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The argumentative fallacy is called the fallacy of the false appeal to authority. For instance citing a person's Ph.D. in English literature as a reason to bel
by skh 8y ago
The argumentative fallacy is called the fallacy of the false appeal to authority. For instance citing a person's Ph.D. in English literature as a reason to believe their statements on quantum mechanics is an example of fallacious reasoning. Referring to the statements about quantum mechanics of an expert in quantum mechanics is not fallacious reasoning.
You do buy arguments from authority every time you listen to your doctor's advice regarding your health. It’s perfectly reasonable to listen to consensus expert opinions on climate change and if you think they have changed their phrasing over the years by assuming the sale it’s because they no longer have doubts about the cause of climate change.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoThe consensus of the Supreme Court of the United States was that Black people were not legally the same as Whites. Your argument about doctor's advice undermines your point: are eggs healthy to eat, or not? Should a good daily diet include 6 or more servings of wheat and carbs? In both cases the consensus was strongly expressed and later debunked...
- skh 8y agoYou appear to be deliberately misinterpreting the point I made. You made a claim to not buying arguments made from authority and I pointed out that you do buy some arguments made from authority. You do so every time you listen to your doctor's advice regarding your healh. Your claim about not buying arguments made from authority is false. Your understanding of the argumentative fallacy of the false appeal to authority is false. Furthermore your conclusion about the point I made is false. Consider this. Experts sometimes get things wrong. Their consensus opinions though are the best we can go by since they have, by definition, the most knowledge on a particular subject. So non experts are left with the cruel reality that even though expert opinions are the best available on a given subject that opinion could still be wrong. In any event it is not an argumentative fallacy to cite experts and that is what I said.
- DoctorOetker 8y agoso this is a flagged comment near the top, from the half I can read I can only assume I too would disagree with the poster, but is it really necessary to "protect" me from this information? To the extent that that it gets many downvotes (greyed out) it seems the audience does not need protection, so why censor? I probably would prefer the comment to just state "glagged" but in a way that I can click it to reveal the flagged message...
- eropple 8y agoYou can turn on showdead in your profile to see flagged posts. It's not a conspiracy.
- DoctorOetker 8y agothanks for pointing this out, this is not evident on its own... many discussion platforms have some form of censorship so it is not unnatural to assume an unclickable "flagged" to be censored.
- pokemongoaway 8y agoYou're the one purposefully misinterpreting. He obviously implied that just because an argument is from a climate science authority, it does not mean one should believe it. Same with war, nutrition, pharmaceuticals. You're just cherry picking which authorities are good and which ones are bad. Every time you've applied logical fallacies, they have been done so incorrectly. Your original comment attacked him for not having the proper credentials... You baited this, not him.
- chronolitus 8y agohttps://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- marci 8y agoThank you William Playfair. I thought I knew, but seeing it in graph form just blew my mind.