atheism, philosophy and emotional immaturity
March 28, 2013 at 10:11 pm
(This post was last modified: March 28, 2013 at 10:12 pm by jstrodel.)
It has come to my attention that many atheists believe that the argument from authority is essentially a fallacious argument. I am not going to argue that the argument from authority is, in essence, a fallacy. That is too obvious of a point to make. Of course the argument from authority is a real argument and not a blatant logical fallacy (and of course some arguments from authority are better than others and some are completely fallacious).
What I want to discuss is why someone would believe that the argument from authority is fallacious. What are the sorts of people that think the argument from authority is fallacious? I believe there are certain personality characteristics that go hand in hand.
1. Age - people that believe that the argument from authority is fallacious are typically under 25. Clearly this has to do with rebelliousness and rejecting established traditions. It is strongly related to religious epistemology. I strongly believe that the way that people reason when they are younger is very different from how they are when they get older. When people become older, they tend to not care as much about proving how smart they are or demanding that others recognize their novel abilities to do different things. There sense of self respect is defined in more professional and more carefully defined ways, such as work place achievement or in ministry or service to others. When people are younger, they tend to have a greater zeal to want to prove to others that the whole world is wrong and they are right. Not only is it wrong, but it is essentially valueless, not worth paying attention to, that everyone is wrong, that there are conspiracies and and dark shadows everywhere and that the only person wise and good enough to sort through this chaos is them.
2. Hubris - Hubris is a vice that is related to people having a greater sense of self confidence than is warranted given a certain situation. Related to the issue of intellectual authority, the issue of hubris becomes very important. If someone has hubris, they believe that their opinions are more likely to be true than other people who know much more than them, have professional credentials, in general could be expected to know more. Hubris is a very dangerous thing, it is a dangerous thing to imagine that you know more about things that are important. Once I was with a guy who believed that medication was evil and he thought that he had the ability to say, it is wrong to take medication. This is an example of the hubris of rejecting the argument from authority. When people reject the argument from authority when it is used properly, and think they, based on a specialized understanding of something can do a better job than others who know better than them, they are proud.
3. Over confidence in informal reason as a means to understand to understand the world. Reason is a valuable tool that can be used to understand the world. But it is limited. In the Enlightenment, people greatly exaggerated the power the reason has to describe the world. It is very very difficult to come to an accurate understanding of anything using purely informal methods of reasoning. This is connected with hubris, believing that your opinions are more important than they are, and thinking that opinions are actually intellectually valuable, when in fact, they are the product of perhaps at most, 10 or 15 hours of reflection. Most people underestimate the amount of time that it takes to truly understand something in all of its dimensions and completely appreciate its nature. Life is complicated, and cannot be reduced to simple pretentious phrases, designed to build political and intellectual movements and make people feel as if they are exercising critical thinking skills (when in reality they are being herded and taught to follow ideological logical methods that presuppose the result, undetected to the untrained eye) rather than give them the ability to directly interact with the main aspects of reasoning and science. It takes years to learn how to do this. And the people who do it disagree a lot.
What I want to discuss is why someone would believe that the argument from authority is fallacious. What are the sorts of people that think the argument from authority is fallacious? I believe there are certain personality characteristics that go hand in hand.
1. Age - people that believe that the argument from authority is fallacious are typically under 25. Clearly this has to do with rebelliousness and rejecting established traditions. It is strongly related to religious epistemology. I strongly believe that the way that people reason when they are younger is very different from how they are when they get older. When people become older, they tend to not care as much about proving how smart they are or demanding that others recognize their novel abilities to do different things. There sense of self respect is defined in more professional and more carefully defined ways, such as work place achievement or in ministry or service to others. When people are younger, they tend to have a greater zeal to want to prove to others that the whole world is wrong and they are right. Not only is it wrong, but it is essentially valueless, not worth paying attention to, that everyone is wrong, that there are conspiracies and and dark shadows everywhere and that the only person wise and good enough to sort through this chaos is them.
2. Hubris - Hubris is a vice that is related to people having a greater sense of self confidence than is warranted given a certain situation. Related to the issue of intellectual authority, the issue of hubris becomes very important. If someone has hubris, they believe that their opinions are more likely to be true than other people who know much more than them, have professional credentials, in general could be expected to know more. Hubris is a very dangerous thing, it is a dangerous thing to imagine that you know more about things that are important. Once I was with a guy who believed that medication was evil and he thought that he had the ability to say, it is wrong to take medication. This is an example of the hubris of rejecting the argument from authority. When people reject the argument from authority when it is used properly, and think they, based on a specialized understanding of something can do a better job than others who know better than them, they are proud.
3. Over confidence in informal reason as a means to understand to understand the world. Reason is a valuable tool that can be used to understand the world. But it is limited. In the Enlightenment, people greatly exaggerated the power the reason has to describe the world. It is very very difficult to come to an accurate understanding of anything using purely informal methods of reasoning. This is connected with hubris, believing that your opinions are more important than they are, and thinking that opinions are actually intellectually valuable, when in fact, they are the product of perhaps at most, 10 or 15 hours of reflection. Most people underestimate the amount of time that it takes to truly understand something in all of its dimensions and completely appreciate its nature. Life is complicated, and cannot be reduced to simple pretentious phrases, designed to build political and intellectual movements and make people feel as if they are exercising critical thinking skills (when in reality they are being herded and taught to follow ideological logical methods that presuppose the result, undetected to the untrained eye) rather than give them the ability to directly interact with the main aspects of reasoning and science. It takes years to learn how to do this. And the people who do it disagree a lot.
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