[Buddha-l] Prominent Neobuddhist proposes religion based blacklisting for government jobs

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 31, 2009, at 7:06 AM, Alberto Todeschini wrote:

> Copi's treatment is now obsolete.

Somebody should communicate that to the people who write college  
textbooks on reasoning and critical thinking. In all the texts I have  
used to teach that subject in recent years, argumentum ad hominem is  
still listed among the informal fallacies, with warnings that using it  
weakens one's overall argument.

> As for the ad hominem, there are cases in which it is perfectly
> appropriate

I've never seen any, except for the one's Dan has mentioned, namely,  
that of being an expert witness in a court of law. I once served as an  
expert witness and was treated to every imaginable attempt to show  
that I had no credibility at all on any topic under the son. I had no  
choice but to plead guilty.

> So to make an ad hominem is not
> ipso facto to commit a fallacy.

I am not sure anyone was making that claim. In fact, all that happened  
was that I used Curt why he weakened his case against Sam Harris by  
citing biographical details about Harris that have no relevance  
whatsoever to the charges Harris made against Collins. I never did get  
an answer.

> (I can provide some bibliographical details off-list if you want)

No thanks. Anyone who writes that ad hominem argumentation is not  
fallacious is ipso facto not worth reading.

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu