In the previous Mark Steyn post, Cosmo accused me of ad hominem argument, then, when I told him he didn’t actually seem to understand what ad hominem was, went and got the dictionary definition (or, well, the about.com definition, anyway) and still managed to get it wrong:
“Ad hominem is a Latin term meaning “to the man”. It is short for “argumentum ad hominem” which refers to an argument against a man. An argument that is ad hominem is one that has deviated from the claims being made and has instead focused on the person making the claims.”
Calling Steyn an asshole would most certainly qualify, as you gave no examples to back up this claim. Do you know Steyn? Ever interacted with him? Corresponded, even? Give us some evidence as to why he’s an asshole, other than because he possesses the extreme character flaw of disagreeing with your political positions.
Who’s REALLY the hack here?
I’m going to go into a little detail now, because this is one of my major pet peeves: people (on any side of the political spectrum: left, right, Ron Paul, 4chan, you name it) get this wrong all the time. So I’m taking my reply to his comment and turning it into a post. (My blog, my rules.)
An argument that is ad hominem deviates from the claims being made and focuses on the person making the claims, this is true, but is still ultimately targeted at the claims, which is why ad hominem is included as one of the classic arguments of fallacy. The generic example of an ad hominem is:
“[X]’s argument about [whatever] is wrong because he is a worthless asshole.”
That’s how ad hominem differs from insult: it takes insult, which is essentially opinion, and treats it as evidence.
For example, I think Mark Steyn is a malicious asshole. That’s opinion (and insult). But it’s not an argument. If I want to justify it and turn it into an argument (IE, “Mark Steyn is a malicious asshole because X”), I might say it’s because he oversimplifies his arguments to misrepresent the position of his opposition, or because he conflates essentially unrelated political phenomena on the basis of apparent surface similarities to create the appearance of a sustained argument where none in fact exists.(And in fact I did say just that in the original post, albeit not as eloquently.) I might go on to add that Steyn’s been cheerfully wrong about the Great Depression and the merits of Augusto Pinochet, among other things. (Those were just the first two links that reminded me of amusements past. There are plenty more; I heartily recommend his idiotic screed about the merits of Jack Kirby versus Stan Lee to comics fans, wherein he suggests that Stan Lee’s motivation for making Spider-Man a troubled individual was not because Stan Lee wanted to make the character more relatable and realistic, but because Stan Lee was a big ol’ nasty liberal.) He has a chronic inability to fact-check and racist tendencies (if you’ve read America Alone, you know he routinely and incorrectly conflates “Muslim” and “non-Muslim” with “brown” and “white”) that are moderately disgusting.
Even then, though, that’s still not ad hominem, because in that case the argument being made is specifically about the individual rather than his claims. (To wit: X is an asshole because of Y and Z.) Ad hominem occurs when the major point of argument is A) not about the specific individual referred to and B) one then fallaciously refers to negative characteristics of that individual to “prove” he is wrong.
In the context of this post, that would have been something like “Steyn wrote about Lily Ledbetter and got it totally wrong, because he is an asshole.” A reader who ignored or glossed over my paragraph about his oversimplifying Ledbetter v. Goodyear to the point of idiocy might incorrectly consider it ad hominem – but no dice. (I might still be wrong – such is the nature of argument – but it’s not a fallacious argument.)
That’s why ad hominem is one of the classic logical fallacies. Got it now?
Top comment: I hate to be the guy who focuses on the one throwaway comics reference in an otherwise political post…
…Actually, no, I don’t. I love being that guy!
Anyway, Steyn’s “EVIL STAN LEE WAS AN EVIL DEMOCRAT” thing kind of hilariously omits the fact that Kirby was a lifelong FDR Democrat himself. — Prankster
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So is the test on this going to be open book, or what?
I will never understand why commenters come to your blog and write comments that essentially say “How DARE you be liberal!” IT’S A LIBERAL BLOG.
Then again, asking people on the internet to act rational is a bit like herding lolcats.
+1!
I find it irritating when someone invokes the My First Wikipedia List of Logical Fallacies at the best of times, but people who use “ad hominem” as a synonym for “insult” or “criticism” drive me insane.
…I put them in the same class as people who tell you off whenever you forget to append the magic words “in my opinion…” to every (self-evidently) subjective statement.
I just want to know one thing.
Now that you’ve made a couple posts about Mark Steyn in your blog in what I can only assume is an attempt to curry favor against this distasteful fellow among your readers, will you then be shocked and dismayed should the subject of your rants appear within your comments section and is then referred to, quite directly, as “a little bitch”?
Thanks for the lesson, MGK!
There’s a thing in Australia where a distinguished professor of Geology wrote a book about Climate Change. His opinion is that the whole thing is bollocks, and there’s no problem. He has been going around the usual places writing opinion pieces based on this, where he predicted that “My enemies and opponents will dismiss this with ad hominem”. His critics point out that most of the footnotes point to papers which explicitly say the opposite of what he says they do. His response? “Look: ad hominem! he says I am wrong, which is slander, which is abuse, which is personal, therefore he’s a big meanie and you can ignore him.”
So, let me make sure I’ve got this…
Ad hominem: Mark Steyn says the sky is blue. This is wrong, because he is a worthless asshole who shouldn’t be trusted with anything more dangerous than a plastic spork.
NOT ad hominem: Mark Steyn says the sky is blue. This is wrong, because it is nighttime. Also, he is a worthless asshole who shouldn’t be trusted with anything more dangerous than a plastic spork.
More or less correct?
I’d put it more like
Ad hominem: Mark Steyn says the sky is blue, he’s wrong because he’s a silly doucherat who needs a severe beating about the head and shoulders with a piece of heavy mining equipment.
NOT ad hominem: Mark Steyn is a silly doucherat who needs a severe beating about the head and shoulders with a piece of heavy mining equipment. Also, he’s wrong about the sky being blue, because it’s nighttime.
My favorite part is how the visitors think Steyn sicking them on you must have drastically inflated your traffic, and yet the number of comments is no higher than any of your modestly popular posts. By his logic, the combined political influence of Betty Cooper and Dark Opal must be terrifying.
“Mark Steyn: Way less useful for traffic than Boing Boing or /.”
I hate to be the guy who focuses on the one throwaway comics reference in an otherwise political post…
…Actually, no, I don’t. I love being that guy!
Anyway, Steyn’s “EVIL STAN LEE WAS AN EVIL DEMOCRAT” thing kind of hilariously omits the fact that Kirby was a lifelong FDR Democrat himself. It’s particularly annoying because I agree with some of what he’s saying about Lee and Kirby apportioning the credit.
As Lore Sjoberg puts it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyK1LTfLXiM):
“Saying ‘you provide oral pleasure to nutria, thus you’re wrong’, is bad, that’s a fallacy. But saying ‘you provide oral pleasure to nutria AND you’re wrong,’ that’s okey kosher.”
It’s conflating correlation with causation, really. If you’re a racist, callous, douche who cheery-picks or misrepresents facts to support your otherwise insupportable arguments, then that makes you an asshole. The same conditions also make your position on any given issue is likely to be a wrong one. Being an asshole isn’t the *reason* you’re wrong, but your asshole quotient can strongly correlate with your dumb-ass argument quotient, because they are both based on the same underlying ultimate cause.
I came to this blog for the comics. I stay because of how intelligent the writing is (um… AND the comics!), even though I don’t agree with everything being said. This page is being bookmarked for possibly being the best explanation of ad hominem that I’ve ever read.
You know, for when my lil’ ol’ liberal mind gets all confuzzled in the future…
Thank you.
I will probably bookmark this to whip it out later.
That would appear to be Cosmo, for continually accusing you of resorting to ad hominems despite a stunning ignorance of what that actually means.
Well, I think that MGK’s explanation of ad hominem attacks is wrong, because MGK is a moron.
;p
MGK LESSON #1:
Don’t argue Law with a Law Student.
(or argumentation, rather)^^^
The example I was given in class was saying something like, “You know who else was a vegitarian? Adolph Hitler.”
There is no real logical point being made either way about vegetarinism in the statement, only that the idea is associated with someone who killed 6 million Jews, and you, by extention as a vegetarian, are like him. Course, anything involving Hitler is kind of passe when it comes to logic statements or arguments, but I digress…
I don’t think that’s an ad hominem, actually. I believe an ad hominem is an attempt to bring up an unrelated trait of the person making the argument. In the case you quoted, it seems like whether vegetarianism is good or not is the topic of debate. An ad hominem in that case might be saying “You can’t be right because you’re a Nazi!”
Or, if you were arguing with the person, you might say “You’re a vegetarian, therefore you’re wrong.” What they eat has no relation to the subject, so if you bring it up as an attempt to “prove” them wrong, that would be ad hominem.
That would be an association fallacy. In fact, Hitler’s vegetarianism is the first example given on the fallacy’s Wikipedia entry.
An ad hominem would be something like “My opponent thinks that we shouldn’t raze this forest, but that’s the sort of crazy thing he would think, being a vegetarian.” It works both ways though. “Hitler’s a vegetarian, so perhaps this ‘final solution’ thing isn’t so wrong after all…”
So Cosmo finally gets it?
Thank you, MGK. I took a logic course in first-year university, and even after my professors supposedly explained ad hominem it still didn’t make sense.
And since then, I’ve clearly constantly been exposed to incorrect uses of the term, which confoozled (to use the technical term) me further.
Now I finally understand.
Now that I think of it, the reason for most of this misuse can probably be narrowed further:
“I need something to bolster my argument, which is weak. I’ve got it! I’ll use this Latin phrase I don’t fully understand to give myself apparent weight, thus cowing people who don’t understand it either and making myself seem important!”
I read one of his other (most recent) articles because I couldn’t get through his Stan Lee/Jack Kirby one…
I’m going to take a moment to be grateful that he cannot vote in my country. You, sir, are more then welcome to deal with this wingnut – we have enough of our own in the U.S.