[split] Critical Thinking Skills

[Mister Agenda]

He ignored the original point completely. Look at Joel's signature. Whatever.

Just to spell it out, in that quote, your justification for the argument not being fallacious was argument ad populum. The juxtaposition makes it cute.

It might cause less confusion if people always said 'fallacy of appeal to inappropriate authority' instead of shortening it for convenience. Many of us take the 'inappropriate' as given, but not everyone is aware of it.

[jstrodel]

obviously an argument from authority is not always true. it is not ad populum to appeal to a community that likely has justification for their beliefs, that is an argument from authority made stronger by the number of people.


ad populum is when the population is used inappropriately. the same for an argument from authority.

it is not always fallacious to appeal to how many believe a certain claim, just as it is not always fallacious to appeal to% the authority of the people making the claim. the argument becomes fallacious when the number or the nature of the authority is irrelevant to whether a statement is true, for instance "75% of voters oppose gun control" would be ad populum, because there is no reason why 75% of voters would necessarily know whether gun control was the correct position. In constrast, the statement 75% of gun manufacters believe that a special lock on assault weapons would prevent them from being converted to automatic weapons, would NOT be ad populum, because the number of people who believe that obviously directly relates to whether the statement is true - if 75% of gun manufacturers who on a daily basis work with the technical details of how guns work, it is a valid argument from authority that is strenthened by the number of independent experts who agree (although perhaps financial pressures involving gun sales bias the result).

This is all common sense. Arguments from authority are not always fallacious and neither are appealing to the number of people who believe something. This is common sense.

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Jstrodel, do you understand what a reputation is? Do you understand the weight behind having your views peer reviewed? Do you know the difference between a credible "authority" and a not so credible authority?

Yes, I believe the findings I get from scientists and researchers as long as those findings are put up for peer review to be criticized and as long as they stand up to criticism. That's the first, biggest difference between theists or their pseudo-scientific theories and legitimate scientific theories. Religious groups fall apart under the slightest questioning or criticism.

I'd like to be able to do some of these scientific tests myself but, sadly, I don't have access to the lab materials or knowledge needed. I can still find out quite a bit about them, though, even without actually doing the research myself. Sometimes I can watch the research being done, which pretty much verifies things for me. Sometimes the details on them aren't given for safety reasons; for example, we don't always get all the details on nuclear research or testing on dangerous baceria or viruses. Under that circumstance, I'd rather trust authorities than give unstable people easy access to information that can help them kill millions. Sometimes, I'll admit, stuff gets to be too advanced for me to really follow and I can't follow it even if I try. And that should be understandable, since it can be hard to follow topics like string theory or discussions on dark energy or anti matter.

But the bottom line remains the same: there's a HUGE difference between credible 'authorities' and 'authorities' that aren't credible. There's a huge difference between bad research and research that can be repeated and verified and even falsified and is published for peer review. If you don't understand that, you don't understand what critical thinking is.

This is true, but you didn't argue for the impossible proposition that "arguments from authority are only valid when they refer to people in scientific circumstances". It is true that science provides methods of dealing with truth claims that are more rigorous than other methods. What is not true is that science is the only way to do this. Before the modern scientific approach, there were other approaches, for instance, the philosophical methods of the Greeks that are still widely influential today.

Science as it is understood in the modern period is a relatively recent improvement on other ways that people have handled truth claims, it is true that it has some advantages, but it is not the only valid kind of authority that exists.

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You guys don't know what you are talking about. A picture of a fossil is not the same as the journals and labs and tests that verify the object is what it says it is. There are plenty of pictures floating around about UFO's, do you believe them because of a picture?

It is not entirely accurate to suggest that we are appealing to a single authority. We are appealing to a great many authorities which have independently, and without an agenda, reached similar conclusions from examination of the same evidence, with the coda that we make no pretenses about them being inerrant. I feel confident in answers that follow questions. I distrust answers which precede questions, when they are right, it is only by coincidence.

You should post this on the thread about whether the greater number of expert testimonies increases the authority of the claim. Cluthulu Dreaming will probably give you a stern rebuke for the "ad populum" fallacy (lol), and refuse to ground his criticisms in anything other than a "common sense" understanding of ad populum.

[Darkstar]

it is not always fallacious to appeal to how many believe a certain claim, just as it is not always fallacious to appeal to% the authority of the people making the claim. the argument becomes fallacious when the number or the nature of the authority is irrelevant to whether a statement is true, for instance "75% of voters oppose gun control" would be ad populum, because there is no reason why 75% of voters would necessarily know whether gun control was the correct position. In constrast, the statement 75% of gun manufacters believe that a special lock on assault weapons would prevent them from being converted to automatic weapons, would NOT be ad populum, because the number of people who believe that obviously directly relates to whether the statement is true - if 75% of gun manufacturers who on a daily basis work with the technical details of how guns work, it is a valid argument from authority that is strenthened by the number of independent experts who agree (although perhaps financial pressures involving gun sales bias the result).

...oh! I was about to call you out on that, but it seems like you took into account the possible bias in your last sentence.

This is all common sense. Arguments from authority are not always fallacious and neither are appealing to the number of people who believe something. This is common sense.

Why do you think it is that Christians are an authority by which one can determine the existence of god? Can you think of anything that could bias their beliefs? Put another way, Bobby Henderson is an authority on the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but does that make the Flying Spaghetti Monster real?

adherents state that Pastafarianism is a genuine religion

[Mister Agenda]

If you say that an argument is not fallacious because everyone uses it, that's ad populum. Are you able to accept that and move on?

[jstrodel]

You guys don't know what you are talking about. A picture of a fossil is not the same as the journals and labs and tests that verify the object is what it says it is. There are plenty of pictures floating around about UFO's, do you believe them because of a picture?

Are you really this deluded? It's called source criticism, look it up. If you don't understand the concept, it is futile for anyone to discuss with you.

A lot of terms are related to source criticism:

cognitive authority; authority (textual criticism)
credibility (e.g. media credibility)
critical literacy /critical reading /critical thinking /Information literacy
information criticism /information quality /information evaluating
quality of evidence / quality norms in science and scholarship
relevance
source evaluation / source reliability
trust (social sciences); trustworthiness

OMG RETARDS DON'T KNOW CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS DON'T U KNOW THAT WHEN U USE SOURCE CRITISIMS YOU WILL UNDERSTAND THINGS YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE AUTHORITY YOU RETARD LOOK

Errr. damn.

U R DELUDED

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Jstrodel please enlighten yourself with things such as the scientific method and peer review then we can talk. Those are the processes anybody making scientific discoveries use to come to their conclusions.

Once it is obvious that you have done this, then we can talk.

What does this have to do with what I posted.

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No Darkstar, you are wrong. When someone shows you evidence that they have collected, really they are making an argument from authority, unless you see the original form the evidence takes in scientific journals and know exactly how to deal with it.

If you see an image of a fossil, that is not evidence. You must actually understand all the issues surrounding fossils before you have a direct experience of the things they are supposed to tell you about.

Now, it may be reasonable to trust that the people who are digging up fossils combined with the facts they present line up to tell a story. But they are establishing their credibility, and essentially arguing from their authority, unless you are reading the really technical stuff.

Most people will never experience real science in their life, their knowledge of science comes from appealing to scientific figures, whether it is directly an argument from there authority or some amount of information supporting the theories they support is gained, people do not really have the ability to do that much critical thinking without doing a ton of work.

What you say is true to a degree. In this day and age there is so much knowledge that specialization is required. So even an accomplished scientist in one field may have to rely on the conclusions of scientists in another field which .. as you say .. they are not in a position to fully vouchsafe directly themselves. But that is where peer review comes in. The fact that we rely on the experts in each field to provide the scrutiny we are unqualified to provide for ourselves can be seen as an appeal to authority. But even to the degree what you say is true, an appeal to the consensus of the best scientists working in a field carries more weight than an appeal to the experts in theology or literature. Someone who understands the scientific method, peer review and a little philosophy of science is not on the same epistemic footing as someone who places their confidence in the inerrancy of the bible.

An honest view of the situation. I will admit, it is not exactly the same. But there are other issues involved, such as science has no power to answer many kinds of questions, and there are other sources of authority that people rely on (such as common witness of the spirit).

Other facts involve tradition and the pragmatic value of theology to societies, the shear number of applications that many understandings of theology has had, over hundreds or thousands of years. There are no scientific methods that have thousands of years of history in for example, instructing young people on the correct way to live. Something to think about when you argue (though you are one of the better ones, whateverist), that Christianity is on the same evidential status as the tool fairy.

The person will point to a study that is 20 years old that has been successfully applied in a limited number of cases that replaced a similar theory, for instance, in medecine, that had a lot of unintended affects, coming out of using very similar methods.

I will accept that in some ways science can do things that theology cannot do, in terms of verification among non-specialized people. Theological verification happens when people experience the reality of God, and through other forms of in-query into the value of theology.

Scientific verification seems more rigorous, but when you look closer, most of the scientific theories and technological products are replaced relatively quickly, almost never longer than 100 or 200 years and technology changes even faster than that, much faster.

Religion has thousands of years of proven results. Someone will give a little junior historian littany of the crusades, the inquisition, and HITLER, blah blah blah, well there is 2000 years of history, there have been some bad things and some things you might not like much, but there is 2000 years of it, it is has mostly remained the same.

Science cannot appeal to that sort of cultural authority that surrounds it, not can it appeal to the degree of explanatory power that religious belief has in giving people credible answers to their origins and the correct way to live, which are always related.

So, in sum, I accept that the rigor of science and theology are of a different nature, but this does not prove that arguments from theological authority are meaningless, though perhaps they cannot be appreciated from an atheist statepoint, and perhaps that is to a lack of wisdom and knowledge of theology that the authority of the Christian church is rejected, rather than due to a proof along the same lines of rigor as the science the atheist clings to that demonstrates the Christian church is false or valueless.

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If you say that an argument is not fallacious because everyone uses it, that's ad populum. Are you able to accept that and move on?

Yes, if you were arguing "because everyone uses it". If you think that learning about theology or experience miracles is the same, referentially as "because everyone uses it", you are intentionally distorting language in order to make way for atheist claims.

You presupposition is the proposition "The authority of theological and mystical experience is not acceptable.", and because it is not acceptable, the argument is ad populum.

But you are not honest enough to actually represent the controversial claim that appeal to theological authorities that have existed for 2000 years or appeal to the testimony of miracles is the same as ad populum.

An honest person would argue that point, letting his pressupositions be known, you try and conflate ad populum with religious authority, trying to reduce religious claims to the same level as a random sampling of human opinions. You can argue that is true, but the fact that you didn't argue it, you just pressed and insisted that this was the nature of ad populum, using the language of a textbook fallacy proves that you are a dishonest person, rather than an atheist trying to advance atheism.

For an example of an honest atheist, see whateverist

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If you say that an argument is not fallacious because everyone uses it, that's ad populum. Are you able to accept that and move on?

Yes, but I never said that. I wouldn't make that claim.

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flying spaggeti monster

The fact that you put Christianity and Judaism and Islam, the three theistic religions, which are collectively the most important forces in history and have the majority of the people in the world adhering to them on the same level as a flying spagetti monster proves that you are DISHONEST (in the sense of lying, or deliberately avoiding the truth) and not worth debating.

[Kayenneh]

OMG RETARDS DON'T KNOW CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS DON'T U KNOW THAT WHEN U USE SOURCE CRITISIMS YOU WILL UNDERSTAND THINGS YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE AUTHORITY YOU RETARD LOOK

Errr. damn.

U R DELUDED

This is your best comeback?

[Joel]

If you say that an argument is not fallacious because everyone uses it, that's ad populum. Are you able to accept that and move on?

Yes, but I never said that. I wouldn't make that claim.

Are you sure about that?

[jstrodel]

OMG RETARDS DON'T KNOW CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS DON'T U KNOW THAT WHEN U USE SOURCE CRITISIMS YOU WILL UNDERSTAND THINGS YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE AUTHORITY YOU RETARD LOOK

Errr. damn.

U R DELUDED

This is your best comeback?

You didn't see what I posted? Obviously you didn't even read the article you posted. It supports my claim that critical thinking skills rely on something similar to the argument from authority. Did you notice terms like "trustworthiness". You are posting things that support my claim.

You also called me deluded, which shows me atheists have no problem employing psychological manipulation tactics to advance their beliefs. Delusion is a medical term. You post a link to something that supports what I said, and then you called me deluded. What do you expect?

When I see people misuse fallacies and ignore the context of what people right, though they may use terms like logic and things like this, I group them together with the high school script kiddies who type in all caps. That is what you did. You posted a document that supported my claim and attempt to arguing a position that helped me by using medical terminology to attribute a medical diagnosis of delusion.

Your style is reminiscent of the tactics of the soviet union.

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Yes, but I never said that. I wouldn't make that claim.

Are you sure about that?

Joel what are your top 5 favorite non-fiction books that you have read that relate to this discussion? Let me see what they are.

Cmon Joel, what are you top 5 favorite books on logic. Who are your favorite logicians. Lets here em Joel. Cough em up. What do you like about them?

[My imaginary friend is GOD]

I can't believe this conversation has gone on for 13 pages. It's so incredibly boring.

[Joel]

Why must I have read a book?
Why don't you just answer the question instead of being a condescending butthole.