Jon,
It never occurred to me before that Law is an "Appeal to Authority". After reading your post in which you attempt to show that it is not, I am now convinced that Law is, in fact, a blatant logical fallacy. You wrote: > So when in law someone argues from authority one is really saying, "we > don't know if what he is saying is valid, but we have to make a > decision, and he seems more credible than the alternatives, so we will > act as though what he is saying is valid." No ad verecundiam fallacy in > that. > > The fallacy comes when one transitions from "we will act as though what > he is saying is valid" to "what he is saying is valid". If we treat rationales as computer algorithms it might look something like this: Input (Situation) ---> Rationale ---> Output (Action) You gave us two possible rationales: 1) we will act as though what he said is valid 2) what he said is valid While there may be a technical difference in the wording of both rationales, both produce exactly the same output for a given input when plugged into the algorithm above. In other words, there is no significant difference between using a blatant Appeal to Authority and using the convoluted version of Appeal to Authority that you came up with. Also, why does law automatically seem "more credible than the alternatives"? Could it be that laws are produced by the Authorities and the alternatives are not? Considering the track record of previous laws, why would any reasonable person show bias toward them rather than an alternative? ---Sasan
