It’s often the case that two people can say the exact same thing but be perceived very differently based off of their personal background - i.e., if a white person says something about black people, that would make the audience bristle in a way that they wouldn’t if it were a black person saying the exact same thing about black people, or a man making a statement about women vs. a woman saying the same thing about women. Or, a Red Sox fan saying “The Yankees aren’t going to win anything meaningful for a long time to come” vs. a Yankees fan saying the exact same thing about his beloved Yankees.
Question is, though… from a logic/rhetoric standpoint, is this technically ad hominem? It’s critiquing the message based off of the identity of the speaker, not based off of the content of the message itself.
*Should *the speaker’s identity make any difference in whether his/her message is considered valid or not?
Communication and even language are about more than just words. Tone of voice, context, the identity and background of the speaker, posture and other phystical gestures/movements, and much more, are all a significant part of communication. So yes, the same words can mean and be interpreted as very different things depending on the speaker (and many other factors).
The ad hominem criticism is most applicable when the statement under consideration is an argument rather than a factual assertion, and when the personal attack is used to evade discussion of the merits of the argument.
But to the extent that a statement incorporates factual claims, it’s not a fallacy to incorporate considerations of character into a probabilistic assessment of whether those factual claims are true. If someone has a record of lying, it’s rational to be more skeptical. But, of course, that’s just probabilistic - the truth of any factual claims would ultimately depend on evidence.
It’s also has nothing to do with the ad hominem fallacy to say something like - even if that’s true, social considerations mean that it’s insensitive and inappropriate for you to be saying it.
That evidence will rightly be given more weight if the speaker is Jim than if it is Bob. This wouldn’t be a fallacy. If the identity of the speaker is directly related to the testimony given its not a fallacy. It becomes a fallacy if the attack is unrelated to the testimony, for example if I disregard the claim based on the fact that the speaker cheated on his wife.
Its the same as the appeal to authority fallacy. Appeal to relevant authority (say a climate scientists view on the existance global warming) isn’t a fallacy, appeal to irrelevant authority is (say a movie star’s view on the existence of global warming)
It depends on whether the speaker’s identity is at all relevant to the message. If it is, I would not automatically call it an ad hominem.
Trump’s a bad example, since by any reasonable standard, he’s very nearly a compulsive liar. If he happens to say something intelligent, something that might even seem praiseworthy from another speaker, it’s perfectly fair to suspect one or more of the following:
A) he clearly doesn’t mean what he saying,
B) he clearly doesn’t understand what he’s saying; or
C) he’s clearly just reading someone else’s words off the teleprompter.
In situations such as the OP describes, I don’t think it’s ad hominem because the identity of the speaker isn’t being used to discredit the statement - the content of the statement is used to discredit the speaker. It’s not “You’re white, so you’re wrong”, it’s “I can’t believe you said that, you racist!”
It’s not ad hominem, at least not directly.
In strict terms;
It’s messenger bias …which could lead to ad hominem more or less easily depending on the scenario.
For instance, Bryan Ekers post #10 demonstrates he perceives Trump with messenger bias, which leads him to A,B and C which are clearly ad hominem, by definition.
But you will have to be more specific with your examples. You make vague mention of a white person saying ‘something’ about black people as opposed to a black person saying the exact same thing about black people.
Can you think of an example where the black person saying the exact same thing isn’t being ironic, self deprecating for the purposes of solidarity or humour, etc?
Most of us get by with a basic understanding of the pragmatics behind an individual’s words; we infer the intentions of their words based on myriad factors beyond the words themselves. Copy/pasting words verbatim and changing the speaker’s identity can indeed change the entire meaning behind the words.
To take a crass example, it’s the difference between a mother-to-be saying “I love kids” and a convicted pedophile saying the exact same thing.
I don’t think this has very much to do with the ad hominem logical fallacy, but there may be specific examples where it does?
Arguably, you’re the one showing messenger bias. I said it was fair to suspect A, B and/or C. I’m willing to entertain the notion that Trump can form an intelligent thought and articulate it well, it just strikes me as uncharacteristic of him based on his demonstrable history.
Fair enough, seemed like a good example, regardless of circumstance if a,b or c were a given reason for the message to be invalid, rather than what the message was, it would be ad hominem.
Messenger bias is still messenger bias though, even if it is warranted and based on past performance. It’s not typically blind prejudice.