Typically, this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself. The most common form of
ad hominem is "A makes a claim
x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument
x is wrong".
Fallacious
ad hominem reasoning occurs where the validity of an argument is not based on
deduction or
syllogism, but on an attribute of the person putting it forward.