http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuPyZJhHePc&feature=watch_response
My previous video in this particular series was on the subject of a logical fallacy called ad hominem. The reason this one is a fallacy is because it strives to tear down an argument on the basis of the arguer; it strives to discredit a line of reasoning by assailing the reasoner. The subject of this particular episode is just the opposite fallacy; one which has precisely the same problem.
Consider, the ancient Greek mathematician Eratosthenes. He is the first person in recorded history to have figured out that the world, contrary to first appearance and popular impression, was round instead of being flat. Clearly, he was a really smart guy. But after having figured that out, he still believed that the Earth was at the center of the Universe (indeed, that the Earth was the center of the Universe) and it would not be until Copernicus that anyone would entertain alternative conceptualizations. Being a really smart guy did not preclude him being mistaken. He was smart, but he was still human.
Being human means having a capacity for error and a predilection for bias. Fortunately, it also means having a knack for detecting error and bias; other people’s. Various evolving academic and intellectual pursuits take this into consideration. The handiest example I know of (and also the easiest to describe) is science. When a scientist has a finding which he or she believes worthy of the annals of science, the most appropriate place to make the case thereof is in a peer-reviewed journal.
The peer review is essential, because your peers probably will not make the same mistakes you have made, nor will they have the same biases, and this opens up the possibility that, if there are very serious problems with your work, they will probably find them. Now if these problems exist, the more of them which can be found, the better, since the more of them which can be found, the more of them can be accounted for, addressed and perhaps solved in the theoretical stages before leading to serious, possibly catastrophic results in the applied stages. But I’ve kind of gotten off the topic.
What if you test drive a car and after you’ve made it a block, it completely falls apart around you? I may be way off, but I suspect that you will probably elect not to buy it. What if the dealer tells you that most of the team of engineers that designed it are Ivy-League graduates who have all been knighted in the New-Year’s Honors list? Will this change your mind? Probably not.
The dealer in this example just used a logical fallacy which is the flip-side of ad hominem. He used an appeal to authority. However impressive are the credentials of the engineers who designed it will not change the fact that the car fell apart, and a car that falls apart after a block’s drive is not worth much to anyone except the people running the nearest scrap heap. No combination of details about the designers is going to change that.
I cited a common creationist tack in explaining ad hominem. Here, I will cite another.
“Dr. Michael Behe rejects evolution, and he has a Ph. D.”
Hmm. Well Professor Richard Dawkins and Professor Stephen Hawking both also have Ph. D.’s, and they both accept evolution. This, however, is not what matters, and personally, I would not ask anyone to accept evolution on this basis. Nor would they. What matters is whether the case can, in fact, be made for evolution. And it can, but that’s another tangent.
Eratosthenes did not ask people to accept that the world is round on the grounds that he, being the guy that made this discovery, happens to be a really smart guy. He asked people to accept it on the grounds that the math proved it, conclusively. The work spoke for itself.
Just as no one who has ever existed has had the power to make “2 + 2 = 4” a false statement, neither has anyone who has ever existed had the power to make “2 + 2 = 5” true. It simply isn’t. Just as the act of assailing the credentials of the arguer does not discredit the argument, nor does the act of touting and polishing those credentials validate the argument. This is the fatal flaw of appeal to authority.
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