[analphilosopher] Keith Burgess-Jackson: The Fallacious Appeal to Authority (a new post at AnalPhilosopher)

[analphilosopher at lists.powerblogs.com]

Posted by Keith Burgess-Jackson:
The Fallacious Appeal to Authority
http://www.analphilosopher.com/posts/1120599880.shtml


   Authority derives from expertise. Someone who is expert in field X is
   an authority on X. Lawyers, for example, are authorities on what the
   law is (although not on what the law should be, for that=E2s a moral
   matter rather than a legal matter). Doctors are authorities on the
   diagnosis and treatment of disease. Some people are expert in nothing,
   some in one thing, some in more than one thing. (Aristotle was expert
   in many things.) How many things are you expert in? If I=E2m not expert
   in X, then I should defer to someone who is. Thus, there is nothing
   wrong with, or fallacious about, citing an expert in support of a
   proposition that is within that expert=E2s realm of expertise. In other
   words,

     S says that p. Therefore, p.

   is a good inference if S is an expert on p-type matters but a bad
   inference if S is not an expert on p-type matters. The fallacious
   appeal to authority is an informal fallacy, not a formal fallacy. It
   can be detected only by inspecting the content of the inference. The
   form doesn=E2t tell you anything.

   Suppose I rely on someone who is not an expert on the matter at hand.
   If I base my belief that p on the fact that a nonexpert said that p, I
   commit a fallacy: the appeal to authority. Unfortunately, this fallacy
   is committed all the time. For example, there is much talk these days
   about Tom Cruise, Scientology, and psychiatry. What expertise, if any,
   does Cruise have? Well, he=E2s an actor, and by all accounts a good one.
   If I had a question about acting, I would certainly consider asking
   Cruise and would, since I am not myself an expert on acting, defer to
   his judgment. (I might also ask other actors, since even experts can
   disagree.) But what expertise does Cruise have with respect to
   psychiatry? Is he a trained psychiatrist? I=E2m pretty sure he isn=E2t.
   Why, therefore, should anyone care what he says about psychiatry? More
   precisely, why should anyone give more credence to what Cruise says
   about psychiatry than what any randomly selected person says about
   psychiatry? Being interested in X, or having read about X, or dabbling
   in X, doesn=E2t make one an expert in X.

   Another example. I love Nolan Ryan, the former baseball player. He was
   a masterful pitcher and a fierce competitor. He knows more about the
   game=E2and about pitching=E2than almost anyone. But unless Ryan has made
   himself expert in some other field, such as cattle raising, he has
   nothing to say to any of us. As in the case of Tom Cruise, his views
   have the same status as the views of any randomly selected individual.
   Let actors act and expound on their craft. Let athletes exert and
   expound on their craft. Let lawyers practice law and expound on their
   craft. But don=E2t expect=E2or allow=E2these experts to expound on matte=
rs
   outside their ken. That way lies fallacy.