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Old 10-25-2012, 09:04 AM   #1
Jerichi
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Machamp Ad Homenem and Ethos

Amistd the whole um debacle, I feel like there's been a general decline in the quality of debates from pretty much everyone in this forum. So in the interest of promoting better debating (and because meta-debates are super fun), let's discuss some related rhetoric devices and fallacies to kick off our new and hopefully more civil Debate forum.

Here's the question: Should ethos play a role in casual or non-competitive debate? If so, to what level can it be used to weigh opinions? When does this tip over to ad Homenem and is there and context where ad Homenem could even be acceptable?

I've been thinking about these questions for a whe now, since many of us employed attacks on ethos to try to discredit um. We're we right in doing that?

I'm also reminded of a discussion I had with a friend a while back concerning LGBT people and opinion weights with respect to LGBT issues. In essence his argument stated that those without first-hand experience dealing with the issues in question have opinions that should be weighted less. At first, this smacked of ad Homenem to me because you are downplaying potentially valid and factual opinions based on ethos alone. I'm still not convinced that this line of thought is totally correct but I do understand the concerns.

Another common example of this in play is the "no uterus, no opinion" card played ever so often in the abortion debate. This one seems a little more clear since men will never be able to experience childbirth, but does a man's opinion hold less weight if he presents it well?

A disclaimer: this thread is NOT about abortion or gay rights or anything like that. If you haven't taken a course on argument or logic or have not had some experience with either, please go google some info on logical arguments and the definitions of terms used. This will make all our lives much easier.
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Old 10-25-2012, 09:46 AM   #2
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Well, one of the things that can lead to ad hominem originated from another tool that is largely fallacious, which is the appeal to authority. The reason I say this is because, due to differing beliefs, "authority" can mean a lot, or almost nothing, which can affect how they react to said appeal. Several who lean left would not consider Fox News as a reputable source, whereas a right-leaner is more likely to put a little more stock in what they say. Vice-versa with, say, Huffington Post. It grew quite common to dismiss the other side's sources due to bias, either perceived or present, from both sides. Now, I will say that if someting does have a hard bias, it shouldn't be touted as fact, but before, the dismissal of sources on both sides of certain arguments did devolve into ad hom on either side, which is something that needs some work, from most all of us.

I will say that it is my belief that if in certain debates on what some would call moral values or ethics, if one's belief system is considered an acceptable source, then the belief systems of the other debaters should be given equal weight. This might prevent some of the anti-religious sentiment I'm sure some are afraid of really hitting.

I'd post more, but I'm slightly rambling as-is and I didn't get any sleep last night. IF anything I said doesn't make sense, my apologies.

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Old 10-25-2012, 10:08 AM   #3
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I'm confused by your mention of ethos. From what I understand, the three debate tenets can be translated simply as follows:
- ethos: appeals to credibility
- pathos: appeals to emotion
- logos: appeals to logic

I see you using the term ethos as I understand it when you bring up anecdotal evidence or "no uterus, no say", but like, I don't see at all how you would ask if ethos does or does not have a place in a debate. I feel ethos has a place in every debate. If someone argues Point A and backs it up with scientific evidence, expert testimony, and personal hands-on experience, I do feel that that matters and that it would be an intellectual crime to place on the same level the armchair ramblings of someone who cites a liberal or conservative thinktank's blogpost.

Last edited by Talon87; 10-25-2012 at 10:17 AM.
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Old 10-25-2012, 10:25 AM   #4
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I'll admit I'm using ethos in sort of a weird way. What I'm referring to isn't the speaker appealing to their authority but an opponent trying to invalidate their opinion with an attack on their authority.

I'm also referring to ethos a little more broadly in terms of ones authority itself being an important factor in weighing their opinion. To use the term in its more traditional sense, does using ethos actually contribute to how their opinion should be treated or is it logically unimportant?
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Old 10-25-2012, 11:02 AM   #5
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I think attacks on ethos are as eligible in a debate as attacks on logos. If you say something logically fallacious, I can expose why it is logically fallacious. This discredits your argument and may or may not bolster mine. So what then of ethos? If you link to a French Geocities webpage that looks like it was written up in the 1990s, and if the person who wrote that page is a complete unknown, and if that person is making claims about quantum physics that aren't in agreement with mainstream science, then it is very much an "ethocal" weak point. In fact, such a situation presents an interesting conflict of two of the Aristotelian debate modes: it pits ethos against logos. Because the adherent says "Judge not the message for its credibility but for its logic!" while the critic says "Doubt your own impressions of how logically sound it is! For you know it to come from a non-credible source!" Think of all the times that you've learned something which was counter-intuitive. These are all things which usually have been figured out by scholars applying logic but which for you, the humble student, appear as conflicts between ethos (the scientists of old) and logos (what your brain tells you). So there are definitely times in any person's life where appeals to ethos are made in conflict with logos.

But yes, were we to rank them, I would always place logos as king before all else. So perhaps with the discussion of quantum physics, the best approach would be:
- layperson: what he's saying could be true but society says otherwise so I will just sit this one out (sides with ethos but realizes they should thus sit the debate out)
- authority/expert: what he's saying is wrong and here's why (engages in debate, answers with logos)

For example, rather than appeal to ethos in a debate about Mormonism (which you're saying would in effect be an ad hominem attack), the person should confront it logically and challenge, for example, why there is no archaeological evidence of the societies spoken of by Mormons, why DNA evidence proves Native Americans are descended from Asians from the steppes of Mongolia, why we haven't found the submarine, etc. Or in a debate about luminiferous aether, rather than say "LOL AETHER" the debator should cite papers where modern scientists searched for proof of the aether and came up empty or should cite how the aether would screw with certain relativistic principles in ways not empirically observed but easily detectable were they there. In other words, as you're hinting, perhaps one wants to use attacks on ethos sparingly.

But there are times in which I think attacks on ethos are fair, prudent, or even the best recourse. For instance, if someone served in a war and has a deep-seeded hatred for a particular race or nationality now, I really don't see why it's wrong to persuade others that he is a negatively biased and thus non-credible source or why it's wrong for that war veteran to fire back that the other person is positively biased and thus non-credible.

*shrug* I don't think it's a black and white issue. ^^;
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Old 10-25-2012, 11:03 AM   #6
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Yeah this is a slightly odd way of using ethos. I shall contribute when I have a computer.

May I suggest VMing FW about this? He debates a lot
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Old 10-25-2012, 11:58 AM   #7
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Yeah FW does Policy debate (which is the worst kind of debate) but it's all about proving how your sources are better and more relevant than the opponents'.
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Old 10-25-2012, 01:19 PM   #8
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Was gonna respond in the ethos thread but then realsied that I don't know enough about the subject to be able to smack Talon down when he inevitably throws his toys out of the pram.
I think it's amazing that you don't appreciate the greater irony in this very post of yours. This is the very sort of ad hominem bullshit Jeri is talking about! So you're not okay with debating but you're a-okay with insulting others behind their backs. Got it. Nice to know you discredit my entire education and lump me in with a toddler. I'll keep this in mind the next time you try to engage us in debate and try to appeal to your own education.
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Old 10-25-2012, 01:35 PM   #9
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To be fair, "throwing your toys out of the pram" isn't really comparing you to a toddler but is just another way of saying "having a fit". He's not directly calling you uneducated or a toddler. He's just saying you can have a temper and he doesn't want to debate you just in case your temper flairs.

Why are you acting so defensive about this?
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Old 10-25-2012, 01:52 PM   #10
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Honestly I think ethos only really has a place in two areas. The first is fact-checking - if someone says something contrary to their usual position (obvious example - if UM said something in favour of Obama), they're probably telling the truth. The more closely a purported fact falls into line with someones general ideology, the more suspicious one should be of it essentially because it'll fall prey to both intentional and unintentional bias.

The second is when you're discussing a topic that you simply don't have sufficient knowledge on to trust logos. "Sufficient knowledge" is obviously ambiguous and there's going to be some dispute over it (I disagree with the "no uterus, no opinion" thing that Jeri mentioned, for example). To use myself as an example here, I'm likely to largely rely on ethos (combined with a little fact-checking, which falls into point one) when listening to arguments about economics because it's a complicated topic I've never studied. On the other hand, I'm much less likely to pay heed to where an idea has come from on topics like classical mechanics or how the ASB should work - these are topics I know enough about to listen to arguments, regardless of where they come from, and logically consider them myself.
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Old 10-25-2012, 02:25 PM   #11
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Originally Posted by Jerichi View Post
To be fair, "throwing your toys out of the pram" isn't really comparing you to a toddler but is just another way of saying "having a fit". He's not directly calling you uneducated or a toddler. He's just saying you can have a temper and he doesn't want to debate you just in case your temper flairs.

Why are you acting so defensive about this?
Do you not know what a pram is? Prams are for babies and nobody else.
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Old 10-25-2012, 02:32 PM   #12
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It's a figure of speech. You're overreacting and only proving Kush right.
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Old 10-25-2012, 02:38 PM   #13
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I'm not being a baby. I'm objecting to the fact that he says he wants to discuss ethos but can't because of me ... and then goes on to call me a baby whose rhetoric is the rattle and pacifier of toddlers. Surely you see the irony in this? Surely you can also appreciate the logical fallacy here:

Kush: I would like to discuss ethos but Talon is a child.
Talon: And there's your personal attack, folks!
Jeri & Kush: lol, by complaining you just proved us right

That sort of logic would mean no one can ever defend themselves against the accusation of immaturity. Thus, a logical fallacy.
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Old 10-25-2012, 03:16 PM   #14
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There's a lot of irony to your reaction as well, since you're overreacting to an off-handed comment about your tendency to overreact.

He's not insulting your education. He's not calling you a baby. He might be implying you're acting immature by his particular choice of words but I'm pretty sure he's just using an idiom that means "to lose one's temper, to throw a tantrum".

If you had just said something calmly like "Hey, hey, I can be a little heated at times but it doesn't mean you should discount what I'm saying!" or something to that effect, there'd be no problem. But you're starting to throw a hissie over something that wasn't a particularly offensive statement.

I don't know if it's just me but you seem to be really overly sensitive lately and I think it's really impacting your ability to debate rationally. Even if someone isn't being rational, it really isn't worth it to stoop to their level, as we've all proven recently.

Anyways, thread successfully derailed, reel it back in.

Based on both Talon's and Concept's posts, that makes me think more about the last question of my set. We've pretty well established that using positive weights is probably a good idea, such as trusting a scientist in matters of science. Is it ever acceptable to use ad homenem for the opposite reason, to tear someone's arguments down? Is calling someone a hypocrite, for example, a way to defend against their points?

A logician would probably say no to this case, though I think a logical contradiction might supersede this in terms of proving them wrong in many cases. If they give two valid opinions, however, as at odds as they may be, can we still say their opinions are worthless since they are effectively committing doublethink?
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Old 10-25-2012, 03:50 PM   #15
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Is it ever acceptable to use ad homenem for the opposite reason, to tear someone's arguments down? Is calling someone a hypocrite, for example, a way to defend against their points?
The two most common criteria which result in an ad hominem attack are 1) the person levying the attack is tired of wasting time or energy on the other party and 2) it's not an academically rigorous debate. That's why you see them so much on the Internet from all sorts of people, including myself and most everyone here. The Internet is something which plays off our idea for instant gratification and trivial entertainment. It can be used for other things, obviously, but when you're on a webforum, do you really want to spend 3 hours writing up one academically rigorous reply to somebody you believe to be wrong (based on years' worth of education and experiences) or do you just want to link 'em real quick to someone else who put the arguments eloquently for you on Wikipedia or a private website? We all do it: Wikipedia is so much easier for me to link you to for neurological diseases, for instance, rather than the tomes of scholarly journals I have. (And ever since MediaFire went to Account Only, I can't even anonymously upload the journal PDFs to a file-hosting site for you. -_-; ) And that's sort of a problem because, as you might already know, most scholarly journals are Payed Access Only except for the really historic or outdated stuff and that grossly limits one's ability to link to JAMA, Lancet, Science, Nature, and other scholastic journals' articles. So what do I do? Find crazy-ass loopholes for you so you can see these articles only to 1) not bother reading them (in part because they may even be too technical for you) or 2) just link you to Wiki? I link you to Wiki. And I know that that isn't quite the same as an ad hominem attack but I hope you see what I am arguing here: that the two come about from the same sort of phenomenon, which is "I might like you but I don't like you enough to spend this much time on you and this one speck of ignorance in your life." And so, when we get frustrated with the other person, the ad hominems can start to fly. "Well you're a close-minded prick." "Well you're a paranoid fuck." "Well you're insane." "Well you're a cradle robber." Well you're this, well you're that, and so on and so forth.

tl;dr I don't think they have a place in rigorous scholarly debates (hence why they're among the first things you're taught not to do in debate!) but I think the fact that they crop up so often in casual settings says a lot for how we operate as human beings. "When confronted with arguments that take too much work to dismantle, just dismiss the entire person rather than the arguments themselves."
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Old 10-29-2012, 07:28 PM   #16
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Amistd the whole um debacle, I feel like there's been a general decline in the quality of debates from pretty much everyone in this forum. So in the interest of promoting better debating (and because meta-debates are super fun), let's discuss some related rhetoric devices and fallacies to kick off our new and hopefully more civil Debate forum.
The quality of debates went down because people went into the debates with fixed, internalized viewpoints that wouldn't be challenged under any circumstances. Especially UM, who was on a tireless quest to convert everyone to his viewpoints and used every fallacy known to loop arguments and grief people.

Debate quality can improve if people 1) be less sensitive and 2) be receptive to change. I don't have a fixed position on abortion because there's argumentation on both sides of the controversy that I can get behind, but no one has yet to give me a comprehensive, convincing argument in favour of one or the other. I'd like to read something, somewhere, that firmly entrenches me in one position, and I'd welcome a debate that could link me to one.
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