Ad hominem, argument from authority, and bandwagon fallacies are actually all the same — they are judgments on credibility where you don't have to understand th

Ad hominem, argument from authority, and bandwagon fallacies are actually all the same — they are judgments on credibility where you don't have to understand the underlying factors. That people would think ad hominem should only deal with negative aspects of credibility is, IMO, myopic. Having faith in the word of an expert is just the opposite side to dismissing the word of an amateur. The matter of a judge also brings up an interesting problem. The fact that a judge has financial entanglements does not preclude them from quality legal reasoning, but it does diminish their moral credibility. Would anyone say that it is an ad hominem attack to sour on a judge because of mere financial entanglement? That the legal profession would develop ethical consensus on this matter means they also believe that credibility is an essential ingredient to legal practice, and not mere truthfulness. And on the matter of logic, that a doctor is likely to be truthful is as logical as telling a mathematician that a famous conjecture is likely true; more accurately, these are both arguments of empiricism. This is why I see insistence on terminology like "logical fallacy" to be the habit of those who enjoy intellectual ornamentation.