You are not the average poster, so Mr TMA I wonder what your background is, it seems you are well trained for forums?:-
Ad hominem
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search
"Personal attack" redirects here. For the policy on Wikipedia, see
Wikipedia:No personal attacks.
Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement lists ad hominem as the second lowest type of argument in a disagreement.
Ad hominem (
Latin for "to the person"
[1]), short for
argumentum ad hominem, is a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.
[2] The terms
ad mulierem[3] and
ad feminam[4] have been used specifically when the person receiving the criticism is female.
However, its original meaning was an argument "calculated to appeal to the person addressed more than to impartial reason".
[5]
Fallacious
ad hominem reasoning is categorized as an
informal fallacy,
[6][7][8] more precisely as a
genetic fallacy, a subcategory of
fallacies of irrelevance.
Contents
Types