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Argument from authority (Latin: argumentum ad verecundiam) also appeal to authority, is a common form of argument which leads to a logical fallacy

In informal reasoning, the appeal to authority is a form of argument attempting to establish a statistical syllogism. The appeal to authority relies on an argument of the form:

A is an authority on a particular topic

A says something about that topic

A is probably correct

Fallacious examples of using the appeal include any appeal to authority used in the context of logical reasoning, and appealing to the position of an authority or authorities to dismiss evidence, as authorities can come to the wrong judgments through error, bias, dishonesty, falling prey to groupthink, speaking about issues unrelated to their expertise, or if they are not a true expert at all. While some philosophers believe that one should assume any statement supported by an appeal to authority must be assumed to be true, only a minority of philosophers support this position.

Overall the appeal to authority is not a generally reliable argument for establishing facts as the truth or falsehood and reasonableness or unreasonableness of a belief is independent of the people who accept or reject it.

History

John Locke, in his 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, was the first to identify argumentum ad verecundiam as a specific category of argument. Although he did not call this type of argument a fallacy, he did note that it can be misused by taking advantage of the "respect" and "submission" of the reader or listener to persuade them to accept the conclusion. Over time, logic textbooks started to adopt and change Locke's original terminology to refer more specifically to fallacious uses of the argument from authority. By the mid-twentieth century, it was common for logic textbooks to refer to the "Fallacy of appealing to authority," even while noting that "this method of argument is not always strictly fallacious."

Contemporary interest in fallacies was reinvigorated with the publication in 1970 of C. L. Hamblin's Fallacies. Hamblin challenged standard treatment of fallacies as dogmatic and unmoored from contemporary logic. As a result, scholars such as Douglas Walton in Appeal to Expert Opinion and Ralph Johnson and J. Anthony Blair in Logical Self-Defense developed more rigorous accounts of how and when arguments from authority are fallacious. Logic textbooks also shifted to a less blanket approach to these arguments, now referring to the fallacy as the "Argument from Unqualified Authority" or the "Argument from Ureliable Authority," identifying the fallacy as being due to the misuse rather than just the use of authority in argument.

Forms

General

The argument from authority can take several forms. A legitimate argument from authority can take the general form:

X holds that A is true.

X is an authority on the subject.

The consensus of authorities agrees with X.

There is a presumption that A is true.

The argument is fallacious as it amounts to an unfounded assertion that leads to circular reasoning able to define person or group A into inerrancy on any subject matter.

One real world example of this tautological inerrancy is how Ignaz Semmelweis' evidence that puerperal fever was caused by a contagious agent, as opposed to the then-accepted view that it was caused mainly by environmental factors, was often dismissed based on appeals to authority. Multiple critics stated that they did not accept the claims in part because of the fact that in all the academic literature on puerperal fever there was nothing that supported the view Semmelweis was advancing. They were thus effectively using the circular argument that the literature is not in error, therefore the literature is not in error.

Other logicians have claimed that the argument from authority is a statistical syllogism:

Most of what authority a has to say on subject matter S is correct.

a says p about S.

p is correct.

Appeal to non-authorities

Fallacious arguments from authority can also be the result of citing a non-authority as an authority. These arguments assume that a person without status or authority is inherently reliable. The appeal to poverty for example is the fallacy of thinking a conclusion is probably correct because the one who holds or is presenting it is poor. When an argument holds that a conclusion is likely to be true precisely because the one who holds or is presenting it lacks authority, it is a fallacious appeal to the common man. A common example of the fallacy is appealing to an authority in one subject to pontificate on another - for example citing Albert Einstein as an authority on religion when his expertise laid in physics.

However, it is also a fallacious ad hominem argument to argue that a person presenting statements lacks authority and thus their arguments do not need to be considered. As appeals to a perceived lack of authority, these types of argument are fallacious for much the same reasons as an appeal to authority.

Notable examples

Inaccurate chromosome number

In 1923, leading American zoologist Theophilus Painter declared based on his findings that humans had 24 pairs of chromosomes. From the 1920s to the 1950s, this continued to be held based on Painter's authority, despite subsequent counts totaling the correct number of 23. Even textbooks with photos clearly showing 23 pairs incorrectly declared the number to be 24 based on the authority of the then-consensus of 24 pairs.

As Robert Matthews said of the event, "Scientists had preferred to bow to authority rather than believe the evidence of their own eyes". As such, their reasoning was an appeal to authority.

The tongue map

Another example is that of the tongue map, which purported to show different areas of taste on the tongue. While it originated from a misreading of the original text, it got taken up in textbooks and the scientific literature for nearly a century, and remained even after being shown to be wrong in the 1970s and despite being easily disproven on one's own tongue.

Psychological basis

An integral part of the appeal to authority is the cognitive bias known as the Asch effect. In repeated and modified instances of the Asch conformity experiments, it was found that high-status individuals create a stronger likelihood of a subject agreeing with an obviously false conclusion, despite the subject normally being able to clearly see that the answer was incorrect.

Further, humans have been shown to feel strong emotional pressure to conform to authorities and majority positions. A repeat of the experiments by another group of researchers found that "Participants reported considerable distress under the group pressure", with 59% conforming at least once and agreeing with the clearly incorrect answer, whereas the incorrect answer was much more rarely given when no such pressures were present.

Scholars have noted that the academic environment produces a nearly ideal situation for these processes to take hold, and they can affect entire academic disciplines, giving rise to groupthink. One paper about the philosophy of mathematics for example notes that, within mathematics,

"If...a person accepts our discipline, and goes through two or three years of graduate study in mathematics, he absorbs our way of thinking, and is no longer the critical outsider he once was. In the same way a critic of Scientology who underwent several years of 'study' under 'recognized authorities' in Scientology might well emerge a believer instead of a critic. If the student is unable to absorb our way of thinking, we flunk him out, of course. If he gets through our obstacle course and then decides that our arguments are unclear or incorrect, we dismiss him as a crank, crackpot, or misfit."

See also

• Credentialism
• Ipse dixit
• Informal fallacy
• Name-dropping
• Manifesto of the Ninety-Three
• Woozle Effect

References

1. Gass, Robert. "Common Fallacies in Reasoning". California State University Fullerton. Retrieved 13 August 2015.
2. Umpleby, Stuart (1990). "The science of cybernetics and the cybernetics of science" (PDF). Cybernetics and Systems: An International Journal.
3. Sadler, Troy (2006). "Promoting Discourse and Argumentation in Science Teacher Education". Journal of Science Teacher Education. 17: 323–346. doi:10.1007/s10972-006-9025-4.
4. Boyd, Robert (1993). "Argument Analysis and Critical Thinking". Korean Journal of Thinking and Problem Solving: 55.
5. Gootendorst, Rob. Some Fallacies about Fallacies. Argumentation: Across the lines of discipline. p. 388.
6. F. Bex, H. Prakken, C. Reed (2003). "Towards a formal account of reasoning about evidence: argumentation schemes and generalisations" (PDF). Artificial Intelligence and Law: 133.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
7. ^ Baronett 2008, p. 304.
8. Easton, Matt (July 9, 2015). Don't trust historians! or English archers... Schola Gladiatoria.
9. Walton, Douglas (2008). Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 223-5. ISBN 978-0-521-71380-1.
10. ^ Gensler, Harry J. (2010). The A to Z of Logic. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 14. Retrieved 7 January 2016.
11. Gale, G. (1979). Theory of Science: an Introduction to the History, Logic, and Philosophy of Science. McGraw-Hill College. p. 51.
12. ^ Carroll, Robert. "Appeal to Authority". The Skeptic's Dictionary.
13. Woodward, Ian. "Ignorance is Contagious" (PDF). University of Tasmania.
14. Cornman, James; Lehrer, Keith; Pappas, George (1992). Philosophical Problems and Arguments: an Introduction. p. 81.
15. Hamblin, C. L. (1970). Fallacies. London: Methuen. p. 171. ISBN 0416145701.
16. Walton, Douglas (1997). Appeal to Expert Opinion. Penn State University Press. p. 53. ISBN 0271016957.
17. Walton, Douglas (1997). Appeal to Expert Opinion. Penn State University Press. pp. 54–55. ISBN 0271016957.
18. Coleman, Edwin (1995). ""There is no Fallacy of Arguing from Authority". Informal Logic. 17 (3): 366–7. Retrieved 12 January 2016.
19. Hansen, Hans. "Fallacies". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 10 January 2016.
20. Johnson, Ralph H.; Blair, J. Anthony (2006). Logical Self-Defense. International Debate Education Association. pp. 167–176. ISBN 1932716181.
21. Hurley, Patrick (2012). A Concise Introduction to Logic (12th ed.). Cengage Learning. pp. 138–9. ISBN 1285196546.
22. Layman, Charles (1999). The Power of Logic. Mayfield Publishing Company. p. 178. ISBN 0767406397.
23. Day, Ronald (2000). "The "conduit metaphor" and the nature and politics of information studies" (PDF). Journal of the American Society for Information Science: 5.
24. Nuland, Sherwin (30 January 1979). "The enigma of Semmelweis—an interpretation" (PDF). Nuland, S. B. (1979). The enigma of Semmelweis—an interpretation. Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences: 259–260.
25. Carter, Codell (1981). "Semmelweis and his predecessors" (PDF). Medical History. 25: 57–72. doi:10.1017/s0025727300034104. PMC 1138986. PMID 7012475.
26. Scholl, Raphael (2013). "Causal inference, mechanisms, and the Semmelweis case". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.
27. Salmon, Merrilee (2012). Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking (6th ed.). Boston: Wadsworth. p. 119. ISBN 1133049753. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
28. Silverman, Henry (2011). "Principles of Trust or Propaganda?". Journal of Applied Business Research.
29. See generally Irving M. Copi (1986). Introduction to Logic (7th ed.). Macmillan Publishing Company. pp. 98–99.
30. Bennett, B. "Appeal to the Common Man". Logically Fallacious.
31. Van Eemeren, Frans; Grootendorst, Rob (1987). "Fallacies in pragma-dialectical perspective". Argumentation. 1 (3): 283–301. doi:10.1007/bf00136779.
32. O'Connor, Clare (2008), Human Chromosome Number, Nature, retrieved April 24, 2014
33. ^ Matthews, Robert (2011), The bizarre case of the chromosome that never was, Fortune City, retrieved May 14, 2011
34. ^ Grootendorst, Robert (1992), Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies: A Pragma-dialectical Perspective, p. 158
35. nytimes.com
36. Midura, Margaretta. "On the Road to Sweetness: A Clear-Cut Destination?". Yale Scientific Magazine.
37. http://www.livescience.com/7113-tongue-map-tasteless-myth-debunked.html
38. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/health/11real.html
39. http://www.aromadictionary.com/articles/tonguemap_article.html
40. McLeod, Samuel (2008), Asch Experiment, Simply Psychology
41. Webley, Paul, A partial and non-evaluative history of the Asch effect, University of Exeter {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
42. David, Phillip J.; Hersh, Reuben (1998). New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics (PDF). Princeton University Press. p. 8.

Sources

• Baronett, Stan (2008). Logic. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

External links

• The dictionary definition of 'ad verecundiam' at Wiktionary

• Authority
• Genetic fallacies
• Logical fallacies
• Relevance fallacies