Appeal to motive

What it is

Dismisses a claim by speculating about the motives of the person making it instead of examining the evidence. Motives can justify extra scrutiny, but they cannot by themselves show a claim is false.

Related

• Ad hominem fallacy
  Questioning someone's motives is a form of ad hominem that replaces a look at the evidence with speculation about the speaker.
• Motivated reasoning bias
  Accusing someone of motivated reasoning can be fair, but doing it instead of checking their evidence is an appeal to motive.
• Genetic fallacy fallacy
  Both dismiss a claim by pointing to its origin; here the origin is the source's presumed motive or funding.

References

• Wikipedia: Appeal to motive en.wikipedia.org
• 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”