Incidentally, I think one of Bond’s “real life examples” exposes an important ambiguity:
A: “I can even handle misplaced apostrophes every now and then. Not excessive amounts of them, [...]”
B: “Perhaps double-check your grammar before you write a grammar rant that refers to ‘amounts of apostrophes’.”
C: ” …the ad hominem nature of [B’s reply] takes the sanctimonious angle that any who criticize must be without stain.”
Bond writes, “B’s reply was not ad hominem. It was not a counter-argument to A, but an attempt to point out what B saw as A’s hypocrisy.”
But actually it is ad hominem, i.e. directed ‘to the person’, though not (of course) an ad hominem fallacy in the usual sense. See: Ad hominem tu quoque.
Hmm, reminds me of a post I wrote two years earlier.
Incidentally, I think one of Bond’s “real life examples” exposes an important ambiguity:
A: “I can even handle misplaced apostrophes every now and then. Not excessive amounts of them, [...]” B: “Perhaps double-check your grammar before you write a grammar rant that refers to ‘amounts of apostrophes’.” C: ” …the ad hominem nature of [B’s reply] takes the sanctimonious angle that any who criticize must be without stain.”
Bond writes, “B’s reply was not ad hominem. It was not a counter-argument to A, but an attempt to point out what B saw as A’s hypocrisy.”
But actually it is ad hominem, i.e. directed ‘to the person’, though not (of course) an ad hominem fallacy in the usual sense. See: Ad hominem tu quoque.