I was watching Survivor and the context was that a player got punished from the production because he had violated some rules and the others were upset about this because they suspected him of trying to find food and eat it by himself. Also in the past they felt they couldn't trust him, but they didn't have any solid proof, just a gut feeling. The following dialog took place:
"-I've noticed that you present a different behavior in front of some people and another behavior behind their backs. I know that there are people in general who apparently cannot handle all the circumstances in their life the same... And since I've been in my personal life with a person like you... -(interrupting her)Can I ask you something else? Since obviously you are the fair person of the group, the fact that you are next to Chris from the first day and you've come so close with him and... and you caress each other and you sleep side by side at night... what makes YOU regarding your boyfriend?"
The player at fault is trying to shift the spotlight from him to the woman that's accusing him and cast aspersions about her being flirty with another player, because he knows that the incident is filmed and her boyfriend will see that, effectively disrupting her thought and forcing her to immediately defend herself against the false accusations and save her relationship. I think he is clearly deflecting. But is that a fallacy? The main point in this is that when you accuse me of something, then I respond by accusing you of the same thing - although in this incident it was much more nasty than that because the stakes weren't just destroying reputation or ego but also a romantic relationship with a third person not present.
Initially I thought about ad hominem (tu quoque) but then again I thought that the guy didn't attack the argument, for example he didn't say that since you are flirty (although you have a boyfriend) that makes you dishonest so your accusations to me don't stand. More particularly I don't see how the "claiming that the argument is flawed" is covered in the above dialog. Then I thought about red herring but again the redirection is not actually another issue that the person making the redirection can better respond. He's just casting aspersions (as a respond though to an argument being made).
What would you call that? Does it fit a fallacy?
asked on Sunday, Feb 14, 2021 11:23:16 PM by Kostas Oikonomou
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I struggled to make out the context, but from what I can infer, this is a relevance fallacy and seems like one form of ad hominem.
As a poster already pointed out, ad hominem (abusive) makes sense (derailing the argument with spurious allegations of misconduct, true or false).
answered on Monday, Feb 15, 2021 09:48:39 AM by TrappedPrior (RotE)
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Kostas Oikonomouwrites:
Well the ad hominem attack was that "you accuse me of being two-faced when YOU TOO are two-faced", and "tu quoque" in latin means "you too", so it was not just any personal attack ('you're ugly, lazy ets), he accused her of doing what she accused of him. So it wasn't completely irrelevant to the initial argument to consider it just abusive. And also, he didn't explicitly deny the accusation, just deflected. Also, another question: If Ad Hominem abusive is "derailing the conversation" then what's the difference from Red Herring? Or is it that Ad Hominem Abusive IS a more specific form of Red Herring?
answered on Monday, Feb 15, 2021 08:28:02 AM by Shockwave
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Kostas Oikonomouwrites:
Well the ad hominem attack was that "you accuse me of being two-faced when YOU TOO are two-faced", and "tu quoque" in latin means "YOU TOO", so it was not just any personal attack ('you're ugly, lazy etc), he accused her of doing what she accused of him. So it wasn't completely irrelevant to the initial argument to consider it just abusive. And also, he didn't explicitly deny the accusation, just deflected.
posted on Monday, Feb 15, 2021 03:51:02 PM
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Shockwavewrites: [To Kostas Oikonomou]
I understand, but bearing in mind that the whole dialogue is in the context of his violation of the rules and improper eating, with which her argument is connected, he did not accuse her of that but of hypocrisy. And if the dialogue were taken separately, then it could be interpreted as ad hominem (tu quoque) .
As for your second question, the difference between these two fallacies is usually "felt" in that by attacking a person we try to end the argumentation by assuming that the facts we present are enough to refute what the opponent is saying (although we don't always say it). Red herring , on the other hand, is an attempt to move the debate to another area where we can more easily defeat our opponent.
By the way, I have to say that you think like a real logician, analytically and strictly determining all concepts. Informal logical fallacies are not so easy to strictly define, we can take them in a narrower or broader sense, if we take them in a broader sense, there can easily be intersection and subordination between fallacies.
Despite this, I think that studying logical fallacies is a good way to improve our own reasoning, avoid deception, and remain guardians of the truth.
It is interesting that in the study of logic, beginners are sometimes more thorough and better base their views taking into account the details than the experienced ones.
[ login to reply ] posted on Monday, Feb 15, 2021 05:32:58 PM
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Kostas Oikonomouwrites:
[To Shockwave]
Thank you for your kind words. You read me correctly. My profession is computer programming, so I'm used to analyzing everything and paying attention to small details (and I had a predisposition to thinking analytically since I was a kid).
Thank you also for pointing out the distinction between Red Herring and Ad Hominem. That made sense.
Now to our point :) The woman didn't accused the man because of eating the extra food, the accusation wasn't about the action itself - at least that's what she said on the outside. She accused him of betraying their trust - I don't know what was in her mind because she didn't finish her train of thought. But she started mentioning another relationship of hers (probably because her conclusion could not be proved by the food incident alone, so she wanted to use her experience as proof), and the main accusation was that he was a person that behaved like her previous relationship who behaved differently in front of others and differently behind their backs - the food incident was just an incident that verified her belief.
So I think it is more complicated actually. I'll try to cover it 1)So she accused him of not being worthy of trust because he was two-faced. He then accused HER of not being worthy for trust. She accused him that other people (the players) couldn't trust him. He accused her that other people (her boyfriend) couldn't trust her. That would be the "Tu Quoque" part 2)She accused him of not having the moral values that she has. He accused her of not acting according to those moral values (of honesty and trust). So now we also have him accusing her of double standard(when he makes something behind their back she accuses him of being untrustworthy, but when she does something behind her boyfriend's back then she is virtuous. 3)Since her boyfriend is not there to know whether the accusation is valid, and since some intimacy was indeed shown in the camera, she claimed to be just a little more close, but she knew that even a suspicion could harm her relationship, so it wasn't adequate to request from her accuser to prove the accusation but she had to prove herself that she was innocent (so she was kind of forced in those circumstances to do it i.e shifting of the burden of proof ) 4)And finally since the subject changed from "You are two-faced" which in an honest conversation would end with the man conceding "Yes, I am two-faced/No I am not", the conversation changed to "You were cheating on your boyfriend" which would end with the woman confessing "Yes I were/No I weren't". And that's red herring
So it was a really sneaky, really calculated and ultimately really effective chicanery, effectively shifting the focus from the accused and reversing the offender and the victim and having the woman striving to prove HER innocence, utilizing a whole armory of fallacious tactics.
But back to my initial question, I wanted to know whether the first point would be categorized under the Ad Hominem, because the proposition of the argument was not explicitly stated. For example I would say it is Ad Hominem if the guy said 'How can I be immoral when I act as "deceitfully" as you but you claim yourself to be virtuous? Since we both have the same degree of deceitfulness and you claim to be virtuous, I am also virtuous.' That's an explicit argument. But he didn't do that. He just moved the conversation to "Should your boyfriend be wary of you? Can he trust you?"
Kudos if you managed to make it through to the end :)
[ login to reply ] posted on Monday, Feb 15, 2021 08:15:36 PM
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