I should be appalled to hear statements such as that by Terry Goddard, but I have become somewhat inured to hearing the most illogical, indeed, anti-logical, claims being made in our political discourse.
He claims that we cannot evaluate whether a statement is factual or not unless we know who made the statement. Apparently, in his mind, reality changes depending on who pontificates upon it or supports it. His statement: “If you don’t know who is paying for a statement, you can’t evaluate it.”
I suppose, following his example, I should claim to be fortunate to know that it was he who made that statement, rather than some other John Doe, because now I can decide if it makes sense not based on the content of the statement, but because I know it was Terry Goddard who made it.
This, to me, is just another instance of the ever-popular ad hominem fallacy, which, according to Google, is “the fallacy of attacking the character or circumstances of an individual who is advancing a statement or an argument instead of seeking to disprove the truth of the statement or the soundness of the argument.”
You see, if only we could know who makes a statement, it would no longer necessary to go to the trouble of evaluating the statement based on its merits (truth) and logic (soundness). We can just decide that the statement is true or false based on our opinion of the person who made the statement!
The real issue here is that of deciding whether certain claims are true or not, and that does not depend on who makes the claim. Of course, policy decisions about how we ought to deal with certain facts will depend upon our value systems and how we perceive those facts affecting us.
But neither of those should logically depend on who makes a claim.
