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My take on this is that you are adding common sense, rather than sticking to what is given: > How is this an ad hominem fallacy? B is not trying to discredit A

My take on this is that you are adding common sense, rather than sticking to what is given: > How is this an ad hominem fallacy? B is not trying to discredit A's argument by appealing to a logically irrelevant characteristic of A. Rather, B is using A as a counterexample for A's argument. But it's not a counterexample. It would be if someone had said thieves are criminals, but no one did. We only know that from common sense outside of the syllogism. Therefore the statement "YOU are a thief and a criminal" is a simple assertion without evidence within the givens, and making such a statement about the debating opponent and then concluding they are therefore wrong ("there goes your argument") is in fact a solid example of ad hominem. I strongly agree that this is a poor example of one, because it allows the sort of confusion that you point out -- it's just not literally wrong. As a footnote (and certainly not aimed at you), a very large number of people who forgot their high school lectures about "ad hominem" use the term to mean any personal attack or criticism, which I find exasperating at best. Such mis-usage isn't just language evolution in action, it is misunderstanding rhetorical concepts over 2000 years old, first stated in Greek and then Latin, and quite language independent. It's a shame. But I digress.

escape_goat 11y ago
To interject, to me it seems that it is actually a counter-example, and I do not follow your reasoning. (A)'s argument is that murderers are criminals, but thieves are not murderers, and therefore cannot be criminals. The lack of logical validity of that argument aside, (B) refutes it instead by providing (quite literally) a counter-example: (A) is both a thief and a criminal. Therefore, if (B)'s assertion is true, (A)'s argument cannot be correct, for if it were correct, then (A) could be a thief or a criminal, but never both. Since this is a logical argument, it prejudges the matter to conclude that the standard of evidence required for (B)'s assertion should be any different than that for (A)'s assertion. We know (A)'s assertion to be false without any extra information. If there were external details of evidence that could be introduced, then (A)'s assertion would still be false. (B)'s assertion, however, might then still be either true or false, depending on the extra lemmas. As the example does not make additional information necessary and does not mention additional information, it is an error to arrive at an interpretation in which additional information is required to make sense of the matter. (One can always arbitrarily arrive at such an interpretation.)

escape_goat 11y ago

To interject, to me it seems that it is actually a counter-example, and I do not follow your reasoning. (A)'s argument is that murderers are criminals, but thieves are not murderers, and therefore cannot be criminals. The lack of logical validity of that argument aside, (B) refutes it instead by providing (quite literally) a counter-example: (A) is both a thief and a criminal. Therefore, if (B)'s assertion is true, (A)'s argument cannot be correct, for if it were correct, then (A) could be a thief or a criminal, but never both. Since this is a logical argument, it prejudges the matter to conclude that the standard of evidence required for (B)'s assertion should be any different than that for (A)'s assertion. We know (A)'s assertion to be false without any extra information. If there were external details of evidence that could be introduced, then (A)'s assertion would still be false. (B)'s assertion, however, might then still be either true or false, depending on the extra lemmas. As the example does not make additional information necessary and does not mention additional information, it is an error to arrive at an interpretation in which additional information is required to make sense of the matter. (One can always arbitrarily arrive at such an interpretation.)