5 ms·

An appeal to authority is not a logical fallacy if the person in question is actually an authority in the domain.

by Espressosaurus 4y ago

fatbird 4y ago
I wish more people would remember this.
- butthisiswrong 4y ago
  But its incorrect, its literally the logical fallacy, argument from authority, if the person us not an authority then it cannot by definition be argument by authority. Experts must prove their views with evidence and not rely upon their reputation, that is the meaning of the fallacy. No wonder so many people cant reason well.
  - fatbird 4y ago
    An argument from authority is not a fallacy in and of itself. An appeal to false authority is always a fallacy, such as considering an authority's opinion on a topic on which they're not authoritative. If the participants in a debate agree that an authority is legitimate, then an unchallenged appeal to their authority is not fallacious. If an authority's opinion is contradicted by undisputed evidence, then an appeal to their authority is fallacious. The whole point of the distinction is to admit authority as a valid source of information, in the absence of direct evidence, because we can't possibly reason from direct evidence in every single case.
ValentineC 4y ago
> if the person in question is actually an authority in the domain I haven't seen a name mentioned in much of the discussion here. Who are we talking about from this list, and what else have they done? https://1password.com/company/ https://1password.com/company/
thefaux 4y ago
The truth of a statement is what matters, not who uttered it.
- scubbo 4y ago
  And, when you are unable to evaluate the truth of a statement for yourself, the expertise of the person making the statement is a helpful datapoint when deciding how much to trust it.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Right but there is no statement by competent person made here. The audits could be classified as that but not "well they hire security people, they must know what they are doing!" Hyundai hires engine developers and their engines explode nonetheless!
zopa 4y ago
Sure it is: an appeal to authority is not a valid step in a deductive logical argument, unless you have somehow established that the authority in question is literally infallible. Now, it's grounds for an (extremely) persuasive inference! And we know very little of what we consider known by strict deductive logic: we rely on weaker inferential reasoning the vast majority of the time. Grandparent's "means almost nothing" is much, much too strong. But when we really want to know for sure that something is true, people are going to want to see proof, not a statement from someone who probably knows of proof.
- msla 4y ago
  If you want to go down this route, we know nothing of the real world from strict deductive reasoning because the axioms strict deduction flows from do not apply to the real world, but to mathematical universes where absolute truth is accessible to us. In reality, all statements we could use as premises are only probably true to a certain level of confidence, having themselves been constructed from inductive reasoning. Therefore, appeal to a good authority is as good of a step as any, by which I mean it's only provisionally worthwhile unless and until sufficient evidence comes in to demonstrate it is invalid in a specific case.
  - zopa 4y ago
    Absolutely we can't get very far with logic without relying on some axioms, and those axioms can't themselves be proven. But I don't think it follows that we need to accept every axiom someone proposes, such as what counts as a good enough authority. You and I probably agree on the basic existence and persistence of objects, for example, and we might as well pretend that we agreed to treat that as axiomatic ahead of time. I'm less sure that we'd have the same list of which people count as infallible-enough experts in which areas. I'm really just here to stand up for the body of knowledge I learned in 9th grade Logic Camp. Good old classical Aristotelian logic is where the concept of a "logical fallacy" comes from; it really is all about deductive reasoning and not about inferences; and there really isn't a PhD-from-a-really-good-school exception to the fallacy of argument from authority. Just the same way that "X is false because George Santos said it" is simultaneously very persuasive, at least to me this week; and also a fallacy ad hominem.
ilyt 4y ago
Appeal to authority is, instead of giving actual arguments you throw a name and say, "well, they surely know their stuff!". Whether they know stuff or not is irrevelant to the fact person is trying to avoid having constructive argument. So it could really be dismissed by "okay, they are experts, but how you're sure they didn't wrote it all on hangover?"

An appeal to authority is not a logical fallacy if the person in question is actually an authority in the domain.

fatbird 4y ago

I wish more people would remember this.

butthisiswrong 4y ago
But its incorrect, its literally the logical fallacy, argument from authority, if the person us not an authority then it cannot by definition be argument by authority. Experts must prove their views with evidence and not rely upon their reputation, that is the meaning of the fallacy. No wonder so many people cant reason well.
- fatbird 4y ago
  An argument from authority is not a fallacy in and of itself. An appeal to false authority is always a fallacy, such as considering an authority's opinion on a topic on which they're not authoritative. If the participants in a debate agree that an authority is legitimate, then an unchallenged appeal to their authority is not fallacious. If an authority's opinion is contradicted by undisputed evidence, then an appeal to their authority is fallacious. The whole point of the distinction is to admit authority as a valid source of information, in the absence of direct evidence, because we can't possibly reason from direct evidence in every single case.

ValentineC 4y ago

> if the person in question is actually an authority in the domain I haven't seen a name mentioned in much of the discussion here. Who are we talking about from this list, and what else have they done? https://1password.com/company/ https://1password.com/company/

thefaux 4y ago

The truth of a statement is what matters, not who uttered it.

scubbo 4y ago
And, when you are unable to evaluate the truth of a statement for yourself, the expertise of the person making the statement is a helpful datapoint when deciding how much to trust it.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Right but there is no statement by competent person made here. The audits could be classified as that but not "well they hire security people, they must know what they are doing!" Hyundai hires engine developers and their engines explode nonetheless!

zopa 4y ago

Sure it is: an appeal to authority is not a valid step in a deductive logical argument, unless you have somehow established that the authority in question is literally infallible. Now, it's grounds for an (extremely) persuasive inference! And we know very little of what we consider known by strict deductive logic: we rely on weaker inferential reasoning the vast majority of the time. Grandparent's "means almost nothing" is much, much too strong. But when we really want to know for sure that something is true, people are going to want to see proof, not a statement from someone who probably knows of proof.

msla 4y ago
If you want to go down this route, we know nothing of the real world from strict deductive reasoning because the axioms strict deduction flows from do not apply to the real world, but to mathematical universes where absolute truth is accessible to us. In reality, all statements we could use as premises are only probably true to a certain level of confidence, having themselves been constructed from inductive reasoning. Therefore, appeal to a good authority is as good of a step as any, by which I mean it's only provisionally worthwhile unless and until sufficient evidence comes in to demonstrate it is invalid in a specific case.
- zopa 4y ago
  Absolutely we can't get very far with logic without relying on some axioms, and those axioms can't themselves be proven. But I don't think it follows that we need to accept every axiom someone proposes, such as what counts as a good enough authority. You and I probably agree on the basic existence and persistence of objects, for example, and we might as well pretend that we agreed to treat that as axiomatic ahead of time. I'm less sure that we'd have the same list of which people count as infallible-enough experts in which areas. I'm really just here to stand up for the body of knowledge I learned in 9th grade Logic Camp. Good old classical Aristotelian logic is where the concept of a "logical fallacy" comes from; it really is all about deductive reasoning and not about inferences; and there really isn't a PhD-from-a-really-good-school exception to the fallacy of argument from authority. Just the same way that "X is false because George Santos said it" is simultaneously very persuasive, at least to me this week; and also a fallacy ad hominem.

ilyt 4y ago

Appeal to authority is, instead of giving actual arguments you throw a name and say, "well, they surely know their stuff!". Whether they know stuff or not is irrevelant to the fact person is trying to avoid having constructive argument. So it could really be dismissed by "okay, they are experts, but how you're sure they didn't wrote it all on hangover?"