thou shalt not commit logical fallacies

[FBM]

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:


Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
Person A makes claim C about subject S.
Therefore, C is true.
This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious.

This sort of reasoning is fallacious when the person in question is not an expert. In such cases the reasoning is flawed because the fact that an unqualified person makes a claim does not provide any justification for the claim. The claim could be true, but the fact that an unqualified person made the claim does not provide any rational reason to accept the claim as true.

When a person falls prey to this fallacy, they are accepting a claim as true without there being adequate evidence to do so. More specifically, the person is accepting the claim because they erroneously believe that the person making the claim is a legitimate expert and hence that the claim is reasonable to accept. Since people have a tendency to believe authorities (and there are, in fact, good reasons to accept some claims made by authorities) this fallacy is a fairly common one.

Since this sort of reasoning is fallacious only when the person is not a legitimate authority in a particular context, it is necessary to provide some acceptable standards of assessment.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacie ... ority.html

[Tyrannical]

My memory of undergrad Logic class isn't perfect, but I seem to recall the prof stressing that it's an appeal to irrelevant authority that's fallacious. Like Michael Jordan telling you which is the best car to buy, Lady Gaga giving musical advice, etc.

Yes, that is my understanding as well.

I might not trust Einstein when it comes to hair styles, but he should be considered quite trust worthy in his field of expertise, unless you can cite a reason to disagree.

[FBM]

But at the same time, it's wise to keep this in mind:

Fallacy Fallacy
Alias:•Argumentum ad Logicam
•Fallacist's Fallacy
Type: Bad Reasons Fallacy
Form:

Argument A for the conclusion C is fallacious.
Therefore, C is false.

Exposition:

Like anything else, the concept of logical fallacy can be misunderstood and misused, and can even become a source of fallacious reasoning. To say that an argument is fallacious is to claim that there is no sufficiently strong logical connection between the premisses and the conclusion. This says nothing about the truth-value of the conclusion, so it is unwarranted to conclude that a proposition is false simply because some argument for it is fallacious.

It's easy to come up with fallacious arguments for any proposition, whatever its truth-value. What's hard is to find a cogent argument for a proposition, even when it's true. For example, it is now believed by mathematicians that the proposition known as "Fermat's last theorem" is true, yet it took over three centuries for anyone to prove it. In the meantime, many invalid arguments were presented for it.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/fallfall.html

[trdsf]

Or people forget that an appeal to authority is not a fallacy, when the authority actually is an expert.

Experts are still frequently mistaken, so it's still a fallacy.

Invalid conclusion. Can you statistically show that experts making statements about their field of expertise are wrong more often than right?

The fault in 'appeal to authority' is not in the appeal or the authority per se, but in making an inappropriate appeal, or making an appeal to an unqualified authority, or both. I am perfectly willing, for example, to take the word of a mathematician (or at least of the professional mathematics community) that Andrew Wiles' proof of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture (and by extension, of Fermat's Last Theorem) is valid.

[Tyrannical]

Or people forget that an appeal to authority is not a fallacy, when the authority actually is an expert.

Experts are still frequently mistaken, so it's still a fallacy.

Invalid conclusion. Can you statistically show that experts making statements about their field of expertise are wrong more often than right?

The fault in 'appeal to authority' is not in the appeal or the authority per se, but in making an inappropriate appeal, or making an appeal to an unqualified authority, or both. I am perfectly willing, for example, to take the word of a mathematician (or at least of the professional mathematics community) that Andrew Wiles' proof of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture (and by extension, of Fermat's Last Theorem) is valid.

Appeal to authority is used correctly all the time in the legal field where previous cases or opinions are cited.

[Atheist-Lite]

The people who get anywhere in life always cut corners with logic. The geeks win arguments in theory but when the guy using his emotional appeals and stuff walks away with the gal you need to ask...? Logic is great inside a computer though...like everything else it has its place.

[FBM]

The people who get anywhere in life always cut corners with logic. The geeks win arguments in theory but when the guy using his emotional appeals and stuff walks away with the gal you need to ask...? Logic is great inside a computer though...like everything else it has its place.

Very true. This is one reason why the smartest people don't hold the highest positions in gov'ts.

[Hermit]

I might not trust Einstein when it comes to hair styles, but he should be considered quite trust worthy in his field of expertise, unless you can cite a reason to disagree.

Even in the latter case an appeal to authority is not a logical reason for claiming that assertion x is true or false. Einstein opposed quantum theory on the grounds of his expertise as a theoretical physicist. Criminality cannot be discerned by studying the shape of skulls despite authorities who have extensively studied the concept for years, and of course the world is not flat despite the pronouncements of the most prominent medieval astronomers.

[Svartalf]

Or people forget that an appeal to authority is not a fallacy, when the authority actually is an expert.

It may be true, it may be right... but in the case of debating and expounding a reasoning, it's still a fallacy.

We all know that Isaac Newton was right, and that his works on celestial mechanics are fundamentally correct.
Yet, if you have to defend gravitation, unless you can yourself reexplain how it works, and show that he was right, resting on the repute of Newton IS a logical fallacy, even if used to support a truthful and correct position.

[Tyrannical]

When you appeal correctly to a recognized authority, the burden of proof falls on the other party to refute.

[Svartalf]

When you appeal to authority, you're weakening your line of defence, or the impetus of your attack... because, sorry, but a) when YOU appeal to an authority, either your opponent recognizes it as such, and may yield, or he may deny the authority (and with woo believers or simply people of bad faith, you never know what excuse they'll pull out), and you get to defend not only your position, but your authority... and let's face it, you use authorities because you deem they showed stuff you can't.

How can you prove that there is an attraction between you and earth that is a relative function of yours and the planet's respective weights and that decreases with the square of the distance between you and it rather than it being dog's will that there be an up and a down and that things always go down unless they have some means of counteracting the effect (say, flapping wings or using a reaction effect)?

[Hermit]

When you appeal correctly to a recognized authority, the burden of proof falls on the other party to refute.

I gave examples of people appealing to recognised authorities that turned out to be wrong. Who decides you have correctly appealed to an authority? Another authority? Oh wait. Now there's a genuine logical fallacy.

[Tyrannical]

When you appeal correctly to a recognized authority, the burden of proof falls on the other party to refute.

I gave examples of people appealing to recognised authorities that turned out to be wrong. Who decides you have correctly appealed to an authority? Another authority? Oh wait. Now there's a genuine logical fallacy.

Then all you have to do is appeal to another authority that contradicts the original.

[FBM]

I don't know about anyone else, of course, but when I cite an authority on a topic, I'm just saying that such is the current state of scholarship on the matter, not that the authority's words prove a truth. I cite authorities as a way of weighing evidence and probabilities that such and such is true, not absolute proof that it is.

And experts disagree. A physics prof at the local community college may disagree with a Nobel physics laureate. In such a case, assuming that you're not in the position to do the physics yourself, it is legitimate to go with the Nobel laureate until further evidence is available. Citing either physics prof would not be a logical fallacy, if the argument is about physics and their specific special area of physics. But neither would it be conclusive proof that one's conclusion is true. It just makes your argument stronger. Remember, an argument that has no logical fallacies in it can also be untrue.

[Hermit]

When you appeal correctly to a recognized authority, the burden of proof falls on the other party to refute.

I gave examples of people appealing to recognised authorities that turned out to be wrong. Who decides you have correctly appealed to an authority? Another authority? Oh wait. Now there's a genuine logical fallacy.

Then all you have to do is appeal to another authority that contradicts the original.

And who decides you have correctly appealed to that authority? And the next, and the one after that, and ... It's turtles all the way down.