Re: Argumentum ad hominem was Re: Michael Crichton dies

[Jura <pristichampsus@yahoo.com>]

--- On Wed, 11/12/08, David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:

> From: David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
> Subject: Argumentum ad hominem was Re: Michael Crichton dies
> To: "DML" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 4:31 PM
> > No.  ad hominem doesn't jsut mean saying anything
> unpleasant about
> > somebody.  It means dismissing an argument, without
> engaging it, on
> > the basis of who made it.  For example, if someone
> denied the validity
> > of the taxon Xenoposeidon by saying "Oh, that
> Taylor is obsessed by
> > sauropod vertebrae", then _that_ would be an
> ad-hominen argument.
> 
> This works the other way around, too: if I say
> "*Xenoposeidon* just _has_ to be valid because that
> Taylor is an expert on sauropod vertebrae", that, too,
> is an ad hominem argument, because there, too, I'm
> evaluating the person who came up with an idea rather than
> the idea itself.

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Wouldn't that be considered an appeal to authority instead?

Jason