It’s interesting to note that the ad hominem come from Locke, but he doesn’t define it in the usual manner or regard it as a bad thing. Locke’s concept of ad hominem is equivalent to a true elenchus, demonstrating your dialectical partner’s words are contradictory. Aristotle’s Sophistical Elenchoi defines a fallacy as an invalid deduction which appears to show a contradiction in the dialectical partner’s premises (he actually doesn’t quite stick to this definition). So ad hominem is by definition not a fallacy. Locke’s point is, of course, to present his conception of scientific method as so superior to Plato’s (which Ari is pinching) that Plato’s - and by implication the Cambridge Platonist’s - method is of solely historical interest. But the important thing is I figured out how to post comments in the Substack app
It’s interesting to note that the ad hominem come from Locke, but he doesn’t define it in the usual manner or regard it as a bad thing. Locke’s concept of ad hominem is equivalent to a true elenchus, demonstrating your dialectical partner’s words are contradictory. Aristotle’s Sophistical Elenchoi defines a fallacy as an invalid deduction which appears to show a contradiction in the dialectical partner’s premises (he actually doesn’t quite stick to this definition). So ad hominem is by definition not a fallacy. Locke’s point is, of course, to present his conception of scientific method as so superior to Plato’s (which Ari is pinching) that Plato’s - and by implication the Cambridge Platonist’s - method is of solely historical interest. But the important thing is I figured out how to post comments in the Substack app