Ad hominem attack - Flaw

[pacer]

Can you go over in detail what constitutes an ad hominem attack? I understand that this is a type of flaw where someone is attacking the personal characteristic of the another person that he/she is arguing against.

A simple example of this would be attacking the persons race, ethnicity, past life history, previous criminality, religious belief, gender etc.

What are the things that come under the personal attack category?

Would attacks geared towards someone's opinions and actions be considered personal attacks?


I got Q14, PT 46 Section 2 wrong. I believe that this is the case because I don't have a complete understanding of what can and cannot come under the ad hominem attack category. I understand what this is and why it is a flaw in reasoning.

Can you please go more in depth about what constitutes an ad hominem attack? I would like to make a list to help me out during my studies.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Pacer,

Actually, you have a very good understanding of what an Ad Hominem attack is based on your comments. This question just happens to be a bit tricky. As sometimes happens, even when you know a concept well, they can still make it difficult by the way they express their ideas

An Ad Hominem attacks something about the person's nature or character instead of the argument being made. In the real world, this could be anything, including race, religion,e tc. On standardized tests, however, topics like race and religion typically do not appear, and thus you would not expect to see them as part of a character attack.

However, actions ARE included inside an Ad Hominem, for example: "We must vote against Smith's anti-smoking bill, because, after all, he is a smoker himself!" Thus, in the Bacon problem, criticizing his actions (when sufficiently similar) falls inside the Ad Hominem banner. The problem with Bacon is that they toss in the words "relying uncritically" early in the stimulus, and it seems like the flaw lies there: Bacon said not to rely uncritically on authorities, and later he gets criticized for using authorities—but what if he had critically appraised those authorities? That leads a lot of students to choose A, but that's not actually what happens here. The author doesn't say authorities are often incorrect, but rather that we should ignore Bacon's work because of how he acted (which is in line with (E).

So, I actually don't think you have an issue with understanding Ad Hominems; this is just a really well-made problem by LSAC, but the good news is that next time you'll be a bit sharper with the idea.

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!