Are many logical fallacies really NOT fallacies in logic, but simply fallacious for other reasons?
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Original Question
The Ad Hominem (AH), attacks the man, not the argument. This does not violate any rules of logic - it is merely a poor or unsavoury debating tactic.
The fact that the AH may be true, or partly true, strengthens this claim.
Example : "you are a a lying bastard." If the person is lying, then you are only stating a fact. It's just the "bastard" word that is the AH.
Answers
1I don't have an exact number, but WIKI has a good page on the "rules" of logic in argumentation and their violations. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propositional_calculus#Basic_and_derived_argument_forms . For the most part, many fallacies (what are usually referred to as "informal" logical fallacies) are subjective violations of reason. There are usually two parts to these kinds of fallacies: attempts to get an interlocutor to abandon reason and the abandonment of reason itself. The former I refer to as a fallacious tactic where the latter is a (logical) fallacy. Using your example, an ad hominem attack is generally a fallacious tactic, assuming the person realizes what they are doing. If the audience or interlocutor accepts the attack as reason to reject the argument, they are demonstrating a flaw in their reasoning process; they are logically fallacious.
Hope that helps.
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