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Wrong. Appeal to authority (argumentum ad vericundiam) says that: because Ms. X is an expert on Y, this statement she made about Y must be true. There's no con

Wrong. Appeal to authority (argumentum ad vericundiam) says that: because Ms. X is an expert on Y, this statement she made about Y must be true. There's no condition requiring the subject matter to be outside her area of expertise, in fact it wouldn't make sense there - since she's not an authority on areas not her expertise, it can't be an appeal to authority in that instance.

st3v3r 10y ago
It's still not relevant to the point, as this is her field of study. I would trust her to know what's going on before any random doofus on the internet.
- spearo77 10y ago
  I had to go look it up.. found this -- https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority > Appeals to authority are not valid arguments, but nor is it reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence. However it is, entirely possible that the opinion of a person or institution of authority is wrong; therefore the authority that such a person or institution holds does not have any intrinsic bearing upon whether their claims are true or not. So, you're both correct!
- gingerrr 10y ago
  If by "I trust her to know what's going on" you mean you would put faith in a proposition she makes based solely on her domain knowledge, that's literally the fallacy. Sure - trust her to know the data in the space better than some random doofus. That's sensible, and why we have experts. That doesn't mean you can grant her extra consideration when evaluating the soundness of the argument she makes with that data as support - the logic contained in that argument does NOT depend on her being a domain expert, but on being a good logician. That's what the fallacy points out. I don't think we're disagreeing, but I wanted to clarify the distinction between her being a field expert and her being an argumentative expert.

st3v3r 10y ago

It's still not relevant to the point, as this is her field of study. I would trust her to know what's going on before any random doofus on the internet.

spearo77 10y ago
I had to go look it up.. found this -- https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority > Appeals to authority are not valid arguments, but nor is it reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence. However it is, entirely possible that the opinion of a person or institution of authority is wrong; therefore the authority that such a person or institution holds does not have any intrinsic bearing upon whether their claims are true or not. So, you're both correct!
gingerrr 10y ago
If by "I trust her to know what's going on" you mean you would put faith in a proposition she makes based solely on her domain knowledge, that's literally the fallacy. Sure - trust her to know the data in the space better than some random doofus. That's sensible, and why we have experts. That doesn't mean you can grant her extra consideration when evaluating the soundness of the argument she makes with that data as support - the logic contained in that argument does NOT depend on her being a domain expert, but on being a good logician. That's what the fallacy points out. I don't think we're disagreeing, but I wanted to clarify the distinction between her being a field expert and her being an argumentative expert.