First, my arguments are carefully developed and evaluated (won) before they are displayed in written composition. Second, your claim of restatements are laughably ironic, given that 70% of your post is comprised of this accusation, which indicates to me that you do not know what restatement means, and consequently my rejection of your verbage based on a rational and efficient evaluation of your personal capacity. Lastly, your careless paradoxical illustration is simply guilty of being a FALSE ANALOGY(logical fallacy). If an argument is presented identically, along with replicated encased claims, yet differing consensus is measured amongst the intended audience only indicates a wide range of quality receptors(natural world constraint) were present, and does not detract from the logical objectivity or validity of the presented argument.

RL, I've gone back and looked, and to be honest I'm not sure what your position is. The writing is unclear. It looks like you're disparaging it as a logical tool but celebrating it as a necessary evil.

Come on, the writing is quite clear, along with an 9th grade vocabulary should make for easy reading.

The ad hominem complaint is an idealistic standard, and a COMPLETE DISCONNECT from any rationally consistent standard of logic.

The words aren't the problem, it's the disorganized presentation.

So you're saying that logic is inseparable from our need to attack our interlocutors.

I guess that means that the interchange in the debate isn't all that matters -- it's whom you're debating as well.

The only ironic confluence to occur is your own confabulation of understanding. Clearly, MFTP demonstrated his own accurate impression of the dubious accusation of the Ad Hominem Argument, which we both concurred. It just that his critical thinking is less refined, consequently exposing him to repeated attacks of credibility.

Come on, the writing is quite clear, along with an 9th grade vocabulary should make for easy reading. The ad hominem complaint is an idealistic standard, and a COMPLETE DISCONNECT from any rationally consistent standard of logic. I would have to abnegate my complete understanding of logic and the subsequent foundation of self-evident consistency to adopt the careless concept of the ad hominem.

P.S. The ad hominem attack is NOT a necessary evil, on the contrary, it is a natural extension of critical thinking.

In all of this it might just be worth mentioning that some ad hominem arguments are not fallacious, and some are fallacious. It depends on what the argument is. Especially, what are the premises, and what is the conclusion.

That can be said about any informal logic fallacy. What's your point?

This is priceless!!

You can't make this stuff up!

I cannot believe you resurrected a post by Ruthless Logic. Oh boy. I hope he still gets e-mail alerts when there is a reply to one of his posts.

Mem'ries... all alone in the moonlight... not a sound from the pavement...

I cannot believe you resurrected a post by Ruthless Logic. Oh boy. I hope he still gets e-mail alerts when there is a reply to one of his posts.

Mem'ries... all alone in the moonlight... not a sound from the pavement...

Kennethamy,

I can agree somewhat with what you are stating in post #27. I think you are right in the respect that some arguments are and are not fallacious, etc. (Note: For anyone else, a fallacy is essentially a defective argument that can be taken to be a correct argument). But only so far as an informal fallacy is concerned. A formal fallacy contains errors in the logical structure of the argument whereas an informal fallacy contains both a flaw in the logical structure as well as flaws in the content. The content could, for all intents and purposes, be correct within the context of a formal fallacy, only its structure is off. It almost seems as though you are not acknowledging the differentiation in informal and formal fallacies.

I cannot believe you resurrected a post by Ruthless Logic. Oh boy. I hope he still gets e-mail alerts when there is a reply to one of his posts.

Mem'ries... all alone in the moonlight... not a sound from the pavement...

Ironically, his posts really presented the best examples of ad hominem fallacies I've seen in a while.

He was an even better example of the sentences you get when you plug the Oxford English Dictionary into a random word generator.

I wrote that all fallacious arguments are fallacious. You mean you don't believe that? And I wrote that some arguments (even ad hominem arguments) are not fallacious. You don't think that all arguments are fallacious do you? What is controversial about any of that, I cannot imagine. Of course, formal fallacies are fallacies. And all informal fallacies are, guess what, fallacies. What have I written that you can possibly disagree with?

But only so far as an informal fallacy is concerned.

What is "only so far as an informal fallacy is concerned"?