Re: Ad hominem? I think not.

From: scerir (scerir@libero.it)
Date: Wed Nov 21 2001 - 13:58:30 MST


> I don't think there should be any rule against ad hominems
> against those who do not practice what they preach, do you?
> "Look over there!" said the blind man, to his deaf son.
> ©¿©¬
< Useless hypotheses snipped>

I agree, though the "argumentum ad hominem - tu quoque"
is usual in treatises like:
Copi, Irving M. and Cohen, Carl., Introduction to Logic, Macmillan, 1990.
Barker, Stephen F., The Elements of Logic, McGraw-Hill, 1989.

The "tu quoque" argument is, of course, different from the "two wrongs
make a right"! The latter fallacy involves the attempt to justify a wrong
action by pointing to another wrong action. But often the other wrong
action is of the same type or committed by the accuser, in which case
it might be the "tu quoque" argument.

Two wrongs make a right. And what about the viceversa? Let me see ...
perhaps "On Sophistical Refutations" by Aristotle ........

-s.

>From the memoirs of Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers,
concerning a bombing attack by the Weatherman on the Pentagon
(Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days):
"The operation cost just under $500, and no one was killed,
or even hurt. In that same time the Pentagon spent tens of millions
of dollars and dropped tens of thousands of pounds of explosives
on Viet Nam, killing or wounding thousands of human beings,
causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. Because nothing
justified their actions in our calculus, nothing could contradict
the merit of ours."



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