I would switch the order of DH1 and DH2. A tone argument is very rarely relevant to the substantive dispute. In most cases, the tone of an article shouldn’t lead you to update your belief in the conclusion. An ad hominem argument, on the other hand, is often substantively relevant, especially given the power of motivated reasoning. It is entirely reasonable to lower your credence in the conclusion of an article arguing that senators are underpaid once you discover that the author of an article is a senator. Of course, if you have already evaluated the argument itself, and are fairly confident in your evaluation, then learning the identity of the author shouldn’t significantly impact your belief in the conclusion (kind of like argument screens off authority), but that is true of tone arguments as well.
The justfication for placing tone above ad hominem in the hierarchy is that the former at least responds to the writing, not the writer. But surely this isn’t adequate justification. One might respond to the writing in many ways that are entirely irrelevant to the disagreement, e.g. by reproducing the written piece in reverse order. The question should be, which of these responses is more often relevant to a proper assessment of the truth of the conclusion.
Like a well-motivated ad hominem attack pretty much boils down to an accusation of motivated cognition, a well-motivated attack on tone usually amounts to an accusation of bad faith. While that shouldn’t affect your conclusion given a constant set of evidence, it can certainly change your or your audience’s weighting of evidence presented and shape the way you approach it rhetorically: if you suspect your opponents might be trying to score political points rather than to present a coherent argument, it behooves you to be more careful in parsing their arguments for dog-whistle phrases or known lines of rhetorical attack. If you suspect them of being deliberately inflammatory to provoke an emotional reaction, that’s a good cue to disengage, and so forth.
I don’t know how I’d weight this relative to ad hominem, but I don’t think I’d call it substantially less relevant in casual debate.
The question should be, which of these responses is more often relevant to a proper assessment of the truth of the conclusion.
If my primary goal is to come to a proper assessment of someone’s conclusion, that’s certainly true.
Of course, in that case, this entire list only covers a vanishingly small fraction of the domain of discourse. The vast majority of my responses when that’s my goal don’t involve interacting with the speaker at all… I listen to what they’ve said, I assess it, end of process.
The nature of this list suggests to me that we’re not talking about proper assessment… rather, it suggests that the assessment has already taken place, and now we’re talking about successful expression of that assessment to an audience. That is, it suggests that the OP is talking about rhetoric, not analysis. In which case proper assessment of truth may no longer be the important question.
Updating beliefs regarding the conclusion of an argument based on discussion of tone is a poor idea, for sure. Discussion of tone is tangential, and doesn’t do much to get you where you’re going at the moment. I believe it is placed above ad hominem in the hierarchy because it is more likely to be adding something, however—updating beliefs about tone based on discussion of tone makes total sense, and may lead to better discussion in the future.
I would switch the order of DH1 and DH2. A tone argument is very rarely relevant to the substantive dispute. In most cases, the tone of an article shouldn’t lead you to update your belief in the conclusion. An ad hominem argument, on the other hand, is often substantively relevant, especially given the power of motivated reasoning. It is entirely reasonable to lower your credence in the conclusion of an article arguing that senators are underpaid once you discover that the author of an article is a senator. Of course, if you have already evaluated the argument itself, and are fairly confident in your evaluation, then learning the identity of the author shouldn’t significantly impact your belief in the conclusion (kind of like argument screens off authority), but that is true of tone arguments as well.
The justfication for placing tone above ad hominem in the hierarchy is that the former at least responds to the writing, not the writer. But surely this isn’t adequate justification. One might respond to the writing in many ways that are entirely irrelevant to the disagreement, e.g. by reproducing the written piece in reverse order. The question should be, which of these responses is more often relevant to a proper assessment of the truth of the conclusion.
Like a well-motivated ad hominem attack pretty much boils down to an accusation of motivated cognition, a well-motivated attack on tone usually amounts to an accusation of bad faith. While that shouldn’t affect your conclusion given a constant set of evidence, it can certainly change your or your audience’s weighting of evidence presented and shape the way you approach it rhetorically: if you suspect your opponents might be trying to score political points rather than to present a coherent argument, it behooves you to be more careful in parsing their arguments for dog-whistle phrases or known lines of rhetorical attack. If you suspect them of being deliberately inflammatory to provoke an emotional reaction, that’s a good cue to disengage, and so forth.
I don’t know how I’d weight this relative to ad hominem, but I don’t think I’d call it substantially less relevant in casual debate.
If my primary goal is to come to a proper assessment of someone’s conclusion, that’s certainly true.
Of course, in that case, this entire list only covers a vanishingly small fraction of the domain of discourse. The vast majority of my responses when that’s my goal don’t involve interacting with the speaker at all… I listen to what they’ve said, I assess it, end of process.
The nature of this list suggests to me that we’re not talking about proper assessment… rather, it suggests that the assessment has already taken place, and now we’re talking about successful expression of that assessment to an audience. That is, it suggests that the OP is talking about rhetoric, not analysis. In which case proper assessment of truth may no longer be the important question.
OK, that helps. Perhaps this should be made explicit in the post, Luke?
Updating beliefs regarding the conclusion of an argument based on discussion of tone is a poor idea, for sure. Discussion of tone is tangential, and doesn’t do much to get you where you’re going at the moment. I believe it is placed above ad hominem in the hierarchy because it is more likely to be adding something, however—updating beliefs about tone based on discussion of tone makes total sense, and may lead to better discussion in the future.