Hello, I’m Pang Ying. Welcome to Episode 12 of Think Like a Debater.

Several earlier episodes mentioned the motion, ‘Should parents determined to divorce wait until their child finishes the college entrance examination?’ I was one of the debaters.

Some online comments said: ‘Pang Ying’s parents are not divorced. She obviously grew up in a happy family, so her view is unreliable.’

In the language of logical fallacies, the problem here is calledan ad hominem attack。

You may wonder: the commenters did not insult me or say anything bad. They even described a positive feature. How can that be an ‘attack’?

That is our subject in this episode.

In everyday use, especially online, ‘personal attack’ broadly means insulting someone, insulting them severely, attacking their personal life viciously, or even attacking their family.

Insulting people is certainly a problem of civility and morality.

But in logic, the more precise definition of ad hominem is different. It cannot simply be equated with abuse.

A person’s character, qualities, and circumstances have no direct logical connection to whether their view is correct. This is why ad hominem is a relevance fallacy.

Several fallacies discussed earlier are also relevance fallacies: appeal to emotion replaces argument with emotional agitation; a straw man attacks a distorted claim instead of the real one; a red herring diverts attention to avoid the real argument.

Let us use examples to locate the essence of ad hominem.

Suppose someone says, ‘Pang Ying is greedy and lazy.’ That may be negative or unfriendly—or, with a broader mind, perhaps not negative at all. In any event, it is an evaluation.