Ad hominem

What it is

Rejects a claim by attacking the person who makes it (their character, motives or circumstances) instead of addressing the reasoning or evidence. Whether the speaker is flawed has no bearing on whether the claim is true.

Related

• Appeal to authority fallacy
  Both judge a claim by the person rather than the evidence: ad hominem against, appeal to authority for.
• Guilt by association fallacy
  Guilt by association is an ad hominem aimed at the company someone keeps rather than at the person.
• Stereotyping bias
  Ad hominem often leans on stereotypes about the speaker's group instead of the argument.
• Tu quoque fallacy
  Tu quoque is a special case of ad hominem that answers a criticism by attacking the critic's own conduct.
• Appeal to motive fallacy
  Questioning someone's motives is a form of ad hominem that replaces a look at the evidence with speculation about the speaker.
• Appeal to ridicule fallacy
  Mockery is usually aimed at a person or group, so ridicule often doubles as an ad hominem.
• Genetic fallacy fallacy
  Both judge a claim by its source instead of its content; ad hominem targets the speaker's character, the genetic fallacy targets where the claim came from.
• Poisoning the well fallacy
  Poisoning the well is an ad hominem delivered in advance, so that nothing the person says is heard fairly.
• Tone policing fallacy
  Judging someone's manner rather than their message is a mild ad hominem that dodges the content.

References

• Wikipedia: Ad hominem en.wikipedia.org
• Your Logical Fallacy Is: Ad hominem yourlogicalfallacyis.com
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies iep.utm.edu
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies plato.stanford.edu
• Wikipedia: List of fallacies en.wikipedia.org
• Purdue OWL: Logical fallacies owl.purdue.edu

More in “Attacking the person or the source”