Hey, welcome back!
We are speaking Latin again with today’s fallacy. It’s called an Ad Hominem attack. “Ad hominem” is a Latin phrase that means “to the man”. An Ad Hominem attack is attacking the person’s character or their personal traits or their motives for believing something to try to undermine their argument, rather than actually disproving their argument.
Let me give a few overly-simple, easy examples to make this really obvious: “My teacher says soccer is the best sport b/c it’s played all around the world.” “Isn’t your teacher a woman? What does she know about sports?” Clearly, the second person isn’t addressing the argument, which was whether soccer is the best sport. They went straight to trying to discredit the teacher by pointing out that she’s a woman rather than addressing the conversation.
Or how about this one as an example of Ad Hominem in advertising: “ABC cleaner is WAY more effective than XYZ cleaner…you can tell b/c their packaging is blue!” Well, the color of the packaging has nothing to do with how well the product cleans! This is an attempt to discredit the competition using a physical trait that has nothing to do with its effectiveness.
An Ad Hominem attack can also happen when someone accuses their opponent of having bad motives. “My uncle says that Taco Bell isn’t real Mexican food.” “Doesn’t your uncle come from Mexico? He’s obviously biased so I don’t think we can give his arguments much weight.” The uncle may be biased, but we shouldn’t totally disregard his opinion just b/c of that. Again, we have to go back and assess the validity and the merits of the argument. Just b/c they’re biased in one direction doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong.
So, What’s wrong with the thinking behind Ad Hominem attacks? Just because someone has character flaws or certain personal traits, that doesn’t automatically mean that their argument is flawed or wrong. It’s a method of avoiding the question or avoiding the argument and discrediting the person by going completely off topic and focusing on something that has nothing to do with the point of the conversation or argument.
Here’s another example: We saw this a lot during the Trump presidency, when things Melania Trump would say were discredited because she had an accent, or President Trump was discredited by calling him “orange man” or “cheeto”. Both of those are Ad Hominem attacks b/c they’re trying to discredit what the person is saying by pointing out a personal trait that is completely irrelevant to what the person was actually saying. (and I’ll just drop this in for free: Typically the people who make fun of others for having an accent have never learned another language themselves! Never discredit or make fun of someone for having an accent…it means they’ve learned another language…sometimes several other languages!)
The #1 question to ask yourself to see if an Ad Hominem attack is being committed is this: “Is it really true that this character trait discredits (or even has anything to do with) the argument this person is making?” *repeat*
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Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
