Re: Summary of the debian-devel BoF at Debconf9
On Tue, Aug 18 2009, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 03:25:30PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> > And really, if some logical conclusion is so broken that this brokeness
>> > has its own name, then everybody should be able to see it.
>
>> This is a nice theory, but in reality one does see people arging
>> against the person, or their perceived personality, or their
>> traits, or ascribing motives to them all the time.
>
> Except that this is *not* the definition of the ad hominem fallacy. The ad
> hominem fallacy is claiming that a person is bad, *and therefore their
> arguments are wrong*.
I would say it is attacking the character or motives of a person
who has stated an idea, rather than the idea itself. The most obvious
example of this fallacy is when one debater maligns the character of
another debater (e.g, "The members of the opposition are a couple of
fascists!"), but this is actually not that common. A more typical
manifestation of argumentum ad hominem is attacking a source of
information -- for example, responding to a quotation from Richard
Nixon on the subject of free trade with China by saying, "We all know
Nixon was a liar and a cheat, so why should we believe anything he
says?" [0]
> Pointing out that someone is being a jerk on the mailing list is *not* an ad
> hominem fallacy.
But saying that their message should not be heeded because at
some other point in the past they had been jerks is one. Discounting a
message because of a (perceived) character trait of the author is also
suspect.
>> These attacks on people, as opposed to discussion of what they
>> said, is one of the major reasons discussion threads devolve into
>> unproductive chaos. We should be managing to police discussion better,
>> and the first step is identifying that such a post has been made.
>
> Given the sorts of things you've objected to as "ad hominem attacks"
> in the past, I definitely don't agree. A number of these have been
> legitimate complaints about behaviors that distract from or derail
> technical discussions.
So you are saying that I misidentified some mail as an attack on
a person. Which is perhaps an argument for my point: we need to
identify that such a post has been made. I do not see the basis for
your refutation here.
Also, if the rationale for the disagreement is that you are say
that a trait you say I possess (mistakenly objecting to non attack as
an attack) is the reason my message (we should identify and curtail
attacks on people) should be discounted -- sound familiar?
Hmm.
> Sometimes heated complaints - but no less legitimate for all that.
Complaining about the behaviours of a person might be
legitimate, but not if it is put forth as the reason to discount the
actual content of the message. It also is probably off topic for the
thread. And in no way is it a counter argument.
In all of these cases, the relevant question is not who makes
the argument, but whether the argument is valid.
manoj
[0] http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html
--
All the existing 2.0.x kernels are to buggy for 2.1.x to be the main
goal. -- Alan Cox
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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