Name:
Appeal to Unqualified Authority
Alternative Names:
Argumentum ad Verecundiam
Category:
Fallacies of Relevance > Appeals to Authority
Explanation:
An appeal to an Unqualified Authority looks much like a legitimate appeal to authority, but it violates at least one of the three necessary conditions for such an appeal to be legitimate:
- 1. The authority is an expert in the area of knowledge under consideration.
- 2. The statement of the authority concerns his or her area of mastery.
- 3. There is agreement among experts in the area of knowledge under consideration.
People don’t always bother to think about whether these standards have been met. One reason is that most learn to defer to authorities and are reluctant to challenge them — this is the source of the Latin name for this fallacy, Argumentum ad Verecundiam, which means “argument appealing to our sense of modesty.” It was coined by John Locke to communicate how people are browbeaten by such arguments into accepting a proposition by the testimony of an authority because they are too modest to base a challenge on their own knowledge.
Authorities can be challenged and the place to start is by questioning whether or not the above criteria have been met. To begin with, you can question whether or not the alleged authority really is an authority in this area of knowledge. It isn’t uncommon for people to set themselves up as authorities when they don’t merit such a label.
For example, expertise in the fields of science and medicine require many years of study and practical work, but some who claim to have similar expertise by more obscure methods, like self-study. With that, they might claim the authority to challenge everyone else; but even if it turns out that their radical ideas are right, until that is proven, references to their testimony would be a fallacious.
Examples and Discussion:
An all-too-common example of this is movie stars testifying on important matters before Congress:
- 4. My favorite actor, who appeared in a movie about AIDS, has testified that the HIV virus doesn’t really cause AIDS and that there has been a cover-up. So, I think that AIDS must be caused by something other than HIV and the drug companies are hiding it so that they can make money from expensive anti-HIV drugs.
Although there is little evidence to support the idea, perhaps it is true that AIDS is not caused by HIV; but that is really beside the point. The above argument bases the conclusion on the testimony on an actor, apparently because they appeared in a movie on the topic.
This example might seem fanciful but many actors have testified before Congress based on the strength of their movie roles or pet charities. This doesn’t make them any more of an authority on such topics than you or I. They certainly can’t claim the medical and biological expertise to make authoritative testimony on the nature of AIDS. So just why is it that actors are invited to testify before Congress on topics other than acting or art?
A second basis for challenge is whether or not the authority in question is making statements in his or her area of expertise. Sometimes, it is obvious when that is not happening. The above example with actors would be a good one - we might accept such a person as an expert on acting or how Hollywood works, but that doesn’t mean they know anything about medicine.
There are many examples of this in advertising — indeed, just about every bit of advertising which uses some sort of celebrity is making a subtle (or not-so-subtle) appeal to unqualified authority. Just because someone is a famous baseball player doesn’t make them qualified to say which mortgage company is best, for instance.
Often the difference can be much more subtle, with an authority in a related field making statements about an area of knowledge close to their own, but not quite close enough to warrant calling them an expert. So, for example, a dermatologist might be an expert when it comes to skin disease, but that doesn’t mean that they should be accepted as also being an expert when it comes to lung cancer.
Finally, we can challenge an appeal to authority based on whether or not the testimony being offered is something which would find widespread agreement among other experts in that field. After all, if this is the only person in the entire field making such claims, the mere fact that they have expertise doesn’t warrant belief in it, especially considering the weight of contrary testimony.
There are entire fields, in fact, where there is widespread disagreement on just about everything — psychiatry and economics are good examples of this. When an economist testifies to something, we can be almost guaranteed that we could find other economists to argue differently. Thus, we cannot rely upon them and should look directly at the evidence they are offering.
« Legitimate Appeal to Authority | Appeal to Anonymous Authority »
