Friday, February 5, 2010
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Alan Dershowitz: Arguments 'Ad Hominem' and 'By Ethnic Identity' in Defense of Goldstone Report - 'Even before the Goldstone Report was released, Richard Goldstone was arguing for its credibility by invoking his Jewishness, his Zionism, his daughter’s residence in Israel and his connection to Hebrew University. It was the mirror image of the classic fallacy known as the argument ad hominem, which is defined as follows: A substantive argument should not be rejected solely because of who has offered it. It follows of course from this fallacy that an argument should also not be accepted because of who offered it. A close relative of the ad hominem fallacy is what I have called "the argument by ethnic identity," which I have defined as follows: An anti-Israel argument is made stronger if offered by a Jew...'
