An appeal to authority is a common type of fallacy that arises when one who has the difficulty in confronting or understanding complicated questions will seek refuge to the ideas, concepts, principles or judgments of a person who enjoys a reputation as an expert or an authority of the matter at issue. In other words, an appeal to authority is a fallacious argument in which the testimony of someone believed to be an authority is cited in support of a conclusion. It must be noted that the person being cited here is not, in fact, an expert or an authority on the matter or for some reason should not be relied upon. Thus, the fallacy of appeal to authority occurs when the authority cited is not qualified in the relevant matters or, less typically, is not free from adverse influences. Thus, the arguer is relying upon the assertions of someone who is not truly in a position to know.
Let us consider the following examples:
- I know your doctor says you need your appendix removed, but according to the famous herbalist Mar Lopez, people with your symptoms just need a change in their diet, plus a daily intake of MX3 capsule. So, forget about having your appendix removed.
- Augustine said there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. That’s reasonable enough for me.
The underlying idea of such arguments is that some statement p is true because some authority q has said it is true. The argument’s basic structure is this:
Authority p asserts that q.
Therefore, q.
Here, we see immediately that such an argument is neither valid nor inductively strong, since the mere fact that someone asserts q neither makes it so nor makes it probable. Typically, however, the arguer believes more than the mere fact that p asserts that q. The arguer very likely is assuming such things as that p is someone who knows what he or she is talking about regarding q, or that p is speaking without bias, or that p is telling the truth. If those or similar assumptions are well founded, then the appeal to authority p may constitute a good argument, that is, non-fallacious reasoning. It must be noted that not all appeals to authority are fallacious. In fact, some appeal to authority may be inductively strong. After all, we should accept the testimony of qualified and unbiased experts, for there are indeed experts in their own right.
Now, to identify an appeal to authority fallacy, we ask two questions: 1) Is the authority, in fact, a qualified authority about matters related to q? and 2) Is there any good reason to believe that the authority may be biased in matters related to q?
Regarding Example #1 above, we should ask whether Mar Lopez is qualified to claim that proper diet and daily intake of MX3 capsule will render the removal of someone’s appendix unnecessary. So, is Mar Lopez an expert in human anatomy? Can he provide a scientific proof that proper diet and daily intake of MX3 capsule will render the removal of someone’s appendix unnecessary?
Regarding Example #2, we should ask whether St. Augustine, although he was a famous Catholic theologian, has proofs that heaven and hell really exist. As a matter of fact, issues about heaven and hell are very complicated ones. In fact, nobody has proven that indeed heaven and hell exist. If this is the case, how can we meaningfully talk about salvation?
A common variation on the appeal to authority is an appeal to a magazine or newspaper article or a radio or TV program. Consider this example:
“They have found a cure for cancer. I read about it in The New York Times.”
In such case, we ought to ask the same question: Is the source cited a reliable one in this matter? Ordinarily, we should be very suspicious of medical breakthroughs reported in The New York Times, though not of such breakthroughs reported in, say, the Journal of the American Medical Association. On the other hand, we would not expect to get reliable advice on the news or current events in a medical journal. Hence, the appeal to authority fallacy occurs when an argument is supported by reference to a publication or program not known for specialization on the subject.
In summary, not all appeals to authority are fallacious. The appeal to authority fallacy only occurs when an arguer appeals to someone who is not an expert in the field for which he or she is cited as support or who is not unbiased.
To recognize the appeal to authority fallacy, we need only look for an argument based primarily on the premises that some person (or some publication) reports that q is true. The fallacy occurs when the person (or publication) is not relevantly qualified or is not speaking without bias.