The fallacy of personal attack involves
assaulting the arguer rather than the
argument. This fallacy is very common. Personal attack is like not accepting a
argument
because of the
way one looks or because they eat seafood any you do not. This form of
rejection is not
logical. There are three forms of
personal attack, character assassination,
circumstantial
and tu quoque.
Character assassination is a personal attack
where the arguer's reputation is
considered evidence
that his argument is false. For example,
if a convicted felon out of jail
has an argument,
most people will not believe him because of his prior involvement with
illegal
matters. By rejecting his argument only
because he was in jail, a personal attack
has occurred.
Circumstantial personal attack is another form
of the fallacy. If a person thinks
that university
professors teach better that community college professors, then that person
as made the
circumstantial personal attack fallacy.
The last type of personal attack is tu
quoque. Tu quoque is like hypocrisy. For
example, who
If a person who is in jail because of drug charges tell a teenager not
to do
drugs and the
teen says "Don't tell me not to do drugs...you did!" then the fallacy
of tu
quoque has
occurred.
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