Abstract
When people are confronted with clear cases of violations of rules for critical discussion they consistently judge these discussion moves as unreasonable. This is the main conclusion of a comprehensive empirical project on the conventional validity of the pragma-dialectical rules for critical discussion carried out by van Eemeren et al. (Fallacies and judgments of reasonableness: Empirical research concerning the pragma-dialectical discussion rules. Springer, Dordrecht, 2009). Overall, the respondents participating in this project judged fallacious discussion moves indeed as unreasonable when they were confronted with such moves in the experiments while they regarded non-fallacious discussion moves as reasonable.
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Notes
- 1.
Although we do not have any quantitative data to substantiate this claim, qualitative analyses of discussions and debates in the media strongly suggests that ad hominem attacks often stay unnoticed.
- 2.
Hamblin claims that Locke is referring to a Latin translation of a passage from Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations and to several medieval treatises (1970, pp. 161–162). Originally the ad hominem is an argument making use of the other party’s concessions.
- 3.
Surprisingly, Hamblin considers Salmon’s textbook a typical representative of the Standard Treatment (1970, p. 13).
- 4.
The relationship between ad hominem and ad verecundiam is also pointed out by Harris, Hsu and Madsen (2012, this issue). They do not take a particular theoretical approach as their starting point.
- 5.
Kahane (1973) gives a similar account of ad hominem argumentation and its relationship with authority argumentation: “But ad hominem arguments are not always fallacious. For instance a lawyer who attacks the testimony of a witness by questioning his moral character argues ad hominem, but does not commit a fallacy. The question of when an ad hominem argument is fallacious is quite complex. In general it can be said that such an argument is not fallacious when the man argued against is or claims to be an expert at issue. Courtroom witnesses, doctors, automechanics, lawyers, etc. of the present arguments against which we, as non-experts, may be unable to argue directly. In such cases, information about the character of an expert may be well important kind of evidence in deciding whether or to accept or reject his opinion. But in these cases we certainly do not prove by ad hominem arguments that the expert testimony of advice is incorrect. At best, ad hominem arguments only provide grounds for cancelling or disregarding the testimony of advice of an expert” (p. 240).
- 6.
For more complex types of differences of opinion, see van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992, pp. 16–25).
- 7.
This rule does not prevent protagonists from using authority argumentation in which they present themselves as the authority. However, something goes wrong if protagonists boast about their good character, good deeds, many friends etcetera., when these facts are not at all relevant to the defense of their standpoint. In the latter case their utterances can be qualified as ‘non-argumentation’ and constitute a violation of the Relevance Rule (rule 4 of the commandments for reasonable discussants).
- 8.
For the distinction between argument by authority and argument from authority, see Pilgram (2011).
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van Eemeren, F.H., Garssen, B., Meuffels, B. (2015). The Disguised abusive ad hominem Empirically Investigated: Strategic Maneuvering with Direct Personal Attacks. In: Reasonableness and Effectiveness in Argumentative Discourse. Argumentation Library, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20955-5_43
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