Amitabh Bachchan recently proposed that all of us who want to disassociate ourselves from the caste issue, must write “Indian” on the census form when it asks us what our caste is. For this, there were many people who lambasted him. Here is one of the comments found on the net:
“I dont care what amitabh has to say. he is just an ordinary person….amitabh was silent like the rest of bollywood when raj thackeray and his gundas were attacking north indians….so i consider people who look up to them as stupid people.“
Spotted the fallacy?
This is a classic ad hominem argument which literally means “To the man.” It means you attack the person instead of the issue they’re talking about. By lambasting Amitabh Bachchan, this guy is trying to distract us from the real issue, namely that we should ignore caste distinctions and unite under one umbrella – Indian.
This happens all the time!! Love the idea of answering these kind of arguments. I sometimes receive emails that say similar stuff, and sometimes what is said is so outrageous and so simply wrong that I just ignore them. But I know these arguments are being used all the times and they should be answered.
Like IHM said, this happens all the time because it's easier to attack the person than the idea…Pure laziness…
You've a point there. But I think every single thing a person says can be analyzed at least along two prongs – 1. the merit of the assertion; 2. the perceived sincerity behind that assertion. E.g., to an assertion like 'universal law of gravity' the second point would not apply. But when anyone touches upon 'ought' v/s 'ought not' most people's mind is automatically tuned to try to gauge if the person actually means what they are saying or if the impression what they say gives is appropriate or not.
Unfortunately, not everyone analyzes things as purely philosophical issues. Over time people attach emotions with personalities. E.g., I might have a favorite author, and the moment I see some harsh criticism of her, my first emotional response would be resentment towards one saying that. It is a few moments later that I would try to make out if that criticism is valid or not.
Likewise, the comment above is dwelling merely on the motive part of what Amitabh Bachchan had said. Was he genuinely concerned about growing divisiveness in India? If he was, is the same reflected by his response (or lack thereof) to recent events? And I have no reason to believe that there is anything wrong with such assessment or its articulation. Just like how one tries to understand the causes of divisiveness in India, one might like to understand another person (Amitabh Bachchan in this case). Just like someone might dislike divisiveness for its consequences, one might dislike a person based on their words and actions – and I find nothing wrong with either. But the problem arises when people believe that only second prong matters, not the first one, and try to substitute that line of logic for the first prong. Moreover, if the agenda for comments would have been strictly determined to be discussing the merits of Mr. Bachchan's comments, then, certainly ad hominem 'attacks' [do they 'harm' to be termed as 'attacks' by some? ;)] someone are wrong!
BTW, I would really like if it were possible to subscribe to comments on your blog through RSS.
Also, I really liked the surveys that go on in your sidebar. You seem to include all possible responses. Have you been pursuing psychology and/or ethics and/or philosophy academically?
In reply to Ketan
Thanks for your detailed analysis Ketan. You're right – the problem arises when people try and substitute one line of thinking for the other. Unfortunately, it's a very compelling way of arguing from an emotional standpoint and if one isn't careful, it's easy to get distracted into a totally different argument.
And no, though I've studied ethical and philosophical problems, I haven't taken it up academically :)
I'll see what I can do about a "comments" RSS feed. I've disabled it cause it loads an extra image and I didn't know anyone used it! Thanks for drawing it to my attention.
Do you mean comments for a single post, or all the comments for the entire site? I guess you mean the former right?
I actually meant for the latter as I usually access the net through Opera Mini, which has inbuilt RSS reader, so that makes it very convenient. Thanks!
Oh, I just saw that I actually received the email notification. Didn't know it would work. So you need not bother with the RSS thing. Thanks, again!
In reply to Ketan
Glad it works for you :)