Talk:Argument from authority/Archive 10

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Challenge to the supporters of the fallacy

Alright, to those who support this fallacy - especially MjolnirPants - as a valid argument, I've got a challenge: look at some popular disputes or widely held false beliefs from the 1700's or earlier, and show how you could have found the truth with an appeal to authority. If arguments from authority are good arguments rather than fallacies, then this should be easy; afterall, according to the article, if authorities agree then it is probably true. FL or Atlanta (talk) 11:14, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

That would be original research (see WP:OR) and not allowed. Wikipedia articles should reflect what the best reliable sources say, not the personal reasoning and conclusions of Wikipedia editors. Framing it as "supporters vs opponents" is a mistake, as editors' personal opinions are of no relevance. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:37, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
@FL or Atlanta: Apart from what Boing says (which I completely agree with) consider the following: All we do (or rather, are supposed to do) here at Wikipedia is appealing to authorities. If we wouldn't, Wikipedia wouldn't be an encyclopedia, but a debate-forum. So if we were to look at an appeal to authority as a pure fallacy, the encyclopedia and every textbook ever written would be collections of fallacies and hence useless. (Reductio ad absurdum). Kleuske (talk) 13:31, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

argument ad auctoritatem removal

@FL or Atlanta: I saw your edit removing "argumentum ad auctoritatem" as an alternative Latin phrase, and I was about to revert it back. I thought I remembered seeing that alternative name in the WP:RS. However, from a diligent Google search, it seems the most reliable WP:RS call it simply "argumentum ad verecundiam", "argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy" or simply "ad verecundiam" [1]. So, I will leave it unless someone finds better WP:RS to justify it.

I did, however, find one source that did discuss and distinguish argumentum ad verecundiam from argumentum ad auctoritatem [2] which said:

There is a difference between the argumentum ad auctoriatem (appeal to qualified authority) and the argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to unqualified authority). Both forms of argument propose that a certain position must be accepted on the basis that some prominent authority (be it an individual or community) accepts it. There is, however, a clear distinction between the two, since the former is a valid argument and the latter is not. An argumentum ad auctoritatem claims that something is to be accepted because a real auctoritas, or authority in the relevant field, accepts it....

I do not know enough about the qualifications of the author to know if they have sufficient expertise in the subject matter--I don't make the fallacious form of the argument we are discussing by citing improper authority about the topic "appeal to authority". :) --David Tornheim (talk) 09:48, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

I undid it on the grounds that it was not a minor edit and it was marked as so. I will ask the Adding editor for RS. Endercase (talk) 17:22, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
The quote above was written by Giovanni Boniolo (see his credentials on page 349). The Google book is Swiss cheese with every other page blocked, so I do not know where he gets his ideas on the subject. I get the impression the study of rhetoric is full of people who present their own ideas as the consensus of the field. I do not think "argumentum ad auctoritatem" should be mentioned anywhere in the article. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 18:07, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
Richard-of-Earth A number of the editors have PhD's in Philosophy. If there was a problem with that portion of the text, I would assume they would have caught it. I believe in one of the sources discussing Locke, the term "auctoritatem" might have come up. I'm a bit too tired to try and find that right now. --David Tornheim (talk) 10:23, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
David Tornheim oh my goodness, did you just make an argument from authority on the argument from authority talk page? Well I do not have a PhD, so I guess I should stick to removing vandalism and neatening formats and stay away from content. But to a degree you are right, anyone can just make up a name for a supposed unique rhetoric element and it may take someone with a PhD to sort out the WP:FRINGE and WP:OR. That said, I looked in google books and I see the phrase "argumentum ad auctoritatem" has been around for quite a while, so I will retract my statement. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 19:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
First, thanks for your persistence MjolnirPants, I'd given up on this article. My view is that this section distinguishing between auctoritatem and verecundiam should be removed. I looked at a couple major logic textbooks (Hurley and Salmon) as well as Walton's book on Appeal to Expert Opinion and none of them make this distinction (it was also a distinction I was not previously familiar with). In fact, the only source I could find was the one cited. That article is also not a great source to base an encyclopedia entry on in isolation from the rest of the literature - while the author looks legitimate, the article is referencing this distinction, not defending it, in a paper on a different topic. This looks to me more an idiosyncratic distinction than one established in the literature and so not really appropriate for an encyclopedia. Original Position (talk) 20:21, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
@Original Position:The text has remained removed. It looked to me that the source for it was using two different phrases to refer to different forms (appealing to legitimate vs illegitimate authorities), though it's been several weeks since I checked, so I could be mis-remembering. Regardless, I don't think anyone wants it put back in at this point. I do, however, intend to put the more common latin name back in. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

chromosome number

This section currently says:

"Even textbooks with photos showing 23 pairs incorrectly declared the number to be 24 based on the authority of the then-consensus of 24 pairs . . ."

and then says,

". . . to the point that "textbooks from the time carried photographs showing twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, and yet the caption would say there were twenty-four"."

If anyone has an argument why within three sentences we should have two making exactly the same claim about textbook photographs, I would love to hear it. There may be a better way to harmonize the two sentences than the way I have taken, but saying the same thing twice is simply repetitive, not informative. Agricolae (talk) 14:52, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

No argument here. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:57, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
While we are talking about this, I find the whole section pretty awkward, linguisically (something to which I contributed in an attempt to bend over backwards for the objecting sock). Sentence flow is obliterated by chopping it up with mid-sentence references, and there is a bludgeoning effect of using 9 references to document a very small set of concepts at (sometimes) word-level precision. I think it might be improved by simplifying the explanation, and it looks to me like a few of the references would be comprehensive enough to document everything that need be said. Agricolae (talk) 22:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree that the section could stand a massive bit of improvement. In fact, I would dearly love to see the Painter example reduced to one or two sentences and a number of additions 1-2 sentence examples added, then the whole thing divided into "fallacious uses" and "non fallacious" uses and the "for examples" found in the structure section removed. I will eventually do this myself at some point, but I don't own this article. If you have an idea of what you want to see, whether it agrees with what I just described or not: Have at it, hoss. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:54, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
Personally, my preference is (still) to remove all historical examples and replace with hypotheticals that can be tailored to illustrate the different factors that distinguish fallacious from non-fallacious appeals to authority. With the historical examples, you get into difficult interpretive questions that only distract from the topic at hand; for example, while Painter turned out to be wrong, was it actually fallacious to appeal to his authority? Cogent inductive reasoning can still reach false conclusions. Since lots of people referred to his authority on various occasions in different contexts, could some of these appeals be fallacious and some not? If so, is it a misrepresentation to call this episode "a fallacious appeal to authority"? Etc. And the section seems to be there primarily as a vehicle for pushing the point of view that appeals to authority are categorically fallacies, which I think/hope we are finally trying to move past. Lord Mondegreen (talk) 00:22, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Personally, my preference is (still) to remove all historical examples and replace with hypotheticals I agree. Hypotheticals would work better. The question is; do we need to use hypotheticals that are given in the RSes? Making up our own seems liable to produce a better result (as we can tailor them to suit the specifics of the article), but they would all come with the explicit claim that they are appeals to authority, which might be blatantly obvious, but is still OR. I would be most comfortable using sourced examples (see the Structure section for a few of these), personally.
the section seems to be there primarily as a vehicle for pushing the point of view that appeals to authority are categorically fallacies Again, I agree. I think you were involved in the last 'discussion' about that. I distinctly remember checking the sources, and while one went on and on about Painter's authority, the others distributed the blame more; citing technical limitations, other researchers producing the same result independently, and direct confirmations of Painter's result as contributing, in addition to the weight of Painter's reputation. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 02:52, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
I see what you mean about OR. But it does seem fairly restrictive, especially considering that pages like modus ponens and affirming the consequent seem to have come up with their own examples. Lord Mondegreen (talk) 03:01, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
Just a thought from me (purely on policy grounds), I agree that examples taken from reliable sources are always better than original examples - in fact, I'd say original examples are clear violations of WP:OR and should not be used. And I think the examples at Modus ponens and Affirming the consequent, if original, should also be replaced by examples taken from the sources. It's certainly a restriction, but Wikipedia is intended to be restricted in that way. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:43, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree, I'm just pointing out that there's a case that could be made for WP:IARing the examples. Because even sourced exampled are generally hypotheticals, and even original examples can be verified by the reader by comparing them to how the RSes describe the structure or nature of the argument. But again, I would prefer sourced examples because there are sourced examples to be found, and there's no point in IARing when there's no need. (I play Devil's advocate against myself sometimes, sorry if I got a little confused). ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:05, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Socks

For the record, for people working on this article and wondering what's happened, the following accounts (of which four have been prolific here) have been indefinitely blocked as socks:

See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Perfect Orange Sphere for more details if you're interested. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:12, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Wow. Lord Mondegreen (talk) 00:12, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
I called it! Next time I guess I should just request the checkuser myself. What is the minimum amount of evidence one should have before doing so? Endercase (talk) 15:56, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
Probably something similar to that SPI, but without the scatter chart. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:59, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

"Psychological basis" section

In addition to my skepticism about the "Notable examples" section, I'd like to remove the "Psychological basis" section. I suppose I should be bold and just remove it, but I wanted to bring it up since there seems to be an uptick in good-faith discussion here. Like the "Notable examples" section, the "Psychological basis" section seems to have been included for on behalf of the POV that appeals to authority are fallacies, and it's written from that perspective. For example, the section refers to a "cognitive bias" as an "integral part" of appeals to authority. It conflates arguments from authority with deference to "high-status individuals" and to "strong emotional pressure." And (prior to an edit that I am about to make) it flagrantly misrepresents a source as holding that the field of mathematics is contaminated by groupthink. More generally, it seems that the tendency of this section is to characterize appeals to authority as grounded in merely contingent features of human cognition, as opposed to in objective principles of correct reasoning.

I suppose it might be possible in principle to write a section about the psychology underlying how humans reason from authority without running into POV issues, but I don't think anything in the current version would survive such a rewrite. Lord Mondegreen (talk) 01:06, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Is it still in there? I've got no problem with removing it. I was planning on getting to it because it looks an awful lot like a big mess of WP:SYNTH to me. I've never once seen a connection drawn between the Asch effect and this fallacy outside of this article. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:53, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
All right, it's gone. Lord Mondegreen (talk) 20:23, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
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