> ad hominems are frequently
> used in moral
> characterizations
Attacking an argument on the basis of who's making it, rather than its content, is frequently used in moral characterisations? Please could you give an example or two to help me understand?
Sure, here's one: "Bad people think that skinning cats is acceptable. If Bob thinks that skinning cats is okay, then Bob is a bad person."
In the above, we haven't delved into why skinning cats is bad (it seems to be bad self evidently and without need for justification, although that's another story), we're just characterized Bob as himself as bad. That's an ad hominem, but it's not fallacious - it only serves to instantiate the badness of an action in a particular person.
Ad hominem is short for argumentum ad hominem, which is a type of logical fallacy. Saying "it's an ad hominem but it's not fallacious" suggests you either don't understand this, or you think that the example you've given is an example where the authority of the arguer is indeed part of the argument (which is indeed a non-fallacious ad hominem), which it's clearly not.
