Politician: My opponent says our zoning laws too strongly promote subu

Source is the LSAT!

Thanks Mike. I agree that this is an ad hominem attack. While solving this, I chose D). But I was tempted by E). Hence, I thought of asking you about it.

I thought that if the politician considers that his opponent has "in fact", as opposed to speculation, lived in an apartment building in the past, then the argument would be weakened. Correct? What are your thoughts?

No. No. No. That falls into the ad hominem fallacy.

The opponents original argument is: "our zoning laws too strongly promote suburban single-family dwellings and should be changed to encourage other forms of housing like apartment buildings." We don't get the details, but if pressed, he would provide some kind of argument about why the zoning laws are unfair, why they promote suburban single-family dwellings too strongly, etc. Those arguments would stand or fall on their own merit.

Regardless of what his argument is, its validity doesn't depend on where he lives now or where he ever lived. It's true, for certain extreme things in life (death of a child, exile from one's homeland, etc.), it would be hard for someone who hadn't been through it to imagine the full ramifications of the experience. Arguably, in those extreme cases, we might say that someone who hasn't experienced it doesn't have the full story. Living in an apartment is not so extreme, so unimaginable, that someone who doesn't live there couldn't understand the basics of that situation or sympathize with its inherent challenges. Almost everyone intelligent has lived in a college dorm, which to some extend approximates the conditions of apartment life. It's just too common, too accessible, an experience to say that a person who lives or doesn't live in an apartment does or doesn't have the right to talk about the equity of zoning laws.

I will grant you --- if it turns out that the opponent has, for a substantial fraction of his life, lived in an apartment, that would make the politician look particularly silly --- in other words, he couldn't even apply his fallacy correctly! But the fact that his application of a fallacy entails a possible flaw --- that is not nearly as important as the fact that he applied a fallacy in the first place. From a strict logical point of view, it makes absolutely no difference whether one applies a fallacy flawlessly or applies it with mistakes ---- that distinction is absolutely irrelevant; the mere fact that the argument rest on a fallacy invalidates it. In logic, you don't gain or lose points for applying a fallacy well or badly --- the mere fact that a fallacy appears at all trumps anything about its application.

This argument contains the ad hominem fallacy. That fallacy invalidates the argument. (E) gets into the issue of --- how well was the ad hominem fallacy applied?--- from a strict logical point of view, that is as irrelevant to the content of the argument as the font one uses to print the argument.

Does all this make sense?

Mike

Where can I find more on ad hominem fallacy?

Mike has nicely brought out the nuance of this issue. In complementing what he says, Let me first of all reassure you that ad hominem simply means no more than ‘appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason’
Now one might see why this example is considered anything but basic. In D, the vituperative personal attack is popping out just on even a cursory glance, leave alone critical reasoning. In logic, we have no room for personal grouse. In relation, E has some relevance as the focus shift somewhat to apartment living, which may not fall as personal as the lifestyle

That really isn't similar to the original argument. A similar argument would be something like:

Doctor: Smoking is bad for you. You shouldn't smoke.

Politician: But you smoke. So we shouldn't take your position seriously.


The politician's response says "you're a hypocrite, so your argument is wrong". That is, it attacks the person, not the argument itself. The politician's reply does nothing to weaken the original argument.

Attacking the person rather than the idea is sometimes called 'ad hominem' (from latin meaning roughly 'at the person') argumentation, and it is usually considered a type of logical fallacy. That said, I can't recall seeing even one real GMAT Critical Reasoning question in which ad hominem argumentation is used (there may well be some that are not coming to mind, but it certainly isn't common), so it is not likely to be very important to understand.

Wikipedia has a good article on them, including some examples. Beyond that, I'm not sure. People don't go out their way producing brilliant and interesting examples of something that's essentially flawed, if you see what I mean.

More to the point, I agree with the estimable Mr. IanStewart. There are certainly no ad hominem arguments in the OG CR questions, and I have not seen any in any other official source. I suspect that GMAC considers the ad hominem fallacy a little too low-brow and obvious for proper CR questions. I believe voodoochild pulled the original question from an LSAT source --- I have no idea what the standards are on the LSAT.

Mike

Politician: My opponent says our zoning laws too strongly promote suburban single-family dwellings and should be changed to encourage other forms of housing like apartment buildings. Yet he lives in a house in the country. His lifestyle contradicts his own argument, which should therefore not be taken seriously.

The politician’s reasoning is most vulnerable to criticism on the ground that

(A) Its characterization of the opponent’s lifestyle reveals the politician’s own prejudice against constructing apartment buildings. - WRONG. Prejudice is irrelevant to the argument offered.

(B) It neglects the fact that apartment buildings can be built in the suburbs just as easily as in the center of the city. - WRONG. Constrution is irrelevant.

(C) It fails to mention the politician’s own living situation - WRONG. Irrelevant.

(D) Its discussion of the opponent’s lifestyle is irrelevant to the merits of the opponent’s argument. - CORRECT. Based on the highlighted text this is directly related to it.

(E) It ignores the possibility that the opponent may have previously lived in an apartment building. - WRONG. Past doesn't affect present argument.

Answer D.