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He's pointing that calling someone a conspiracy theorist is an example of an ad hominem attack. Which it is and was and always will be. Calling someone a conspi
by JoshCole 8y ago
He's pointing that calling someone a conspiracy theorist is an example of an ad hominem attack. Which it is and was and always will be. Calling someone a conspiracy theorist is talking about a person, not the ideas they are expressing.
According to Paul Graham in his article How to Disagree an ad hominem attack is the second weakest form of disagreement, only a little better than calling someone mean names.
However, in the case of calling someone a conspiracy theorist, I would argue that it actually is an example of name calling as well. It is a negatively charged word. Name calling, according to Paul Graham, is the weakest form of disagreement.
From a logical fundamentals perspective, calling someone a conspiracy theorist has never held water. It can't hold water, unless talking about the character of a person, because it tries to attack the character of a person, rather than refuting their ideas.
Wikipedia, citing conspiracy theory as an example of ad hominem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
It is an error of logic to support that the fact that an ad hominem attack doesn't hold weight means that a thing is right or wrong. The entire point of understanding fallacy is to realize that there is a disconnection between ground truth and any claims reached via their use.
In this particular case, people are talking about Elon being a conspiracy theorist, because he suspects there might be outside actors involved on the basis of known data exportation, known sabotage, and profit motives. These are examples of things tied directly to the question of whether Tesla is experiencing corporate espionage.
- djur 8y agoNot exactly. Calling someone a "conspiracy theorist" can certainly be an ad hominem attack akin to calling someone a "wacko", but it can also be shorthand for "your argument is structured like a conspiracy theory", and conspiracy theories tend to be logically unsound because they are unfalsifiable. (Broadly speaking, the conspiracy theorist can always explain away evidence contrary to their claims by suggesting that it, too, is part of the conspiracy.) 9/11 truthers, birthers, JFK assassination theorists, Illuminati/Satanist/New World Order types, pizzagaters, ZOG-believing antisemites, flat earthers, hollow earthers, etc. all have common rhetorical tactics and modes of argumentation that are distinctly "conspiracy theorist".
- JoshCole 8y agoGood point, though I'm really just trying to get across that 'since some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true, all conspiracy theories are likely true' is not a good summation of the motivations which produced rplst8 statement. When I apply the principle of charity to what rplst8 said, I'm forced to ascribe to him beliefs which maximize the correctness of his views. In doing so, I have to take the position that he is referring to conspiracy theorist as applied as a label to a person, rather than used as shorthand to discuss the structure of someone's argument. This is especially a truth maximizing necessity, because the conversation he is replying to is discussing cases where conspiracy theories turned out to be true; not just unfalsifiable rhetoric.