Appeal to motive

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An appeal to motive is a form of ad hominem attack in which it is asserted that the opponent's argument is false because they have some (base) motive for advancing it; it is a way of poisoning the well.

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[edit] Form

  1. Person A says P.
  2. Person A has an interest in P being true.
  3. P is false.

[edit] Examples

In many cases there is no actual evidence of the supposed motive. A common example is the Big Pharma Conspiracy: defenders of woo will dismiss those advancing rational argument as being "big pharma shills" or part of "$cience":

The determination to 'discredit' Burzynski must be money-driven, like the wealthy ACS
—Burzynski shill on Twitter

[edit] Types

[edit] Arguments involving motive

Appeal to motive is a logical fallacy. However, motive can be highly relevant in practical discourse: when almost all the proponents of position A seem to support rather more odious position B, then it's a useful heuristic to check out whether B is actually the goal. e.g. Holocaust denial is, in practice, overwhelmingly just neo-Nazism dressed up as a mere question of history.

If one can prove the opponent's argument is false, and that they have an ulterior motive for making the false claim, their entire position is much weaker. But to argue robustly, you need to show the actual argument is wrong. Being colourable as having a conflict of interest does not make one wrong.

[edit] See also

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