97% Consensus: The Great Climate Lie

jc456 · Nov 30, 2015

livefree said: ↑

Your ignorant misunderstanding of what is meant by "appeal to authority" is not surprising in someone as obviously retarded and heavily brainwashed as you are. You are confusing arguments that use the testimony of the experts in a field of science with a "fallacious appeal to authority".

And there's one more thing that you don't understand. An 'appeal to authority' is considered a logical fallacy in a formal debate because it can be an attempt to say that something is true just because a supposed expert says it is true. However, in the real world, empirically, if the great majority of the experts in a given field say that all of the available research indicates a certain conclusion, then it's really strong odds that they are right. For example, virtually all of the medical experts now believe that smoking tobacco causes an increased incidence of various diseases, like cancers, cardiovascular diseases, chronic bronchitis and emphysema. It is not a 'fallacy' to use such a fact as a valid argument in a debate about the dangers of tobacco smoking, if you can demonstrate the truth of that consensus.

From the Wikipedia article Appeal to Authority that you probably can't comprehend:

On the other hand, arguments from authority are an important part of informal logic. Since we cannot have expert knowledge of many subjects, we often rely on the judgments of those who do. There is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true. The fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible in principle and can hence be exempted from criticism.

There are two basic forms of appeal to authority, based on the authority being trusted...The more relevant the expertise of an authority, the more compelling the argument...The second form, citing a source who is actually an authority in the relevant field, carries more subjective, cognitive weight. A person who is recognized as an expert authority often has greater experience and knowledge of their field than the average person, so their opinion is more likely than average to be correct. In practical subjects such as car repair, an experienced mechanic who knows how to fix a certain car will be trusted to a greater degree than someone who is not an expert in car repair. There are many cases where one must rely on an expert, and cannot be reasonably expected to have the same experience, knowledge and skill that that person has. Many trust a surgeon without ever needing to know all the details about surgery themselves.

An appeal to authority cannot guarantee the truth of the conclusion, given the nature of truth and the Consensus theory of truth, because the fact that an authority says something does not necessarily make it so. The fact that, objectively, a proposition is in fact true or that it has good unrelated arguments supporting it will be what makes authorities believe it to be true.

As with all logical fallacies, the fact that an argument is an appeal to authority does not make its conclusion untrue (this line of thought is sometimes known as the logical fallacy fallacy) and does not make it unreasonable to believe the truth of the argument. It also must be noted that a rigorous concept of truth is a complex subject. In informal logic, the fact that a majority of experts in a given field believe X—for example, the fact that nearly all medical scientists think that HIV causes AIDS and reject AIDS denialism—makes it more reasonable for a person without knowledge in the field to believe X.

The Skeptic's Dictionary - appeal to authority

Finally, it should be noted that it is not irrelevant to cite an authority to support a claim one is not competent to judge. However, in such cases the authority must be speaking in his or her own field of expertise and the claim should be one that other experts in the field do not generally consider to be controversial. In a field such as physics, it is reasonable to believe a claim about something in physics made by a physicist that most other physicists consider to be true. Presumably, they believe it because there is strong evidence in support of it.

Philosophical Society - Logical Fallacies

appeal to authority -- Known also as the argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy. An appeal to authority is ordinarily one good way to buttress a line of thought. The practice becomes fallacious when one of the following happens: the authority is not an expert in the field in which one is speaking; the allusion to authority masks the fact that experts may be divided down the middle on the subject; no explicit reference is made to the authority.

So, dimwit, in the case of my post that you labeled as a fallacious 'appeal to authority', we have the position statement of the American Meteorological Society, which represents the educated opinions of hundreds of experts in climate science.

You lose again.
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spot on. It is what you do.

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97% Consensus: The Great Climate Lie

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