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| I. Argumentum ad Verecundiam: (argument from authority)
the fallacy of appealing to the testimony of an authority outside his special field.
Anyone can give opinions or advice; the fallacy only occurs when the reason for assenting
to the conclusion is based on following the recommendation or advice of an improper authority. |
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A. Occasionally, this argument is called the
"argument from prestige" and is based on the belief that prestigious people
cannot be wrong. In these cases, the fallacy is probably best termed the "snob appeal"
variety of the ad populum. |
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B. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish
between the ad verecundiam and the ad populum
when the authority cited is a group with high status. |
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This example from a popular logic
text can be identified as either an ad verecundiam or an ad populum:
"Those who say that astrology is not reliable are mistaken. The wisest men of history
have all been interested in astrology, and kings and queens of all ages have guided the
affairs of nations by it."1
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C. The informal structure generally has the
basic pattern: |
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Authority on subject x, L
says accept statement p.
p is outside the scope of or not germane to the
subject x.
p is true. |
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C. For example: |
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Linus
Pauling as the only person ever to win two unshared Nobel prizes, one for chemistry, the other
for peace stated his taking of Vitamin C delayed the onset of cancer by twenty years.
(Winning a Nobel Prize in chemistry and for peace does not imply expertise in the medical science of
the diagnosis and treatment of malignant neoplasms.)
Therefore, vitamin C is effective in the treatment of cancer. |
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E. Many advertising campaigns are built on this
fallacy. Popular sports figures, musicians, or actors endorse products of which they have
no special expertise and, in this context, this fact is offered as a mistaken reason we
should use those products.
Even so, occasionally a movie star, for example, might also be
an appropriate authority in another subject. For example, Ronald Regan can be relevantly
quoted as a political authority or Paul Newman can be quoted as a race car driver. Their
reasoning in those respective fields would not ordinarily be open to the charge of an ad
verecundiam fallacy.
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F. Note also that an ad verecundiam
inductive argument (i.e., an argument whose conclusion is
claimed to follow not with certainty but with probability) is not necessarily a
fallacy even if the relevant or appropriate authority in the field is mistaken.
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For example, in 1948, readers of Science
News were invited to buy a fluffy dish towel made from 80 percent cotton and 20
percent asbestos from "Things of Science," an experiment of the month program provided
by Science Service.1 Concluding
that the towel would be safe and useful would not have
been an ad verecundiam fallacy even though the authority in this case, the
Science News program, was being relied upon. The authority was relevant but simply mistaken.
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| II. Examples of the ad verecundiam fallacy: |
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A. The brilliant William Jenkins, the recent
Nobel Prize winner in physics, states uncategorically that the flu virus will be
controlled in essentially all of its forms in the next two decades. The opinion of such
a noted scientist cannot be disregarded. |
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B. The United States policy toward mainland China
in the 1980's was surely mistaken because Shirley McLaine, the well-known actress, emphasized
at the time she had grave misgivings about it. |
| III. Uses of the ad verecundiam. |
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A. Proper experts and authorities render valuable
opinions in their fields and, ceteris paribus, should have direct bearing
on the argument at hand—especially if we have no better evidence to base a conclusion
securer grounds. |
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B. To qualify as an authority, the individual
must be generally recognized by peers in the same field by peers who either hold a similar
view or recognize the cogency of the point of view being expresses. (Examine, for yourself,
why this condition of citing what many authorities in a field believe is not an instance
of the ad populum fallacy.) |
| IV. Non-fallacious examples of the ad
verecundiam. |
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A. Former President Bush said that America would
be much stronger if the people would return to traditional American values, and indeed he
argues that we should. |
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B. Although the following passages are considered
fallacies by a popular logic textbook, note why they are not fallacious. |
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1. "But can you doubt that air has weight
when you have the clear testimony of Aristotle affirming that all the elements have weight
including air, and excepting only fire?"
(Galileo Galilei, Dialogues Concerning
Two New Sciences)3
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2. "In that melancholy book The Future of
an Illusion, Dr. Freud, himself one of the last great theorists of the European
capitalist class, has stated with simple clarity the impossibility of religious belief for
the educated man of today."
(John Strachey, The Coming Struggle for Power)4
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Philosophy
103: Introduction to Logic
