(May 24, 2013 at 3:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: The appeal to authority doesn't really work at any level when trying to establish absolute truth. I could just as easily lie about the ethics of hacking as Rayaan could do some good research and write an accurate essay on the subject.
Appeal to authority seems to me to be a fallacy when you are trying to make absolute truth claims, but if all you are trying to do OS establish trust in a claim, then it's fine. Saying "Tiberius is a hacker so what he says about hacking is true" is a clear fallacy. Saying "Tiberius is a hacker so he likely knows more about hacking than Rayaan" isn't.
I agree with you; that's pretty much the same thing I said in my previous post. Appeal to authority doesn't work when trying to establish absolute truth.
My quote (with the addition of bolding):
(May 23, 2013 at 7:03 pm)Rayaan Wrote: That being said, one aspect that comes to my mind is the issue of knowledge and trustability: It's natural for us to think that a person who has an abundant amount of knowledge and experience on a subject (such as photography, for example) is more likely to be right in regards to something that he said about the field of study that he is qualified in, although not necessarily, because that would be a fallacy.