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Why, again, attack the man instead of the argument? It's especially grating when the entire thread is about ad hominems. Saying that Scott Adams has been known
by crdb 10y ago
Why, again, attack the man instead of the argument? It's especially grating when the entire thread is about ad hominems.
Saying that Scott Adams has been known to be irrational is at best tangential to the example he gives to qualify whether the Trump and Clinton campaigns are using emotional manipulation, especially ad hominem attacks, to achieve their respective goals.
It's an appeal to emotion built upon an ad hominem: you use your attack on Scott Adams' ability to reason coupled with an association fallacy [1] to attack me in order to invalidate my line of argument.
Specifically: Scott Adams is irrational; you presented an example by Scott Adams; you therefore agree with an irrational man; this makes you irrational; your arguments are therefore irrational; let's not bother debating your irrational arguments.
I might be wrong, so attack the flaws in my reasoning, not me or the author or my examples.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
- ubernostrum 10y agoI suspect sooner or later you're going to try to find a way to claim that anything which merely mentions someone's argument is an ad hominem, and your entire style is close to the fallacy fallacy ("I can name an informal fallacy, therefore your argument is invalid"), but... It is perfectly fair to say "Scott Adams makes claims about himself which cannot charitably be interpreted as rational or reasonable, therefore appealing to Scott Adams (hint: appeal to authority!) when talking about a desire for more rational and reasoned and impersonal debate does not lend credibility to your argument".
- crdb 10y agoBut I did not appeal to authority. I gave an example of both the Trump and Clinton campaigns using manipulation to illustrate my point. Why do you disagree?