Ad Hominem: Bias

8 Ad Hominem: Bias

George Wrisley

My opponent says that we should return the municipal garbage‐disposal to private hands. But why does he say this? What are his underlying motives? Could it be that he and his friends want to get in on a profitable little monopoly?

Patrick Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic

A person’s character can matter when we assess testimony or decide whether to trust them. If you are considering a closer friendship, how someone has treated past friends is relevant. Political debate also often involves questions of trust. The difficulty is deciding when such evidence bears on the claim being made.

However, it is because of the importance of character and the power to influence others that comes with commenting on another’s character that we must be very cautious how and when we do it. The ad hominem argument form is one way of engaging another’s character. The ad hominem argument is an argument “to,” “toward,” or “against” the person. That is, it is an argument that calls into question a person’s character, her credibility and trustworthiness, by appealing directly to some negative aspect of her person, or indirectly by making some negative claim about the person’s relationships, actions past or present, commitments, views, or still more. It is the direct or indirect impugning of a person’s character that unites the various forms of the ad hominem argument.

Many textbook accounts of the ad hominem argument are much too cavalier in their approach, often treating the ad hominem argument form as usually/always fallacious. However, as Walton, for example, has made clear, things are not so easy. One of the greatest challenges in thinking about the ad hominem argument type and the possibility of particular cases being fallacious is finding a way to distinguish between those cases that are fallacious and those that aren’t. The same case may be considered fallacious or legitimate depending on how it is read and what conclusion the respondent draws.

Related forms include ad hominem: circumstantial (Chapter 9), ad hominem: direct (Chapter 10), and ad hominem: tu quoque (Chapter 11).

We are very often rightly disturbed by bias, as it represents a kind of ungrounded prejudice in favor of one thing, person, group, and so on. However, is bias always problematic? What about my bias for Japanese food over Mexican? How about a salesperson’s bias for his product? One would expect a salesperson to be biased toward his product. However, bias becomes a problem in contexts in which the goal is fairness and the discovery of impartial truth, as far as that’s possible. In such contexts, bias can be particularly pernicious as it can impede the dialogue’s goal of impartial inquiry, as it involves the “suppressing of critical doubt (when critical doubt is appropriate)” (Walton 1998, 132). Further, accusing someone of bias can be a powerful way of impugning her character and making suspect what she says since it is purportedly driven by bias. Such is an ad hominem bias argument.

As with all the ad hominem argument forms, the ad hominem: bias has both fallacious and legitimate uses. Thus a central question becomes: How do we differentiate the fallacious from the legitimate instances of ad hominem attack? This is particularly important because of how powerful an influence ad hominem arguments can have on the proponent’s ability to support her position in a meaningful way. Fallacious uses of the ad hominem argument type are pernicious, in part, because of how difficult it can be to respond to them in an effective way. Think about how hard it can be for someone to recover from accusations that paint him as a bad person or hypocrite.

What makes an example of an ad hominem: bias argument fallacious is that there is not sufficient reason to believe that the proponent’s vested interests compromise her ability to engage fairly in argument. There may be cases where it does, but bias alone is not sufficient, and, thus, trying to turn others against the proponent in a case of unproblematic bias is a dirty and fallacious move, one that illicitly shifts the issue from the subject of the argument to the character of the proponent.

The basic form of the fallacy looks like this:

1. Respondent: Claims the proponent of argument/position x is biased.
2. Respondent: Claims that the proponent’s bias interferes with her ability to argue fairly.
3. Respondent: Therefore, the proponent’s character and credibility are not trustworthy.
4. Respondent: Therefore, argument/position x “should not be given as much credibility as it would have without the bias” (see Walton 1998, 255).

Key questions to evaluate ad hominem bias arguments:

• What reason is there for thinking the proponent is biased?
• If the proponent is biased, is she biased merely in the sense of having a vested interest or has the bias also interfered with her ability to argue fairly?
• Are the details about the proponent’s purported bias relevant to the argument/position in question or the dialogical context?
• Is the respondent’s conclusion the weaker claim that the proponent’s argument/position is questionable and in need of further support or the stronger claim that her argument/position is refuted?