Comments Elsewhere

For example, you quote Szasz- the well known anti psychiatrist that serves as the ’scientific’ background for Scientology’s absurd notions and fantastic beliefs.

This is as crass a textbook example of argumentum ad hominem (abusive form) as you could come up with. Szasz is not a Scientologist, so why even mention Scientology except in an attempt to tar the actual subject of your remarks (Szasz) by association? And if Szasz were a Scientologist, what would that matter? His arguments can be addressed on their merits, without dragging religion into it.

That makes the following very rich:

Finally, this conversation began when I pointed out that you were attacking Dr Sanity herself, rather than her ideas.

That still seems to be the case.

Actually, Mona was criticizing the methods by which she comes up with those ideas. There is a difference between criticizing method and merely attacking the speaker.

Furthermore, contrary to popular opinion, “personal attacks” on an interlocutor aren’t a logical fallacy. In fact there is nothing wrong with them at all, if the interlocutor merits them. The fallacy of argumentum ad hominem is committed only when one claims or suggests that these abuse proves something about the interlocutor’s conclusion, or argument, rather than merely proving something about the interlocutor herself.

Mona’s critical remarks about Dr. Sanity don’t commit this fallacy. Your repeated efforts to dismiss interlocutors’ remarks on the basis of credentials rather than argument, on the other hand, do.