A long overdue retraction: ad hominem
Way back in march of 2007, I wrote a post lamenting the death of the pointed personal attack in Australian politics.
For example, claiming that ex-PM* John Howard has all the vision of Mr Magoo, but none of the good intentions, while a personal attack is pointed in that it refers directly to his (Howard’s) popularist short-term politics (precipitating as unprecedented pork barrelling at elections for example) and to various political objectives that Howard had closeted in the 90s (crypto-racist dog whistling and using Pauline Hanson as an unwitting proxy to shift debate without the associated risk, instead of the overt racism Howard demonstrated in the 80s and 70s.) No vision beyond re-election and a heap of short-sighted, bad intentions for the state of the nation.
It’s a valid criticism (one of Paul Keating’s best), not a fallacy. Invoking a more colloquial-rhetorical definition of ad hominem (i.e. any personal attack), I described such criticism as a valid ad hominem.
John M. chimed in with this comment.
“Is not an ad-hominem argument one where, rather than dealing with the substance of the argument, it deals instead with the person making the argument? Because, if so, a “valid ad-hominem” seems an oxymoron.”
(John M., 2007)
I’m going to defer to John on this.
I’ve been planning to publish a retraction, but never got around to it, but here it is.
Speaking syllogistically, there is no such thing as a valid ad hominem. And while I was being somewhat colloquial with my definition, such a use of the word was out of place in what was otherwise written in a more technical manner. I should have either stuck with the technical definition, or written a far more casual post wherein the distinction didn’t matter or at least keeping with the tone.
I’ve had more than one chance over the last twenty odd months to witness how my original definition would have brought me unstuck in discussion. If I recall correctly, the most interesting of these opportunities presented itself on the ABC’s Insiders, wherein either Andrew Bolt or Tim Blair or The Morbid Hobbit** dismissed a personal attack as ad hominem, implying that it was fallacious. The particular argument that they dismissed I’m sad to say I can not remember, but it was relevant and all ad hominem are by definition fallacies of relevance.
Now if one were to come out and casually say that it was “a valid ad hominem“, to invoke a rhetorical response to what is clearly an error in informal logic, one would be inviting people to cast their rhetoric as (broken) logic, rather than rhetoric. And let’s face it, Bolt, Blair and Ackerman have form for passing off rhetoric as logic!
Or, in response to the claim that the original criticism was ad hominem and thus invalid, one could simply reply “no it isn’t!” Then point out what an ad hominem looks like in as far as being an informal logical fallacy.
A much more sound strategy and less confusing. Best to keep one’s rhetoric unambiguously rhetorical and one’s logic, logical.
In lamenting the loss of the artful political slight, I should perhaps instead recognise that many of Keating’s insults were so good precisely because they weren’t ad hominem arguments.
~ Bruce
* For clarity, I’ll repeat: Ex-PM. Got that? Ex-PM. No. Longer. Prime. Minister. Career over. Nothing other than talking tours, bitterly reminiscing about how Australia got rid of him when it needed him the most. Don’t need any further clarification? 
** That’s an ad-hominem.
