On 2010-11-25 11:30:12 -0500, Mario S. Mommer said:
In the realm of pure logic, ad hominems are logically invalid, period.
We don't live in the realm of pure logic (whatever that would mean - pretty sure no human beings exist in the realm of pure logic, so there is no homo hominis to make an ad hominem argument against in the land of pure logic...)
Here in the real world, no amount of the rigid application of pure logic is going to substitute for the very necessary social skill of inferring the motives of a participant to a debate.
Again, not all ad hominem arguments are ad hominem fallacies. JH has repeatedly trumpeted the virtues of languages whose adoption by others brings him financial gain, and repeatedly made pejorative statements about other languages in newsgroups for these other langauges, in a clear attempt to drum up clients for his training consultancy.
Pure logic alone won't help you here; the ordinary human social skill of inferring a person's motives does.
warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
