Logical Fallacies — the Argument from Authority [Repost]

(This entry has been reposted, as well as heavily revised and updated from the original. See Logical Fallacies — the Argument from Authority)

Here, we deal with a common form of informal argument, known as the Ad vericumdiam, also referred to in both valid (argument by authority) and fallacious forms (argument from authority) as the Appeal to Authority.

This pattern of inference attempts to assert the truth of a claim by calling upon supposed — but sometimes misleading or irrelevant qualifications, virtues, and certifications of the one making the claim.

This argument in its fallacious usage usually has the following format:

Person A has claimed qualifications Q. Person A says that X is true. Therefore X is true. The valid form of this argument attaches the qualifier ‘probably’ to the alleged truth of claim X, and in the valid form, the qualifications are both true and relevant to the nature of the claim.

Or to put it another way as a fallacy…

Dr. Von Blümrich is a great rocket scientist. Dr. Von Blümrich claims that the vision described in the Biblical book of Ezekiel was that of a visitation by ancient astronauts in a rocket-powered spacecraft. Therefore, despite a complete lack of any physical evidence of a spacecraft landing in the Middle East at around that time, it must be true that Ezekiel’s vision was literally a physical event, and described an alien rocketship, not Ezekiel hallucinating out of his tree in a mystical experience.

People, I sh*t you not. Someone actually used that argument on me, and it wasn’t convincing then either…

Another example of this style of argument, used on me by someone who otherwise has the intellectual resources to know better than to commit such an obvious fallacy, is…

“Time travel is impossible, because Professor so-and-so, at such-and-such University, whom I highly respect because he’s very intelligent, said that it is…”

Ahem…

There is a wide variety of supposed  virtues invoked in this form of specious argument, including such things as wealth, intelligence, unconventionality, age (or youth), celebrity, beauty, social position, quotations by someone famous taken out of context or even fabricated (Quote-Mining), purity, claims of impending acceptance (a combination of Argument from Authority & Unstated Major Premise), piety, self-assumed authority, alleged divine or scriptural authority, vague references to ‘experts,’ ‘scientists,’ ‘researchers,’ or other authorities that cannot be followed up on.

The list goes on, and may even shade into other logical fallacies, Ad misericordiam, the appeal to tradition, Ad baculum, and Ad populum…

In any case, as a fallacy, this sort of argument attempts to deceive about the nature of the evidence it presents, a gambit to present itself as offering relevant evidence while doing nothing of the sort.

This was an acceptable form of argument even as a fallacy in medieval scholasticism, but we’ve moved on a bit since then, and in that usage no longer widely accepted by philosophers of science and logicians as sound reasoning.

While an Argument from Authority is always fallacious when the authority so name-dropped is considered in effect to be incontrovertibly correct, its not-so-evil mirror universe twin, an Argument by Authority, made by someone or in reference to someone whose experience, training, and other qualifications are both real and relevant to the issue being discussed, when they have a sound basis for their statements, can be a valid form of argument.

Finally, as mentioned above, this can shade into an ad Hominem, especially in the positive form, along a continuum, with a fuzzy but real division between them in some arguments, in that often those people in the best position to examine the truth or falsehood of a statement just happen to be those individuals with experience, a vested interest and personal involvement in the subject at hand.