JPWalton
Sergeant
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2013
What I wrote is there for all to see, Mark. The short version what I posted is that while adopting an expert's opinion blindly and wholesale merely because they are an expert is a fallacy, claiming that the opinions of experts have little or no value is an even bigger fallacy.
Anaxagoras is pro-Johnston enough to have written an 800-page novel depicting Johnston as winning the war. It's not surprising he was eager to diminish this particularly strong statement by Bearss by misrepresenting what the "appeal to authority" fallacy is really about.
This is a quote from Princeton about what this particular fallacy means in logical philosophy:
Argument from authority (also known as appeal to authority) is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative.
Given that we were and are engaged in a debate, and Bearss opinion was produced as evidence -- part of a case and not the entire case itself -- the fallacy charge carries little merit. Furthermore, we can reasonably assume that Bearss could produce his own argument based on voluminous facts as to why he feels the way he does about Johnston, and isn't merely pulling his opinion out of his behind. That would make the charge out-and-out false.
Anaxagoras is pro-Johnston enough to have written an 800-page novel depicting Johnston as winning the war. It's not surprising he was eager to diminish this particularly strong statement by Bearss by misrepresenting what the "appeal to authority" fallacy is really about.
This is a quote from Princeton about what this particular fallacy means in logical philosophy:
Argument from authority (also known as appeal to authority) is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative.
Given that we were and are engaged in a debate, and Bearss opinion was produced as evidence -- part of a case and not the entire case itself -- the fallacy charge carries little merit. Furthermore, we can reasonably assume that Bearss could produce his own argument based on voluminous facts as to why he feels the way he does about Johnston, and isn't merely pulling his opinion out of his behind. That would make the charge out-and-out false.
I'm not sure that citing an author with known expertise in the field is a fallacy per se. One is in that case citing his opinion, of course, but it would not be wise to dismiss an expert's opinion lightly, even given the possibility of the expert's being in error...
Last edited: