[OT on OT: ad personam vs ad hominem][OT rude or not, a different opinion] -Re: Beta 8.10 released

[Ignazio Palmisano]

Emanoil Kotsev wrote:
> --- On Tue, 10/14/08, Ignazio Palmisano <ignazio_io at yahoo.it> wrote:
> 
>> From: Ignazio Palmisano <ignazio_io at yahoo.it>
>> Subject: Re: [OT on OT: ad personam vs ad hominem][OT rude or not, a different opinion] -Re: Beta 8.10 released
>> To: "Kubuntu Help and User Discussions" <kubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
>> Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2008, 10:59 PM
>> tom bell wrote:
>>>> Fake politeness is useless, in this we agree. But
>> if you disagree with 
>>>> someone else's ideas, you attack the ideas,
>> not the person. That's not 
>>>> fake politeness, that's respect. (it's not
>> meant to be a scolding, I'm 
>>>> not referring to what has been said; the technique
>> of attacking a person 
>>>> whose ideas we don't share is old and well
>> known, the exact term escapes 
>>>> me - is it "ad personam"?)
>>> ad hominem
>>>
>>> Tom Bell
>> :D out of curiosity I've reread Schopenhauer
>> definitions of the 
>> arguments ad personam and ad hominem. To me, it seems that
>> ad hominem is 
>> the technique of using against the opponent the same
>> arguments the 
>> opponent has put forward, while ad personam corresponds to
>> try and 
>> discredit one's point by making personal attacks,
>> either to let the 
>> audience believe that such a bad person can only be in the
>> wrong or to 
>> make the opponent angry and therefore more susceptible to
>> other 
>> dialectic tricks. So I maintain I was right in my naming ;)
>>
>> I.
>>
> 
> This is an invention of Shopenhauer. The classical term is ad hominem, when personal characteristics are used as argument against some statement (thesis).
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Uh that's rough, now I have to complain to Schopenhauer... will take 
forever to find his email address ;)