[rhinoceros 1]
Someone is discussing what someone else is and tries to classify him. This is an argument in itself. This is not ad hominem, because it is not supposed to counter any specific argument made by the second person.
[Joe Dees 2]
In the case of the article writer, it is indeed an ad hominem, as it is intended to a priori impeach anything that the targets of the article might have to say, regardless of merit; that is the very definition of ad hominem.
[rhinoceros 1]
But the first person makes a specific argument. If we counter this specific argument by trying to classify the first person, then we have an ad hominem,
[Joe Dees 2]
In either case, it is an ad hominem, and I have just explained why.
[rhinoceros 3]
By your definition of ad hominem, every negative argument about a person or source would become an ad hominem argument, making the concept practically useless.
Let's take a hypothetical situation. Someone publishes an article providing good evidence that a source is in the payroll of an organization (CIA or Saddam's secret services). According to your definition, that article would be ad hominem. According to mine, it would not.
The article would not invalidate any specific arguments made by that source; it would just make the source less credible. Only when one uses the credibility issue of the source to argue against a specific argument of the source do we have an ad hominem argument.
---- This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=26206>
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