Description

The Ad Hominem Fallacy, or Fallacy of Personal Attack, is one of the most common logical fallacies.  In short, this class of fallacies shifts attention from an argument by focusing on irrelevant parts of the argument’s source.  This survey succinctly discusses the six types of this fallacy, namely 1) abusive ad hominem, 2) circumstantial ad hominem, 3) tu quoque, 4) guilt by association, 5) genetic fallacy, and 6) ad feminam.

Discussion Questions

• Can you think of a time where you or someone else has tried to use an ad hominem attack?
• Why are such attacks irrelevant and fail so badly?
• Why do you think we, yes all of us, argue for such fallacies so often?

Keywords: feminism, philosophy, logical fallacy, rhetoric