When is an argument from authority acceptable?

I would give the respect of authority to someone who had experience and was able to support their argument with relevant information, details, facts, etc. It’s not enough for me to hear someone say, “This is right because Mr. Chomsky said so,” but if someone says, “Chomsky said this, and because of x and y and z, I agree with him.”

It’s not a matter of right or wrong in argument, really IMO as a composition teacher, but a matter of strong or weak arguments. Appealing to authority sometimes will weaken someone’s argument.

There are many ways we give authority its argumentative power- when we see a doctor hawking meds on TV it’s more believable than a street thug, even if the street thug might happen to know more about meds than some doctors. Same with women selling feminine products or bras—that authority is completely given and indisputed, even though some men might be equally able to extol any virtues of bras.

I haven’t read your thread completely, but I think whether the argument from authority works or not depends on whether you can use something other than authority to argue your point. If you said, “Sin is bad because the Bible says so,” it’s weak, even if millions of people agree with you, but if you define sin, give examples, and show in cause-effect form that “sin is bad,” your argument’s stronger.

Well, if you want to make that argument, you better be an acknowledged authority. You can’t just say you are an authority. You have to offer evidence.

Someone who is famous will generally be accepted as an authority. But someone who nobody knows won’t be accepted.

Some of us know something about the research you do and have some idea of the background reading you have to have done to get where you are. Others probably have no idea what your work is.

To use your authority, you have to ask people to take your word for it. If people won’t take your word for it, then you have to provide evidence to support your point of view.

I try not to make appeals based on my authority except for my children, and even there, we’ve taught them to question us. Prove it, they are supposed to say. We are not supposed to say, “because I say so.”

If authority is almost universally acknowledged, or if authority has been pre-certified (say by a rank in the armed services), and the certification is accepted as valid within the group, then an appeal to authority is acceptable.

Otherwise, not. In a forum like Fluther, there are few authorities, if any. The only universally recognized authority here that I can think of is Augustlan.

No shortcuts, @nikipedia. Sorry.

—And in this context, I would think that “consensus” means a nearly universal acceptance of a theory about whatever is being discussed.”

I am an authority on epoxies, Home Brewing, Yoga and coffee. Ask me anything and I will take on all comers.

Anyone can say “experts say ______” but unless you can provide a link to an article or a study; ie. cite an expert, and prove that experts really do say that, and that other experts don’t say that your experts are wrong, the phrase is mostly useless.

Some authorities I trust more than others. For instance, I trust a doctor more than a faith healer, though they might both be considered authorities in their own given fields.

However, for the purposes of Fluther, we don’t have ridiculously high standards of who’s an authority. Hell, the banner at the top says “everyone’s an expert;” one of the major themes of the site is using our own particular little tidbits of knowledge that we’ve gained from out experiences to help others. You may be a student, @nikipedia, but I’d trust your word damn well enough on any question I had about neuroscience because you obviously know a lot more than I do about it. I guess if we wanted to do some really formal debating, avoiding such a logical fallacy would be important, but on Fluther? Nah.

So I consider myself a pseudo-authority on ulcerative colitis and a lot of math.

Oh, I want to add… “Years of Experience” alone does not constitute authority. I detest it when someone is losing an argument, and then turns and uses, “I worked here for 25, 30, 47 years, so I know.” No, that’s not true at all. I know teachers who made their lesson plans 30 years ago and never updated anything and that goes for doctors, dentists, professors, you name it. UGH!
If someone has 25 years, plus kept up, refreshed, updated, did additional work, adjusted for the times, read the research (and bothered to agree or disagree), I’ll respect their authority.

I think it’s about making judgments as to the strength of the authority’s expertise on the particular area. I don’t think an argument from authority is ever acceptable in convincing someone of the truth: there remains that degree of uncertainty and doubt without the authority explaining the rationale behind his/her conclusion.

What constitutes an “expert” is obviously debatable. But generally we say it is someone with credentials from accredited sources. “Accredited” can get debatable of course too.

I’ll accept arguments from authority if I’m not passionate about needing to know the full roots of something. Like an idle question. Or if it is an emergency with little time to act. If I say to an astronomer “how far is the nearest star” and the answer is “about 4 light years,” I’ll accept that. I won’t believe it is absolutely the truth though, since I know I just accepted an argument from authority.

I think that while it’s frequently practical to accept an argument from authority, it is very important to acknowledge to one’s self when one has done that. Ask a bunch of economists if cutting taxes creates jobs and you’ll notice they don’t all agree. If I accepted the first one’s statement of “yes” without question, then I’m going to be biased against someone that tells me “no.”

@Mariah I think I am an expert on ulcerative colitis brought about BY math!

I didn’t read the thread, but I’ll use examples. I know that you’re studying neuroscience (that’s it, right?), so I would like to think I could trust you if I asked you or an actual neuroscientist some questions and requested links. But if we were arguing about something more subjective like the morality of abortion, it wouldn’t matter how many people you knew who’ve had them or what you’ve experienced.

Even though I don’t like the pope, if I asked him a basic question about catholicism, I would trust his answer (I mean a fact, not what he felt about something).

I guess it comes down to whether it is objective and/or if you trust the person to be objective. This is just my opinion.

@Blackberry Great answer. I’d add that even if I was asking @nikipedia more probing questions about some minutia about neuroscience, questioning how such a detail is known to be true, at no point would it be acceptable for her to throw up her arms in exasperation and say “Look, that’s just the way it is, trust me!” and expect anyone to be convinced it’s true. While it may be human and reasonable to act that way if I monopolized an hour of her time and was very slow in understanding her, it would be a logical fallacy for me to accept it as a true statement because she said it from her authority. Even if it is true.

I guess where personal experience of physical tasks is involved it makes a difference. People trust me with foraging stuff because I’ve done it so often and therefore have the experience. They can say “You didn’t die or get sick when you ate it, so it’s got to be at least reasonably safe.” And such. Having done a lot of botanical research probably helps people trust my knowledge too, of course, but nothing beats the first hand experience. But when it comes to anthropology related stuff, which is a bit more subjective and nuanced, I try to let my arguments stand on their own based on facts and good logic (but I have on occasion whipped out the degree when someone is being deliberately or persistantly obtuse).

I guess with crafts and such, it matters too, because there are things people learn that can’t be learned in books, like the timing or balance of flavors when homebrewing or something.

There’s also the halfway point, where you can say “Well, in my experience doing X,Y, and Z, it’s been this way”, and people will likely give that information a bit more weight, though not necessarily take it as a true argument.

There will be people with PhD’s who will say, “Because of my PhD, I know this and that,” but nothing beats the experience that the trenches bring. I’d take the authority of a successful business owner with a high school diploma over the PhD who took 10 years of college studying the theories of business but not 5 minutes running a real business. Same with education- I’ll take the experience of a 25 year teacher over the PhD who has never been in an actual classroom.