The Personal Attack: The Logical Fallacy of Argumentum

The term ad hominem is a Latin phrase that translates to against the human race (Ad hominem). It is one of several logical fallacies that may appear (intentionally or otherwise) in the rhetorical mode of writing or speaking cognize as Argument. The use of the ad hominem indicates that an demarcation (or counter-argument) is focusing not on the issue or cause, but on the issues presenter, and it largely takes the form of a personal attack of the presenters function (Introduction to Ad Hominem Fallacies).The soundest ad hominem attacks are made up of dickens grades. The first step is to discredit the speaker/presenter/sponsor, and the second step is to imply that because the speaker/presenter/sponsor is a bad person, the issue or cause must be bad as swell (Introduction to Ad Hominem Fallacies).For example, prior to the last local election, I be a debate between two city council nominees regarding a worldly concern train adhesiveness measure. Having read about the issue, I was aware that the facts be the bonds cost would far outweigh the anticipated stripped benefitsbenefits that had not been shown to occur in similar communities. I had seen no licence to instigate any logical argument to encourage citizens to support the bond issue, so I was not surprised when one candidate turned the factual debate into a personal attack of his antonym.The argument that his opponent had no school-aged children and because of this, his opponent has no vested interest in the mastery or failure of the communitys public school system. plain the candidate who was attacking his opponent (via the ad hominem) hoped that people would equate his opponents lacking school-aged children with an in energy to assess a public school bond issue properly.The logical counter to this fallacious argument would be to return the focus to the facts ifpassed, would the school bond result in improvements or would it not? If passed, would thecosts of the school bond be worth the benef its or not? I would quickly point out that whether ornot one has children has no bearing on ones ability to assess the fiscal impact of a set of facts,and I would cater to that, that if this were a logical supposition, that only those who had childrenshould be allowed to vote on the bond issue as obviously only those with children havethe capacity to grant a sound decision in this area.ReferencesAd hominem. (2000). In The American heritage dictionary of the English language (4th ed.). Boston Houghton Mifflin.Introduction to ad hominem fallacies. (n.d.). Mission Critical. Retrieved October 17, 2006, from http//www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/adhom/adhom.html