The Nazi connection: eugenics, American racism, and German national socialism. Oxford University Press.Jackson, J. P. (2006). Argumentum ad hominem in the science of race.
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The Latin phase argumentum ad hominem stands for "argument against the person". "Ad" corresponds to "against" but it could also mean "to" or "towards". The terms ad mulierem and ad feminam have been used specifically when the person receiving the criticism is female.
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Gratuitous verbal abuse or "name- calling" is not on its own an example of the abusive argumentum ad hominem logical fallacy.Ad hominem fallacy, Logical Fallacies, Formal and Informal, Independent Individualist. The fallacy occurs only if personal attacks are employed to devalue a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker; personal insults in the middle of an otherwise sound argument are not ad hominem attacks.
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In: Focus, 31, 2 August 2010. People who are offended in such a way see this as a rhetoric trick, which ridicules their striving for humanism, solidarity and social equity. Seeing the counterpart as Gutmensch took the discussion to a personal (argumentum ad hominem = "ad personam") and emotional level, in order to avoiding a discussion on a content level. The term is often used as an aggressive defense strategy against criticism on personal positions.
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Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a type of informal fallacy where adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say. Poisoning the well can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem, and the term was first used with this sense by John Henry Newman in his work Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864). See also: The origin of the term lies in well poisoning, an ancient wartime practice of pouring poison into sources of fresh water before an invading army, to diminish the attacking army's strength.
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Name- calling is a cognitive bias and a technique to promote propaganda. Propagandists use the name-calling technique to invoke fear in those exposed to the propaganda, resulting in the formation of a negative opinion about a person, group, or set of beliefs or ideas. The method is intended to provoke conclusions and actions about a matter apart from an impartial examinations of the facts of the matter. When this tactic is used instead of an argument, name-calling is thus a substitute for rational, fact-based arguments against an idea or belief, based upon its own merits, and becomes an abusive argumentum ad hominem.
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Ad hominem (), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a term that refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion to some irrelevant but often highly charged issue. The most common form of this fallacy is "A makes a claim x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument x is wrong".
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Sometimes a speaker or writer uses a fallacy intentionally. In any context, including academic debate, a conversation among friends, political discourse, advertising, or for comedic purposes, the arguer may use fallacious reasoning to try to persuade the listener or reader, by means other than offering relevant evidence, that the conclusion is true. Examples of this include the speaker or writer: # Diverting the argument to unrelated issues with a red herring (Ignoratio elenchi) # Insulting someone's character (argumentum ad hominem) # Assume the conclusion of an argument, a kind of circular reasoning, also called "begging the question" (petitio principii) # Making jumps in logic (non sequitur) # Identifying a false cause and effect (post hoc ergo propter hoc) # Asserting that everyone agrees (argumentum ad populum, bandwagoning) # Creating a "false dilemma" ("either-or fallacy") in which the situation is oversimplified # Selectively using facts (card stacking) # Making false or misleading comparisons (false equivalence and false analogy) # Generalizing quickly and sloppily (hasty generalization) In humor, errors of reasoning are used for comical purposes. Groucho Marx used fallacies of amphiboly, for instance, to make ironic statements; Gary Larson and Scott Adams employed fallacious reasoning in many of their cartoons.
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