Argument from authority

Author: Leandro Alegsa Creation date: November 13, 2022

Argument from authority or appeal to authority is a form of argument or reasoning that argues if a person with authority in a field makes a statement about it, it is probably true. It could become a fallacy if it is misused.

In informal reasoning, the appeal to authority is an argument of the form:

A is an authority on a particular topic

A says something about that topic

A is probably correct

The argument is good in some conditions. For example, a person says, "I need to take my medication because my doctor told me to." Doctors are trained, know much about medication, and probably have experience giving medication before. The person is appealing to a real authority with supported data that makes the authority probably right.

The argument is bad when there is a false authority or unclear authority. For example, "I know X is true because it said so on the internet." The complete internet has no authority because any person on the internet can say anything they want. A part of the internet may have authority, but it is unclear because the argument was not specific.

Rating

To be admissible, an authority argument must have the following characteristics:

Authority is trustworthy because it has been proven.
The authority is cited correctly.
The authority has expertise in the relevant subject area.
The general rules of reasoning were followed.
Authorities who hold the opposing view, rather than simply ignoring them, are also cited and refuted.

Where these points are not met, the authority is unjustifiably invoked and it is a sham. The suspicion is that it is also an intentional fallacy or sophism.

Reconstruction Suggestions

In his introduction to logic, Wesley C. Salmon reconstructed the structure of authority arguments as a case of a "statistical syllogism," that is, an inductive argument that makes its conclusion at least probable:

	The overwhelming majority of the claims x makes about S are true.
	p is a statement of x about S
	p is true.

In this form, the conclusion is correct, but not necessarily truth-preserving. Salmon also makes the demands that the authority must be correctly cited, that it must actually also be a professional authority (and not just a celebrity), that S must actually be the authority's field of expertise, that the authority might actually know about the truth of p if p is true, and that no equally appropriate authorities contradict p. Where the requirements are not met, there is for him a clear abuse of the argument form.

The figure consensus gentium is treated by Salmon as a special case of argumentum ad verecundiam, subject to the same conditions.

Recent systematic epistemology deals with criteria of epistemic justification for the acceptance of "authoritative" statements, especially from "experts", mainly in the context of social epistemology.