Ad Hominem - Questions About The Notion of An ad Hominem Fallacy

Questions About The Notion of An ad Hominem Fallacy

Doug Walton has argued that ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, and that in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue, as when it directly involves hypocrisy, or actions contradicting the subject's words.

The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that ad hominem reasoning is essential to understanding certain moral issues, and contrasts this sort of reasoning with the apodictic reasoning of philosophical naturalism.

Read more about this topic:  Ad Hominem

Famous quotes containing the words questions, notion and/or fallacy:

    He believes without reservation that Kentucky is the garden spot of the world, and is ready to dispute with anyone who questions his claim. In his enthusiasm for his State he compares with the Methodist preacher whom Timothy Flint heard tell a congregation that “Heaven is a Kentucky of a place.”
    —For the State of Kentucky, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all.
    John Berger (b. 1926)

    I’m not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called “scientific” mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.
    Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)