Attacking the person doesn’t address the argument
Let’s say you make an argument about something – could be anything, healthcare policy, a restaurant recommendation, whatever. And the response you get back isn’t really about the argument at all. It’s about you. Your motives, your background, your credentials, what you look like. The argument you made just sort of evaporates, and suddenly you’re the one on trial.
That move has a name – it’s called ad hominem, Latin for “to the person.” And once you start noticing it, you’ll see it absolutely everywhere, because it’s one of the easiest ways to derail a conversation without ever having to engage with what somebody actually said.
The most obvious version is just straight-up personal insult – you’re stupid, so your argument is stupid. The weird part is the insult might even be accurate, and it still doesn’t matter, because whether somebody is smart or dumb has nothing to do with whether the specific thing they said is true. A brilliant person can make a terrible argument and a total idiot can stumble into a correct one.
Then there’s the version that goes after motive instead of logic – you only support that policy because you benefit from it. And look, sometimes that’s even true, but it’s still beside the point. Someone can have completely self-interested reasons for saying something and still be right. And people with the purest motives in the world make bad arguments constantly, so motive was never really the thing to focus on in the first place.
There are a couple of close cousins worth knowing. Guilt by association – which we covered in Essay 15.4 – is when someone gets attacked based on who they hang out with rather than what they actually said. And tu quoque, from Essay 15.3, is ad hominem via hypocrisy, basically “you can’t say that because you do the opposite.” Both of these are just flavors of the same move – make it about the person instead of the argument.
Here’s the example that usually gets the point across – a doctor who smokes can still correctly tell you that smoking causes cancer. The cigarette in their hand doesn’t change what’s on the X-ray. A financially irresponsible person can still accurately explain why credit card debt is a trap. The messenger’s personal failings don’t determine whether the message is true, and treating them like they do is just a way of avoiding the actual conversation.
So when somebody pulls this on you, the move is pretty simple. Something like – “okay, whether or not that’s true about me, it doesn’t address the argument I made. What’s your actual response to the argument?” Most of the time they won’t have one. Which tells you a lot.