Humanities desk
< January 14	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	January 16 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 15

"Many think that ad hominem is actually a fallacy"

[1] Does anyone know the origin of this quote, if it is a quote? A quick web search didn't find it for me. 2602:243:2007:9330:15DA:CAD1:28F4:E61E (talk) 06:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's not wbat ad hominem means, either the fallacy itself or the literal Latin. There's a different informal fallacy for questioning expertise -- some variant of appeal to authority. All besides which, informal fallacies are mostly dumb anyway. [Edit: and Twitter/X is always 100% dumb.] SamuelRiv (talk) 07:43, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia thinks the term refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacies. It has, however, become common to call any personal attack an ad hominem, as (for example) in this news article about Trump calling Justin Trudeau "very dishonest and weak". Such attacks by insulting a person may or may not be justified by the facts. The term ad hominem arose by ellipsis of the Latin expression argumentum as hominem, so if one strictly adheres to the original meaning of the term, for a personal attack to be considered an ad hominem, it has to be an argument. One can disagree here, but Wikipedia calls name calling "a form of argument". --Lambiam 10:12, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify my point (which was not made), I was intending to answer the OP's question in that I suspect it's not a quote of anyone of any importance or qualification -- more likely it's just an example of how "letting every web guru with a theory would create a mess." Looking at the text box in completely best faith, it may come from some cruddy law book, since US law kinda has a weird thing where the LSAT obsesses over fallacies but everyone in law uses them all the time (which kinda defeats the purpose of the term "fallacy"). (Freakonomics podcast 2023-06-05 covered some of these issues well with regard to the slippery slope fallacy, for example.)

Also, your strict etymology is wrong since "argument" is not specifically what wikt:argumentum means in either the English or Latin. The implication in calling a politician "dishonest and weak" is that because of these personal qualities, you should not do X. Argumentum ad hominem. It can be considered true that if a person is dishonest you should not accept invitations from them. It is not true that if a person is dishonest you should not accept certified mail from them. So I don't see how the term "fallacy" is even meaningful for this kind of thing. (Not trying to rant on my own thing -- just saying this Twitter guy is missing the point.) SamuelRiv (talk) 19:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that this is a screenshot of an editable document displayed in a window of a word-processing app. Maybe Taleb is quoting from the glossary section of a yet unpublished book he wrote himself. --Lambiam 10:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

reprisal and precaution.

please list all the provisions/articles/rules that specifically talk about Reprisals and Precautions in the realm of international law Grotesquetruth (talk) 09:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do your OWN homework. HiLo48 (talk) 09:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]