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An appeal to authority is when you assert that because person X has significant knowledge on subject Y, that they're also therefore right about something in top
by petewailes 11y ago
An appeal to authority is when you assert that because person X has significant knowledge on subject Y, that they're also therefore right about something in topic Z, where Y and Z are unrelated. For example, Steve is a researcher in bioengineering who's well regarded in his field. He says Stephen King is a poor writer. Stephen might be right or wrong, but we can't use his status as a scientist to back up his statements regarding literature. They're not related.
However, it's not an appeal to authority when someone is actually an authority on an established subject where it's possible to be an authority on that thing. Which is the case here.
Hope that helps!
- eivarv 11y agoActually, an appeal to authority [0,1] is fallacious because the entire argument (e.g. "authority figure says X") rests on the supposed infallibility of the authority, and says nothing about X in itself. An expert is, of course, more likely to be well informed within their field than a layperson, but they may nonetheless be incorrect. [0]: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority