Saturday, March 6, 2010

Mistaking the person for the argument

A: My mom said children are brats and that's why I shouldn't have them.
B: Why are you listening to her advice? She doesn't even have any.

Besides the obvious problems with this argument, this argument is also another case of mistaking the person for the argument. Speaker B is implying that speaker A's mom doesn't know what she's talking about because she doesn't have any kids. Speaker B is also implying that Speaker A's mom could only come to the conclusion that kids are brats if she has her own kids. This type of fallacy is actually really common, I think. Many people mistake the person for the argument. Especially for people in high levels of administration and such. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting these people to not be hypocritical, but I think the problem with this is that when one of these persons in administration end up doing something that is contradictory to what they are saying, they instantly lose all credibility and any of the arguments they made, whether they were valid or strong, are now deflected with, "Are you kidding? isn't this the same person that did that?"

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