Ad Hominem Arguments

reader.

1

Classic Cases and Basic Concepts

When studying fallacies, it is useful to make a distinction among the three tasks of identification, analysis, and evaluation of the type of argument involved. Although the ultimate goal is evaluation (chapter 7), most of our efforts at this preparatory stage will be directed toward the task of identifying the ad hominem as a distinctive type of argument.

Before turning to the textbook treatments of the ad hominem—shown in chapter 2 to be an extraordinary mass of conceptual and terminological confusions—it will be very helpful, especially for the uninitiated reader, to attain a clear beginning grasp of how the five main types of ad hominem arguments work. In chapter 6, a much more refined classification and analysis of the various subtypes of these five basic types of ad hominem argument is given. But for now, to get some coherent initial point of departure in chapter 1, the reader is given a brief introduction to some classic cases that have already been studied in the scholarly literature.

The other goals of chapter 1 are: (a) to give a brief outline of the historical roots of the argumentum ad hominem; (b) to give a brief survey of leading developments in the recent scholarly literature on the ad hominem, or at least to introduce the reader to the basic logical concepts and leading theories needed to understand what follows; and (c) to make a statement of what the problems are that need to be resolved, at the current state of developments, to give us a better understanding of how the ad hominem argument fits into the current state of developments in dialogue logic.

Sections 1 through 4 of this chapter introduce the reader to the five classic types of ad hominem argument. Section 5 outlines three special cases that raise some problems of conceptualization and classification. Sections 6 and 7 outline the history of the ad hominem argument—especially its ancient origins, and how they developed into the modern treatment. Sections 8 and 9 introduce the reader to special problem areas, where the problems have to be carefully explained so that they can be later cleared up. Section 10 sketches out a provisional conclusion that states the understanding of the ad hominem argument achieved in the chapter, as a basis of going forward to a further analysis of it as a type of argument.

1. Abusive and Circumstantial

In what has come to be more or less accepted as the conventional treatment of the ad hominem argument in the scholarly literature (see Krabbe and Walton [1993] and van Eemeren and Grootendorst [1993]) five types or subcategories of ad hominem argument recur as being recognized as central most frequently—the abusive, the circumstantial, the bias, the tu quoque (or you too), and the poisoning the well. The abusive and the circumstantial subtypes are the most frequently emphasized ones and the ones that are usually accorded most importance in the scholarly accounts of the ad hominem fallacy.

The abusive type of ad hominem argument occurs where one party in a discussion criticizes or attempts to refute the other party’s argument by directly attacking that second party personally. This argument has the form, My opponent here is a bad person; therefore you (the audience) should not accept his argument. In this type of argument, the attack is centrally on the character of the opponent. Quite often it is bad character for veracity that is the focus of the attack.¹

One of the most widely used logic textbooks has been Irving M. Copi’s Introduction to Logic. This textbook is often cited as the leading paradigm on what a fallacy is taken to be in logical practices. The first edition was published in 1953. The ninth edition (1994) has a co-author, Carl Cohen. In the second edition (1961), the following illustration of the abusive ad hominem argument is given (p. 54).

Case 1.1

It may be argued that [Francis] Bacon’s philosophy is untrustworthy because he was removed from his chancellorship for dishonesty.

Copi (p. 54) evaluates this ad hominem argument as fallacious on the grounds that the personal character of a man is logically irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of what he says or the correctness or incorrectness of his argument. Copi’s statement here is a questionable generalization, but one can appreciate the point he is driving at in case 1.1. Bacon’s philosophy should be judged on its merits and not rejected simply because of an allegation about his bad character for veracity.

Whether or not the allegation made in case 1.1 is true or false is one factor that might be considered or further investigated. But either way, the ad hominem argument in case 1.1 should be subject to critical questioning. Although Bacon’s character might be somewhat relevant to some parts of his philosophy, for example, his ethical views, nevertheless dismissing his philosophy as a whole as untrustworthy—without even looking at it, just on the premise of his dishonesty as suggested by this reported incident—would be too much of an inferential leap. Even if there were adequate grounds for questioning Bacon’s honesty in his political dealings as chancellor, it hardly follows that his scientific and philosophical views should be rejected for this reason alone, without examining them on their merits.

A pair of examples cited more recently by Copi and Cohen (1994, pp. 122–23) are taken from a dispute on feminism between two American philosophers, Christine Sommers and Sandra Lee Bartky, in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association. Commenting on Sommers’s views, Bartky (1992, p. 56) wrote as follows.

Case 1.2

It is one thing to be attacked by an honorable opponent in an honorable way. This happens all the time in philosophy. But in my view Sommers’ intellectual methods are dishonest. She ignores the most elementary protocols of philosophical disputation.

Sommers (1992, p. 79), who was the target of this personal attack, replied as follows.

Case 1.3

One dishonest and unworthy tactic used by several of my detractors is to attribute to me complaints I never made and then to dismiss the complaints as irresponsible and evidence of my reckless unfairness.

Once again, the reason these arguments are classified under the heading of the ad hominem fallacy relates not to the truth or falsity of the allegations. Calling each other dishonest may be justified or not, but either way, these ad hominem attacks do not provide much of a basis for deciding on the issue of feminism the two parties are debating. As Copi and Cohen put it (p. 123), the merits of the positions of the conflicting parties are not illuminated by arguments of this character. The problem seems to be that such personal attacks do not make any real contribution to the advancement of the discussion and may even pose a serious obstacle in this regard, if the quarrel escalates.

These textbook cases of the uses of the abusive ad hominem in philosophical disputations are relatively tame, however, compared to some of the uses of this type of argument as a devastating attack in political debate. Ever since the Gary Hart case, where a presidential aspirant was accused of marital infidelity, the lid came off the former gentleman’s agreement not to report such matters in the media, and American politics since that time has been preoccupied with what are called negative campaign tactics or going negative, referring essentially to abusive ad hominem attacks on a candidate’s character and personal ethics. Even before this ascendancy of the abusive ad hominem into the mainstream of American political campaign argumentation, however, personal attack had long been a potent weapon in presidential campaigns.

What Jamieson (1992, p. 55) called the most famous ad in the history of political television attacked Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for president in the 1964 election campaign, by suggesting that Goldwater was trigger-happy.

Case 1.4

The Democrats juxtaposed a child plucking the petals from a daisy with the explosion of a bomb as Lyndon Johnson extolled the value of loving one another. A young girl is picking daisies in a field. Four, five, six, seven, she says. An announcer’s voice (actually the voice used to count down the space launches at Cape Canaveral) begins an ominous count. Ten, nine, eight . . .  At zero the camera has closed on the child’s eye. A nuclear bomb explodes. Lyndon Johnson’s voice is heard: These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live. Or to go into the darkness. We must either love each other. Or we must die. Until the tag line appears, that ad has no explicit partisan content. Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay at home. (Jamieson, 1992, pp. 54–56).

What is fascinating about this particular ad is that no explicit ad hominem argument is stated at all. Instead, the argument is conveyed indirectly by suggestion and innuendo, giving it an element of plausible deniability.

Even so, the argument put forward is clearly an ad hominem attack to the effect that Goldwater’s unstable character makes him an unsuitable and untrustworthy candidate for president. Goldwater was perceived as a candidate who was on the more extreme right of the Republican party and who was therefore highly susceptible to any attack suggesting he was not a moderate or careful and prudent person. Hence this ad hominem attack was a successful tactic in scaring voters away from him as a potential president.

In business as well as politics, the effective use of the abusive ad hominem can have awesome financial and social consequences. In a case described in Walton (Plausible Argument, 1992, pp. 148–50), the unions in the Eastern Airlines strike of 1980 portrayed Frank Lorenzo, the cost-cutting CEO of the company, as a ruthless and greedy person. The unions made Lorenzo’s character the issue, and when striking workers saw his picture on television they shouted, There’s the slimeball. Even though, in fact, Lorenzo was not the robber baron type of person portrayed in the ad hominem attacks, the fight became personal as the workers became obsessed with getting the best of him. The dialogue was locked into an irretrievable quarrel, and Eastern went into bankruptcy when the strike could not be settled.

At any rate, these cases illustrate how abusive ad hominem attacks focus on the character of the person whose argument is attacked. Before examining a couple of classic cases that illustrate how the circumstantial ad hominem works, it is necessary to warn the reader about the broad scope of the term circumstances, as used in connection with defining the circumstantial ad hominem argument.

The circumstantial ad hominem is distinguished from the abusive type by virtue of the feature that some circumstances of the arguer, other than his character, are used to attack his argument. The notion of ‘circumstance’ is quite broad, however, and could include many things. Accordingly, Whately (1870, p. 142) commented that the ad hominem has been described in logical usage as a fallacy in a lax and popular language, . . . not scientifically, by those who have written about it: The ‘argumentum ad hominem,’ they say, is addressed to the peculiar circumstances, character, avowed opinions, or past conduct of the individual, and therefore has a reference to him only, and does not bear directly and absolutely on the real question. But circumstances is a broad notion. For example, in case 1.1, supposed to be an abusive type of ad hominem, Bacon’s removal from his chancellorship (or the actions that led to this removal) might come more under the heading of past actions that are his personal circumstances, rather than exclusively under the heading of character. The general problem is that the conceptual notion of circumstances is so broad here that it is difficult to pin down the circumstantial ad hominem type of argument in some fairly clear, well-defined, useful way.

A narrower type of approach to classifying these various subspecies of ad hominem arguments is the one outlined in Walton (Informal Logic, 1989, chapter 6). According to this account, the circumstantial type of ad hominem argument requires a contradiction or practical inconsistency between what an arguer says and some propositions expressed directly or indirectly by that arguer’s personal circumstances. So, in other words, the circumstantial type of ad hominem argument requires some kind of practical inconsistency between the speaker’s argument and something about the speaker’s person or circumstances. This approach makes the circumstantial ad hominem more manageable and gives hope that it can be analyzed as a clear and recognizable type of argument for logic, as indicated in the next section.

In contrast to the circumstantial type (so defined), the abusive type of ad hominem can now be defined more precisely as a direct attack on the argument by questioning the arguer’s veracity, normally by saying the arguer has a bad character. This type of argument is quite a direct attack in the sense that it does not require any kind of showing of pragmatic inconsistency or contradiction in the way that is characteristic of the circumstantial type of ad hominem argument. This approach offers a clear way of distinguishing between the abusive and the circumstantial.

The clearest way for the reader to get a better grip on the distinction being made here is to refer to the classic case of the circumstantial ad hominem argument—the smoking case—and a new case that illustrates the kind of argument at issue in a highly realistic actual case.

2. The Smoking and Tree Hugger Cases

The following case, from Walton (Arguer’s Position, 1985, p. 67), also cited in Walton (Informal Logic, 1989, pp. 141–42), is a leading example of the circumstantial ad hominem type of argument. In this case, a parent cites evidence of the link between smoking and chronic obstructive lung disease as part of an argument to convince the child not to smoke.

Case 1.5

A parent argues to her child that smoking is associated with chronic disorders and that smoking is unhealthy, therefore the child should not smoke. The child replies You smoke yourself. So much for your argument against smoking!

What is at issue in this type of circumstantial ad hominem argument is not logical inconsistency, but what we could call pragmatic inconsistency, which means a kind of inconsistency between asserted statements and personal actions. Here the child observes the action of the parent (smoking) and cites this circumstance against her argument for not smoking. The parent advocates the policy of not smoking, but she herself smokes. She does not practice what she preaches. Ergo, the child concludes, her argument is worthless.

The ad hominem fallacy comes in to the extent that the child may be throwing out the baby with the bath water by totally rejecting the parent’s argument against smoking, once she sees the pragmatic inconsistency, instead of considering that the evidence against smoking given by the parent could be quite good.

These and some other considerations apart, however, the child may have a point worth considering. If the parent smokes but advocates nonsmoking, is not this pragmatic inconsistency a reasonable basis for criticism or at least for challenging the parent’s personal advocacy of her own argument? It is as if the child is raising the question: If you are really serious about your own argument, why don’t you follow it yourself? This seems to be basically a legitimate type of questioning or criticism to raise in this case.

Much depends on how you interpret the conclusion of the child’s argument. If the child’s conclusion is that the conclusion of the parent’s argument is false and that her argument is totally refuted, then the child’s argument is premature, weak, and flawed. If the child’s conclusion is that the parent’s position is open to question or challenge because of prima facie evidence of an inconsistency in that position, the child would seem to have a point worth considering, and his argument should not be rejected as fallacious or erroneous.

In judging this case, much depends as well on how good the evidence is that the parent has presented to the child. Perhaps the parent has presented findings brought forward by leading experts in the area of studies on the effects of smoking on health. It is possible that these are good arguments, worth serious consideration.

The context of dialogue of the smoking case is also significant. The parent may be basing good arguments on statistical or medical findings about smoking and health. But the child is no expert and may not be in a position to evaluate these arguments for himself. He is in the situation of having to operate on presumptions, based on an assumption that his parent can be trusted, and knows what she is talking about. Therefore, any perceived or apparent inconsistency between the parent’s arguments and the parent’s own personal conduct is a reasonable focus of concern for the child. And it seems reasonable and proper, even commendable perhaps, for the child to question the apparent inconsistency that is evident to him.

The reason for the legitimacy of the child’s question of his parent’s consistency derives from the context which indicates that the child does not know the facts of the issue and must judge on the basis of his plausible estimate of the sincerity and coherence of the parent’s advice. Nevertheless, evidence of a possible inconsistency in the parent’s position offsets the presumption that the parent’s advice is acceptable and shifts the burden of proof back onto the parent to respond to the child’s questioning. At least it should be said that the parent owes the child some sort of explanation concerning the possible inconsistency in the position she advocates.

These observations link the argumentum ad hominem with the argumentum ad verecundiam, the use of appeal to expert opinion to support an argument. In dialogue between two participants where one knows less and has to operate on a presumption that the other one (the expert) knows what she is talking about, questioning what appears to the nonexpert to be a sign of inconsistency is a move in dialogue that is appropriate and acceptable. For after all, if the nonexpert has no direct access to the evidence or to the truth of the matter, what else can he do but to question the consistency and coherence of what the expert tells him, and the expert’s consistency is a key aspect of her credibility.

Piaget (1959) showed that conflicts which place children in difficult argumentation situations are important to the child’s learning cooperative skills of topical coherence and intellectual understanding. According to Eisenberg (1987, p. 114), conflicts between parents and children and the ways they are resolved are important for the development of many skills. Particularly important is how parents manage the child’s freedom to