Ad hominem

The argumentum ad hominem comes from the Latin phrase meaning “to the person”. It is a logical fallacy that occurs when one person attacks the person that is making an argument rather than the actual argument itself. This usually means that the character, motives, or some characteristic of the person making the argument is attacked rather than directly attacking the argument. The aim is that if you can attribute a bad trait or characteristic to the person making the argument then others will doubt the argument. This way they use the ad hominem argument to get the argument or claim dismissed on something irrelevant to the argument.

Trying to equate someone’s character or personal traits with how sound or spported their argument is, is a logical fallacy.

The formal way of stating this is:

A makes claim X
There is something objectionable about A
Therefore X is false

The shill gambit is a classic ad hominem fallacy.

Related Topics:
‘Ad Hominem’ Print
‘Personal Attack ≠ Argument’ T-shirt
Tu quoque fallacy

Pick Your Logical Fallacy:

Ad hominem	Bandwagon fallacy	Cherry Picking	False Analogy	Galileo Gambit
Appeal to Authority Fallacy	Burden of Proof Fallacy	Confirmation Bias	False Balance	Natural Fallacy
Appeal to ignorance	False Equivalence	Slippery Slope Fallacy	False Dilemma or Dichotomy	Non sequitur
Appeal to Novelty Fallacy	Special pleading logical fallacy	Straw Man	Tautology	Post hoc ergo propter hoc
Appeal to Tradition Fallacy	The Moving Goalpost	Wishful Thinking Fallacy	Shill Gambit	Ambiguity Fallacy
Post Hoc Fallacy	Shoehorning	Motivated reasoning	Causal Illusions	Cognitive Biases
It's Just a Theory	Tu quoque fallacy	‘It worked for me’ Fallacy	Argument by Analogy	Sunk Cost
Critical Thinking Skills For Dummies	An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments	The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them	Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies	Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language