I was asking Natalie what she thought an intelligent and well-educated conservative might say to support the position of intervention in the TS case. It is within that framework that I would work with TT’s post.

The obvious repsonse, I think … that under ambiguous conditions, I am assuming the framework that I want and, thereby, making TT’s post an ad hominem fallacy almost by defintion. (If a reasonable and well educated human being could claim X, then any reply to the person that attacks ad hominem another lesser thinker of the same camp is going to be an ad hominem fallacy. But isn’t that more of a straw-man argument?)

I think there are close rhetorical links between the two fallacys. But I have once again gotten off-track. Sorry, this is what my first drafts look like. We are not discussing a case in which the original ad hominem fallacy claim was really questioned. I questioned it myself, but was happy with the notion that there is a direction from which it does apply, while releasing anyone else from the obligation of taking the step that direction. If not accepted, that merely moved TT’s post from ad ad hominem fallacy to a straight forward type 3 (from earlier posts) ad hominem attack. I was happy with either result.

The question at hand was rather the claim, either kind, is also an ad hominem attack. I like to think that we have shown here that it could have been. That given the right set of beliefs on my part, that I could have ben engaging in ad hominem attacks of the 2^nd (political) or 3^rd (generic personal attack) kind.

If this were true it would not be like the first dialouge above. The manner in which I might be personally invested in one side of the case would not be overt. That is, the political question at hand, I has claiming ad hominem fallacy with someone with whom I likley agree on what I thought should be the proper outcome. I just did not like his form of argument. At some level, though, the question might arise … can it be the case that one’s investment in nicities is itself an investment in the system as a whole, and the form of attack I do not like is important only because of its form and not by virtue of what it intends to argue against?