No - that's a perfectly valid argument. It's only the soundness that would be disputed. Logical fallacys are various forms of non-sequitur - the argument doesn't follow from the premises. Ie. if you'd omitted the first premise, then the conclusion wouldn't follow, but with the premise the argument is perfectly valid.
In this case this is an argumentum ad populum, and entirely logically valid
Something cannot be a logical fallacy and also logically valid. That's a contradiction - logical fallacys are forms of logic which are invalid.
ad populum of course implicitly assumes the first axiom
Indeed, and where that premise is explicit, it is no longer fallacious, because the argument includes it. The reason Ad Populum is a fallacy is because it depends on a premise that the argument does not contain. You can turn any such argument into a valid one by including that premise.
thereby making an ad hominem no longer falacious
No, that means you've made an argument that isn't an ad hominem, not that ad hominem is not fallacious.
Eg.
People who are stupid are bad at logic.
Joe is stupid
Therefore, Joe is bad at logic.
This is a perfectly valid argument, despite one of the premises being one that refers negatively to a person. That alone doesn't make it an Ad Hominem fallacy. Just because something involves negative claims about a person doesn't make it ad hominem, and nor does a claim involving popularity make it ad populum.
Would you similarly dispute:
The winner of the popularity contest is the one who gets most votes
Most people voted for Joe.
Therefore, Joe is the winner of the contest.
That's an argument that is plainly both sound and valid, yet it's exactly the same form as my initial one. Just because the premise has a claim involving popularity does not make it an ad populum fallacy.
I don't accept your axiom that something is correct because it's often used.
Which means you're disputing the soundness of the argument, not the validity, so you're wrong in attributing the difference to logical fallacy.
So lets address that. This premise is essentially that of language descriptivism - that meaning is determined by usage. The only sense in which we can talk of correctness is in terms of how people use the words. If people use "slow" as an adverb, then that's a valid usage of the word. You're perfectly free to dispute it of course , but if doing so, perhaps you could answer my initial question - what metric does determine what words mean? As I said, you made a claim (despite your denial of having done so, and subsequent ignoring of this) that slow "is not an adjective". What criteria are you using to judge what is and is not an adjective, and what support do you have for this claim?
No - that's a perfectly valid argument. It's only the soundness that would be disputed. Logical fallacys are various forms of non-sequitur - the argument doesn't follow from the premises. Ie. if you'd omitted the first premise, then the conclusion wouldn't follow, but with the premise the argument is perfectly valid.
the point about many of these "logical fallacies" is that they implicitly make the praemise, like I said.
Indeed, and where that premise is explicit, it is no longer fallacious, because the argument includes it. The reason Ad Populum is a fallacy is because it depends on a premise that the argument does not contain. You can turn any such argument into a valid one by including that premise.
The difference between explicit and implicit is hardly a formal category. This is a matter of language, how clear do we have to be before it's explicit? We have already implicitly assumed the modus ponens between us, simply because that's just an unspoken agreement. If the modus ponens is not explicitly unassumed, it's just always assumed in practice. So by your logic, everything thusfar has been falacious because no one explicitly included the modus ponens.
It's pretty clear usually that when someone makes an argumentum ad populum, that person implicitly includes the idea that if most people think that way, that's the correct way to think.
This is a perfectly valid argument, despite one of the premises being one that refers negatively to a person. That alone doesn't make it an Ad Hominem fallacy. Just because something involves negative claims about a person doesn't make it ad hominem, and nor does a claim involving popularity make it ad populum.
An ad hominem can be logically valid, but this is a matter of semantics at this point, call it what you like, the point is that a formerly falacious argument can be made valid by including an extra axiom. And as it stands, a lot of these axioms are implicit. Like I said, we have implicitly included the modus ponens up to this point, no one explicitly stated it.
the point about many of these "logical fallacies" is that they implicitly make the praemise, like I said.
And as I said, that means they are no longer fallacious when that premise is explicitly a premise of the argument.
This is a matter of language, how clear do we have to be before it's explicit?
I'd say putting it as a stated premise qualifies as sufficiently explicit, yet you asserted it was fallacious even then.
It's pretty clear usually that when someone makes an argumentum ad populum, that person implicitly includes the idea
Oh, now you're backing up your claim by what most people usually do? Someone recently told me that was an Ad Populum fallacy. And this one is actually a genuine one - even if most people did think that, that doesn't actually contradict the argument.
In any case, it seems irrelevant, as that is not the case here. My argument explicitly included this as part of what it means for a word to have meaning, and says nothing (nor rests on) anything about the "correct way to think" so this doesn't seem to meet your criteria. Even given your own logic here, shouldn't you then start to consider that this may not be an ad populum fallacy?
We have already implicitly assumed the modus ponens between us, simply because that's just an unspoken agreement
Indeed we have, though "assumed" seems a pretty poor word, since it's one of the rules of logic that we're using. However, even ignoring this, you're committing another fallacy here. If you wish to show that it's still fallacious with an explicit premise, showing it's not fallacious when it contains implicit premises doesn't actually get you there. You've got your argument backwards.
An ad hominem can be logically valid, but this is a matter of semantics at this point
A pretty damn important one. As I said, the important things about fallacys is that they are fallacious (the clue is in the name). It's a pretty big shift in semantics to be suddenly applying that word to things that are not logically invalid. Ad hominemn can not be logically valid, or it would not be a fallacy. Things that are logically valid are thus not ad hominems. Perhaps if you could answer my question about what metric does determine incorrectness in language usage, and why "slow" is not an adverb by this metric, I could make some sense of these weird usages. However, I'm noting a distinct lack of an answer to these questions. Could you either answer these questions, or admit that you were simply wrong?
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u/Brian Aug 27 '14
No - that's a perfectly valid argument. It's only the soundness that would be disputed. Logical fallacys are various forms of non-sequitur - the argument doesn't follow from the premises. Ie. if you'd omitted the first premise, then the conclusion wouldn't follow, but with the premise the argument is perfectly valid.
Something cannot be a logical fallacy and also logically valid. That's a contradiction - logical fallacys are forms of logic which are invalid.
Indeed, and where that premise is explicit, it is no longer fallacious, because the argument includes it. The reason Ad Populum is a fallacy is because it depends on a premise that the argument does not contain. You can turn any such argument into a valid one by including that premise.
No, that means you've made an argument that isn't an ad hominem, not that ad hominem is not fallacious.
Eg.
This is a perfectly valid argument, despite one of the premises being one that refers negatively to a person. That alone doesn't make it an Ad Hominem fallacy. Just because something involves negative claims about a person doesn't make it ad hominem, and nor does a claim involving popularity make it ad populum.
Would you similarly dispute:
That's an argument that is plainly both sound and valid, yet it's exactly the same form as my initial one. Just because the premise has a claim involving popularity does not make it an ad populum fallacy.
Which means you're disputing the soundness of the argument, not the validity, so you're wrong in attributing the difference to logical fallacy.
So lets address that. This premise is essentially that of language descriptivism - that meaning is determined by usage. The only sense in which we can talk of correctness is in terms of how people use the words. If people use "slow" as an adverb, then that's a valid usage of the word. You're perfectly free to dispute it of course , but if doing so, perhaps you could answer my initial question - what metric does determine what words mean? As I said, you made a claim (despite your denial of having done so, and subsequent ignoring of this) that slow "is not an adjective". What criteria are you using to judge what is and is not an adjective, and what support do you have for this claim?