>i can ignore the endless bickering. i was talking about principles.
That's what I'm talking about too. I think it can become a matter of principle to question why we should dismiss anything having to do with "psychological" motives or "states of mind" as automatically ad hominem and therefore dismissable.
Freud came up with ideas as fascinating, important, and *useful* as Marx did. Why do we limit and police the way such insights can be used?
Beggs said "It's just a version of the rhetorical move of speculating about your opponent's mental health."
I assume what he means is you can't go around dismissing an argument by saying, for example, "you have to be crazy to believe that."
That's a logical fallacy. But it doesn't follow that anything having to do with "mental processes" should be off the table, I don't think.