80s Shorts said:
Damocles said:
Sorry mate, your copy paste was incorrect. Ad Hominem does not need to be used in reference to the point. If you belittle the character of the person then it is classed as Ad Hominem but a more implicit type.
Ad Hominem is Ad Hominem. There is no type. People may believe such as it has become a common "put down" on internet forums and some may say that its meaning has evolved. However, just ending an argument by calling somebody a prat, a balloon or even a **** is in no way Ad Hominem. Probably not the place for this discussion but it is self evident that many many people cannot grasp the meaning of Ad Hominem.
No, its meaning has been the same since Aristotle in De sophisticis elenchis and you are dead wrong in saying that there "is no type". Thete are two types at a minimum; tu quoque and abusive/circumstancial; I believe more have been added into the Ad Hominem family in the modern era. The whole point of Ad Hominem is that person A tries to negate the point of person B by making Person B the obje ct of the rebuttal. That is it in its most simplest form.
In the form displayed in this thread, one poster tried to mitigate the credibility of another by referring to them as a prat - an insult implying bufoonery.
Whilst this is not an explicit ad hominem, that is Person A stating that Person B has no point as they are a prat, the implication (defining the opponent as a halfwit) automatically casts a negative light on the argument of Person B thus qualifies.
The argument that we have, is whether a fallacy has to be explicitly stated rather than implied to qualify and gi ven the anonymous nature of forums, with each text standing on the merit of the user, I would say no.