User blog comment:H-Man Havoc/Fallacies Within Argumentative Discourse/@comment-743796-20110425175807/@comment-217683-20110426084520

I think you about covered all the ones we went over in my philosophy class. You covered them quite well, too. The example you provide for ad hominem seems a bit off to me though. I've always heard it described more as insulting the other person to discredit or dismiss their opinion.

Perfect example: At work today I overheard a dispute between a young Asian woman and an older Caucasian woman. All of a sudden, the young Asian lady starts yelling "You're racist! That's racist! You're just a racist!" and so on and so forth. Nothing the other lady had said was racially motivated (she was more commenting on cultural matters by suggesting that a strong grasp of English, the lingua franca of the US, would be in the other lady's best interest), yet the young woman sought to shut up and demonize her opponent with baseless accusations of racism.

Anywho, that's more what I've always understood ad hominems to be, and how they were presented to me in class.