Forgive me for going on about this...
"Ad hominem" is latin for something like "because of the man", and is
a label for a particular faulty reasoning style -- in particular,
that a statement is true or false because of who made the statement.
It is never a valid argument; barring perhaps some pathological
self-referential end cases: the truth of a statement is never a
question of who said it -- even a statement about one's own feelings
can be a lie.
At a meta level, it is true that the statement I made, as you said,
injects the person (and a personal feeling) into the discussion, and
I suppose it could be construed as an attempt to discredit Karl's
argument because of the way he is. However, I think a more direct
and obvious interpretation is something like this: "Bashing is a
matter of tone, and I perceive Karl's tone as almost always
negative". That is, simply an expression of my personal feeling
about the matter. [This is in the context of a direct reply to Karl,
and others may not know that he and I have had a long running debate
over this issue that has sometimes in the past been heated, but
*always*, to my recollection, been civil.]
Finally, as I'm sure you know, the term "ad hominem" is frequently
used incorrectly as a synonym for "insult". Strictly speaking, an ad
hominem is a just form of faulty logic, not an insult, and can just
as easily be positive. An example would be: "What Joe says must be
true because Joe is a good guy." This is an ad hominem argument.
In a positive form, however, it frequently shades into something
else, "an appeal to authority", which is also a faulty argument:
"What Joe says must be true because Joe is President of the
organization."
> Perhaps rather than referring to "bashing" it would be better, in general,
> to look at statements which personalize discussion, rather than focusing
> on the content. At its simplest, that means any reference to the behaviors
> of people. By extension, it can -- and I think should -- include reference
> to the behavior of organizations, where the references go towards
> "personalizing" the organization, rather than considering its actions in
> more detached and formal terms.
Ah -- so easy to say, so hard to do...I agree that it is a good goal,
however.
-- Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be kent@songbird.com lonesome." -- Mark Twain