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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 li

by 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.
  - msla 4y ago
    > 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. Nobody's saying we do, and I think there's a good middle ground we all actually inhabit where the director of the CDC, for example, is an authority on diseases when speaking in an official capacity, but we don't give a damn what they think about the latest movies. This isn't a difficult concept until we try to formalize it, really, at which point I'm sure we can run off into a bramble of paradox and bizarre conclusions we "must" accept in order to satisfy certain kinds of logical consistency. > I'm less sure that we'd have the same list of which people count as infallible-enough experts in which areas. This is a problem and we've seen it be a problem quite severely in recent years. Part of the problem is certain political groups following people with absolutely no recognizable expertise in anything except making money from people who don't recognize logical argumentation as even potentially useful: If it doesn't validate their pre-existing ideas, it's not only wrong, it's a trap laid by the enemy, and anyone who promotes it must be punished. Take that mindset, add some over-simplified and incorrect models of reality, and you have people who refuse to accept reasonable sources of authority for self-contradictory and purely emotional reasons. Finally, logic has come a long way since Aristotle, and using some kind of consistent attempt at statistical reasoning is no less valid than declaring some probably-true statements to be axioms or postulates and reasoning deductively from there. Like diagnosing a disease: You can't use deductive logic to determine why you're having flu-like symptoms, you must use some kind of reasoning based on relative frequency of diseases and, possibly, incorporate the results of various tests in a more inductive fashion. "George Santos lies a lot" is a perfectly valid piece of evidence to incorporate into a worldview, just like "The seasonal influenza is more common than some horrendous infection which also initially presents with flu-like symptoms" is.
    - zopa 4y ago
      I agree about the problem —- I might quibble with the psychology, but close enough. But that’s exactly why the distinction I’m trying to draw is so important. If we keep in mind the difference between what we can rigorously establish and what we’re fundamentally taking on faith (however well-founded), then at least we can talk to people on the other side: clarify core disagreements, examine evidence, and occasionally, with entirely too much work, change a few minds. That may sound hopelessly optimistic, but shifting one mind in fifty would be an earthquake: for most purposes,’enough to declare victory. Treat arguments from authority as indistinguishable from any other rule of reasoning, on the other hand, and there’s nothing to do but declare people who don’t share our view of authority irrational. And then I don’t know what the plan is. It’s exhausting when people refuse to recognize well-established expertise, but I think it’s counter-productive that so many of us get defensive about it. Yelling at people to accept our authority figures isn’t working. It won’t ever work.
shakow 4y ago
> Sure it is: an appeal to authority is not a valid step in a deductive logical argument Technically, unless you reinvented logic on your own, this in an argument of authority with extra steps.
- zopa 4y ago
  If we're talking about fallacies, we're invoking old-fashioned classical logic. The nice thing about having a notion of strict deductive reasoning is that it gives you an idea of what arguments might persuade someone of basic good faith, but who very much doesn't want to be persuaded. If you and your interlocutor don't both accept modus ponens then you won't get anywhere, but that's pretty unlikely in practice. (And I'd actually argue that we each invent logic on our own and then notice that the logics are equivalent, but that's straying into metaphysics.)

by zopa 4y ago

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.
- msla 4y ago
  > 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. Nobody's saying we do, and I think there's a good middle ground we all actually inhabit where the director of the CDC, for example, is an authority on diseases when speaking in an official capacity, but we don't give a damn what they think about the latest movies. This isn't a difficult concept until we try to formalize it, really, at which point I'm sure we can run off into a bramble of paradox and bizarre conclusions we "must" accept in order to satisfy certain kinds of logical consistency. > I'm less sure that we'd have the same list of which people count as infallible-enough experts in which areas. This is a problem and we've seen it be a problem quite severely in recent years. Part of the problem is certain political groups following people with absolutely no recognizable expertise in anything except making money from people who don't recognize logical argumentation as even potentially useful: If it doesn't validate their pre-existing ideas, it's not only wrong, it's a trap laid by the enemy, and anyone who promotes it must be punished. Take that mindset, add some over-simplified and incorrect models of reality, and you have people who refuse to accept reasonable sources of authority for self-contradictory and purely emotional reasons. Finally, logic has come a long way since Aristotle, and using some kind of consistent attempt at statistical reasoning is no less valid than declaring some probably-true statements to be axioms or postulates and reasoning deductively from there. Like diagnosing a disease: You can't use deductive logic to determine why you're having flu-like symptoms, you must use some kind of reasoning based on relative frequency of diseases and, possibly, incorporate the results of various tests in a more inductive fashion. "George Santos lies a lot" is a perfectly valid piece of evidence to incorporate into a worldview, just like "The seasonal influenza is more common than some horrendous infection which also initially presents with flu-like symptoms" is.
  - zopa 4y ago
    I agree about the problem —- I might quibble with the psychology, but close enough. But that’s exactly why the distinction I’m trying to draw is so important. If we keep in mind the difference between what we can rigorously establish and what we’re fundamentally taking on faith (however well-founded), then at least we can talk to people on the other side: clarify core disagreements, examine evidence, and occasionally, with entirely too much work, change a few minds. That may sound hopelessly optimistic, but shifting one mind in fifty would be an earthquake: for most purposes,’enough to declare victory. Treat arguments from authority as indistinguishable from any other rule of reasoning, on the other hand, and there’s nothing to do but declare people who don’t share our view of authority irrational. And then I don’t know what the plan is. It’s exhausting when people refuse to recognize well-established expertise, but I think it’s counter-productive that so many of us get defensive about it. Yelling at people to accept our authority figures isn’t working. It won’t ever work.

shakow 4y ago

> Sure it is: an appeal to authority is not a valid step in a deductive logical argument Technically, unless you reinvented logic on your own, this in an argument of authority with extra steps.

zopa 4y ago
If we're talking about fallacies, we're invoking old-fashioned classical logic. The nice thing about having a notion of strict deductive reasoning is that it gives you an idea of what arguments might persuade someone of basic good faith, but who very much doesn't want to be persuaded. If you and your interlocutor don't both accept modus ponens then you won't get anywhere, but that's pretty unlikely in practice. (And I'd actually argue that we each invent logic on our own and then notice that the logics are equivalent, but that's straying into metaphysics.)