[ExI] Usage of "ad hominem", "ad personam", etc.

[BillK]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:04 PM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
> I appreciate very much the scholarly efforts of everyone
> to properly define and distinguish among ad hominem,
> ad personam, ex concessis, and so on, simply because
> it's good to have knowledge to hand about what they
> really mean.
>


Just to complicate it a bit more, part of the problem is to decide
what we are talking about.

Are we talking about a list of debaters' tricks to get an advantage in
the argument?

Or are we talking about fallacious arguments?

There is some overlap, of course, as an erroneous argument can be used
to gain an advantage, but tricks to divert the opponent's attention
are not really wrong arguments.

The Ad Hominem group falls under irrelevances or diversions used to
distract the argument away from the point.

Bruce Thompson's pages are about the clearest I've read (so far).
<http://www.cuyamaca.edu/brucethompson/Fallacies/intro_fallacies.asp>


BillK