On 10/17/05, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > but you had written >William Gallie's essay was a trivial exposition > of a minor problem of political discourse.< Is this Gallie person an > authority like Einstein? I doubt it. Even Einstein wasn't perfect, so > we can't cite him as the final authority on anything.
------------------ You are so missing my point again......... Not all citations of authors are manifestations of the fallacy of argument by authority. You are engaging in a fallacy when you are claiming that I'm engaging in a fallacy after I've already told you I'm not engaging in citing writers/thinkers to make some formal argument as in, say, the American Journal of Sociology or American Economic Review or Philosophical Quarterly. As if the claim that the argument from authority is a fallacy doesn't run into the problem of sel-reference. .....................People on this list cite other writers all the time, are they too engaged in the fallacious thinking you're attempting to claim I'm engaging? If so why am I always the one you seem to single out for tedious zero-sum hair splitting? There is no final authority on anything, nor was I citing Gallie or Einstein as final authorities; indeed it was you who brought up the issue of authority which is/was *totally irrelevant* to the issue at hand which was conspiracy theories..................
