On Nov 23, 2011, at 12:57 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Horace Heffner wrote:
An appeal to authority, regardless the credentials of the
authority, can only affect one's judgement of the probability of
truth. It is thus non-Aristotelian. It is a sales tool. It is
not a logical argument, and thus can not be either valid or
invalid, as the application of modus ponens or other logical
inferences can be.
True, but it is useful. It can be compared to a rule of thumb. It
is a way to make an evaluation of some sort in the absence of hard
evidence. In business and many ordinary situations, you have to
reach some sort of conclusion without real proof or a logical
basis. You have use imperfect methods such as paying heed to
authoritative opinions. It is better than nothing.
- Jed
Appeal to authority is worth less than nothing when evaluating the
existence of anomalies. If a set of observations are not anomalies
then most experts would agree a priori on the nature of the
observations. This is essentially a tautology. Expert disagreement
occurs when a set of observations disagree with wide spread
preconceived notions of truth, thus making the observations anomalies
in the first place. The application of appeal to authority in such a
case, like cold fusion for example, should be looked upon with great
skepticism, and rejected as irrelevant, especially when presently
accepted theory is being applied to deny the truth of repeated
observations.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
