<i><b>Philosphical Argument with a Friend about Ad hominem and Frankfurt School<br>

Hasan Yahya, Ph.D</i><br>

The  message from a friend says:

<i>" I don't know anything about your "crecentolgy" theory, but it seems to focused on conflict management - the need for compromise is certainly intrinsic to this. However, the search for truth is not the same as the search for consensus, or compromise. I suspect we might be approaching the conversation from different objectives right now. It sounds like you're coming from the Edward Said camp with much of your perspective? If so, that's precisely the "franfurt school" heritage I don't accept for the reasons I gave earlier. In effect, I find his criticisms nothing largely adhominem attacks dressed up with an inordinate amount of prose, sorry.:) You mentioned Russell-I'm sorry, who is this? Bertrand Russell? If so, I love him, as I subscribe to analytical philosophy."</i> [End of My. Friend message]<br>

My response was in two parts, the first was: You make it hard now! 1) I passed too often that place in my way to Detroit and back. 2) My Crescentology theory is a book on amazon, its cheep though, but I can furnish a copy. 3)Truth never be found unless relatively with what is it according to research with high probability, compromise is an attitude like truth if we are accustomed to; 5) Are you kidding about Bertrand Russell, the American-British who wrote, Why I am Not a Christian? It 's hard to believe.  (4) will be answered later. I don't think that we talk on different perspectives here, if we both talk logic. Here is my second response number 4 above: <br> 

1. Concerning the terms you used "The Fran(k)furt School" (FS) and "adhominem attack", under these terms, the FS considers facts or truths deny adhominem stereotyping. If you need facts we can discuss the perceived or imagined facts in both writings of Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington. A good book on the subject  was published by M. Shaid Alam, Challenges the New Orientalism, (2006). He negates adhominem logically in Edward Said's  response to Lewis and Huntington attack of Orientalism. In fact, the later two professors had adhominem attacks against Edward Said. I believe if I argue, I would argue on bases of ideas rather than persons. Persons have many colors, but truth has two sides, true or false. The most dangerous ideas are those which depend on perceptions rather than facts. Ideas, however may be ideological, or pure intellectual as in mathematics, you cant give ideas about numbers as true or false. If ideological, ideas need  prove to be true,  but intellectual ideas need facts like natural phenomena, the sun rises from the east, I have kids, so I am a woman. [This case might not be true unless the talker is not a man]  <br>

2. In my case, I cannot be in that side of ad hominem argument because I  believe that I am not ideological. If I have one, my ideology would be intellectual reasoning to find facts. Emotions while have a great deal in human life cannot be discard, but emotional issues have to be distinguished from facts in human relationships. By the wayA another good book is Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance by Rolf Wiggershaus, David Weininger. It gives  the following description of the Franfurt School: He describes "In the early part of this century, a loose aggregation of intellectuals known as the "Frankfurt School" produced a body of work which was haunted by exactly such issues. Famous names include Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm. While they engaged a dazzlingly diverse group of intellectual disciplines and theoretical approaches, The guiding thread of of their analyses was the diagnosis of the ruined, pathological world of the early 20th century. Under the triumphant twin shadows of full-blown industrial capitalism and National Socialism. <br>

3. I might ask the same two questions, the Frankfurt School asked 1) How did we get here? and 2) Where does salvation lie? Which cannot be answered in short time or easily. But the impact will be endless on intellectual life. What was so tremendously original about their collective responses was that the answers lay not in political activism or in a revolutionary labor movement, but in such abstruse phenomena as avant-garde art, psychoanalysis, dialectical philosophy, and a messianic religious faith. <br>

4. Their [FS] studies-which go under the general name of "Critical Theory"-were among the first which can be properly labeled interdisciplinary, encompassing insights from so many different areas. By the time of their mature works-most notably Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment-the members of the Frankfurt School no longer referred to their work as philosophy, sociology, aesthetics or psychology; it was, simply, "Theory."<br>

5. In my philosophy, according to my learning and interacting with people experiences (students, colleagues, and employees through my career), I would encourage people to adopt certain principles such as: Always try. Do your best. Manage yourself. Treat others with respect. Cooperate and actively help others. And finally; Respect the property and rights of others, as one school took as principles for school students. I believe these principles may apply to any person, regardless of social or biological characteristics. Therefore, my judgment style is different.  I refuse to be described as sharing in an  ad hominem argument, for two reasons: 1 : appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect and, 2 : marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made. As in Latin: "argument to the man", or  "against the man" which  consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the source making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. I don't engage in a  process of proving or disproving the claim to make it subverted, because  the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject. <br>

6. In other words, the Ad hominem argument is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem abusive, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or attacking the person who proposed the argument (personal attack) in an attempt to discredit the argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it, which I refuse. <br>

7. Finally, Ad hominem arguments are always invalid in syllogistic logic, since the truth value of premises is taken as given, and the validity of a logical inference is independent of the source making the inference. Furthermore,  ad hominem arguments are rarely presented as formal syllogisms, and their assessment lies in the domain of informal logic and the theory of evidence, which  depends to a large degree on assessments of the credibility of witness, (eyewitness or expert witness evidence. Evidence that a purported eyewitness is unreliable, or has a motive for lying, or that a purported expert witness lacks the claimed expertise can play a major role in making judgments from evidence.  (1228 words)<br>

<i>Hasan Yahya is a professor of sociology, a columnist at wfol.tv, Malaysia, and TINA International News Agency, Chicago, USA www.hasanyahya.com </i><br>