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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: spiral3 who wrote (70588)6/4/2008 7:43:13 AM
From: Lane3  Read Replies (2) of 542655
 
The point is, you missed his point.

I didn't miss his point, at least not once Cogito turned the light bulb on.

An ad hominem is not an even if proposition. It IS an attack on character.

I think you misread something. The reference for my "it" was apparently unclear. I meant "if the statement is relevant."

Sorry, but looking it up seems to have done nothing except reinforce your misunderstanding.

Excuse me? Looking it up produced a definition that that confirmed my understanding that ad hominems are distractions, not relevant. Nothing more, nothing less.

Call it arcane if you will, but that sounds like option A to me not option B.

I don't think so. I reason I don't think so is that this reinterpretation has no constructive utility. It complicates what is a straightforward and useful notion--the ad hominem character attack as intentional diversion from a losing argument. Why mess that up? So somebody with too much time on his hands can create an exception? Or maybe to create a further diversion when someone calls him on his use of an ad hominem? Yeah, that's just what the world needs--further complication for negative purposes. Nope. Unless you can identify some value that I missed, I'll stick with option B: baloney.
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