So far we've been discussing ad hominem arguments, deniers, silencers, and
dismissers. And as I've said, many ad hominem
arguments are guilty of a fallacy of relevance.
The premises are not relevant to the conclusion.
Now I'd like to describe a different kind of argument,
an argument that I call an appeal to authority.
And many arguments of this second kind are also guilty of fallacies of
relevance. Now appeals to authority,
like ad hominem arguments, start from premises about a particular person, a
person who is making a certain point or defending a certain conclusion and they
move from premesis about that person to a conclusion that's about the point that
person is making So in the respect that I just mentioned appeals to authority are
just like ad hominem arguments. But there's one important difference.
Whereas ad hominem arguments, draw a negative conclusion, about the point that
some person is making, appeals to authority draw a positive conclusion
about the point that person is making. So just as there are three different
kinds of ad hominem arguments, deniers, silencers, and dismissers, so to there
are three different kinds of appeals to authority and I'm going to call them
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affirmers,
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amplifiers, and supporters. Now lets consider each one of these types
in turn. Let's start by talking about affirmers.
Affirmers, recall, are the opposite of denier ad hominem arguments.
In the denier ad hominem argument, we start with premises about a person who's
making a certain point, and we move to the conclusion that the point that that
person is making is false, or probably false.
In an affirmer appeal to authority argument, we once again, start with
premises about a particular person, but then we move to the conclusion that the
point that the person is making is true or anyhow, likely to be true.
Let me give you an example of an affirmer appeal to authority.
Suppose I said you write now, I'm talking to you.
Now you might reason as follows. Rom said that he was talking to me, therefore he
was talking to me. So you start with a premise about me,
about what it is that I said. In this case I said that I was talking to
you and then you move from that premise to the conclusion that I was talking to
you. Now notice in this case the conclusion
that you arrive at is the conclusion that what I've said is true.
Because what I said just that I'm talking to you and your conclusion is that I'm
talking to you. So your conclusion is just the acceptance
of the truth of what I've said. Now why do you accept your conclusion?
Well because I said that I was talking to you.
But you see, I coudn't have said to you that I was talking to you unless I was
talking to you. So this is a case of an affirmer appeal
to authority, an argument where you start with a
premise about me, and you move to a conclusion, to the effect that the point
I was making was true. It's an affirmer appeal to authority
that's justified. The argument that you just made is a good
argument. If I did say to you, that I'm talking to
you, then it's true. That I'm talking to you.
So this is a case of a justified affirmer appealed to authority.
But there are also cases of unjustified affirmer appeals to authority.
Now let me give an example of an unjustified affirmer appeal to authority.
Suppose I say to you now, Je parle Francais tres bien.
Now in French that means I speak French very well.
Now if I say that to you right now, you might conclude that I do speak French
very well. Because I just said, Je parle Francais
tres bien. But that would be a mistake, and it's not
just a mistake because I don't speak French very well, it's also a fallacious
inference, because when I say in my poor broken French, Je parle Francais tres
bien, I'm not giving you very good evidence that I do speak French very
well. So for you to conclude on the basis of
what I've said, that I speak French very well, would be for you to draw an
unjustified conclusion. So that's an example of an affirmer
appeal to authority that is unjustified. Now let me talk about amplifiers.
An amplifier is an appeal to authority in which we move from a premise about a
particular person who is making a point to the conclusion that their point is one
that we should pay special attention to. We should lend special credence to the
point they're making. Now, some affirmers are justified.
So, for instance, suppose we're trying to figure out whether a player in some game,
is guilty or not of a foul, and the referee declares the player guilty of a
foul Now, you might reason that since the referee said that the player was guilty
of a foul, that means the player is guilty of a foul.
What you're doing there, is reasoning from the fact that the referee said it to
the truth of what the referee said. But the reason why you assign importance
to the fact that the referee said it is because in most games the referee gets to
decide if the person is guilty of a foul or not.
Whatever the referee decides is taken as truth.
So there the referee is in a special position to decide what's true.
In contrast to other people, who might have opinions about what's true, but have
no authority to decide the matter. Now in that case, where you infer from
the fact the referee said the player's guilty of the foul, (no period) To the
conclusion that the player is guilty of a foul, you make an appeal to authority
that in general is justified. That's an example of a justified
amplifier argument. But there are also amplifier arguments
that are unjustified. For instance, suppose that the tallest
player on the field, declared, that some other player was guilty of a foul.
Well you might infer that since the tallest player on the field says that
this other player was guilty of a foul, the oth, other player is guilty of a
foul. But that would be a mistake.
Just because the tallest player on the field said so, doesn't mean that they
have any special voice in the matter. And special role in determining, whether
or not the other player is guilty of a foul.
So amplifier arguments, just like silencer arguments, can be justfied, or
unjustified. And when they're unjustified, they're
guilty, of a fallacy of relevance. Finally, I want to talk about, supporter
appeals to authority. In the supporter appeal to authority, you
move from a premise about a particular person who is making a point to the
conclusion that the point they're making is one that you have additional reason to
believe. So it's the opposite of a dismisser ad
hominem argument. In a dismisser ad hominem argument, you
move from a premise about a person making a particular point to the conclusion that
their point is one that you have no special reason to believe.
Finally let's talk about supporter appeals to authority.
In the supporter appeal to authority you move from a premise about a person who's
making a particular point, to conclusion that the point they are making is worthy
of belief, is likely to be true. So, let's consider an example of a
supporter appeal to authority. The intergovernmental panel on climate
change has said that over the last century, the temperature of the Earth has
gone up by 1 degree Celsius. Now do you believe that? I do.
And I believe it because. I believe that the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change represent the best effort of a whole lot of experts
about climate. So, because there's a lot of expertise
that goes into the IPCC's information I accept the conclusion that they come to.
The fact that they say it, lends that conclusion a great deal of creadence in
my mind because they're experts. That's an example of a supporter appeal
to authority. That I take it, is justified.
But lets compare that to a supporter appeal to authority that is unjustified.
Suppose that a magician performs at the IPCC panel on climate change, and in the
course of the magician's performance, the magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat,
well everyone in the audience is astonished doesn't understand how this
magician could possibly have pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
And the magician says to them, it's magic, and look, I've just prove to you
that magic exists. Well suppose the magician was able to
pursuade All of the members of the IPCC, that magic exists, because he was just
able to pull a rabbit out of a hat after all.
And so the IPCC includes in, its report on climate change, an appendix about the
existence of magic. Now, I don't know about you, but I would
not believe what the IPCC has to say about the existance of magic.
It's not that I think that the members of the IPCC aren't experts about anything,
but I don't think that they're experts about magic.
So while I might trust what they say when it comes to climate, I don't trust what
they say when it comes to magic because they have no special reliability on the
topic of magic. So, an unjustified support or appeal to
authority would be an argument that moved from some premise about the IPCC, to a
conclusion that we have special reason to believe the IPCC when it says that magic
exists. Just because the IPCC consists of a bunch
of experts on climate doesn't mean that it consists of a bunch of experts on
magic. And so, any support or appeal to
authority that tried to reinforce the IPCC's statement of the existence of
magic by appeal to the reliabilty of the IPCC.
Would be an unjustified supporter appeal to authority.
So far today we've talked about different kinds of ad hominem arguments and
different kinds of appeals to authority. We've distinguished three varieties of
each of those kinds. And we've distinguish between the
justified and the unjustified versions of each of those varieties. But what we find
in every day life is that we frequently encounter dismisser ad hominem arguments
and supporter appeals to authority and We need to choose between these.
We're in a situation where we need to decide whether or not a particular
dissmissor ad hominem argument is any good or a particular supporter appeal to
authority is any good. And those are the situations that this
course should be aimed to address. So next time I'm going to discuss those
situations in more detail. And with more examples.
Also I should mention, all of the examples that we've considered today of
ad hominem arguments or appeals to authority were examples where what was at
issue was the testimony of a particular individual.
Sometimes it's not individual testimony that we're considering.
Sometimes the point that we're asking about is a point that's being made by a
group, or by a tradition, or by a culture, or by a government.
And in those cases as well, we can have ad hominem arguments.
That tried to undermine the authority of that group, or that culture, or that
government, and appeals to authority that try to support the authority of that
group or that culture or that government. Next time we'll talk about some examples
of those also.