>And that's just in the capture - the reason you'd want 16bit in the software is so that those 10bpc values don't keep getting re-converted to 10bit values while working with the file, accumulating error as you go (aspects of GEGL looks promising on this front, but for other reasons). You still do that in 16bit, but the error is much smaller.
But you just made my point - even the best camera captures only capture in 14 bpc values. I am sorry if I was unclear about what I meant. Either way - this is not a crucial feature for professional art photography with heavy post processing.
Perfect quality - heavy (though very subtle) post processing.
So while you may find higher bit depths useful, they are not in fact required for good quality post processing. That is, if you know what you're doing (for starters, once you import your RAW, don't change the bit-depths again, EVER - and never scale unless you have to and if you must scale use liquid-rescale).
>P.S. If I had to pick anything out of The GIMP that I find lacking, it would be the transform tools rather than bit depth issues - but that's getting addressed in a future version and I happily use The GIMP in favor of e.g. Photoshop most of the time.
This is true - they aren't quite as good as they could be, but they are already much better than they were in the past and will only improve. Personally I prefer to limit my transforms to cropping for composition anyway so it doesn't bug me much. As far as I'm concerned if you're rotating an image you took it wrong in the first place.
Either way - my point is still simple. I'm a professional art photographer. I've been published in several international magazines. I use gimp and it does everything I've ever needed.
> If you are a non-believer, and you are wrong, when you die you will be in for a very rude awakening. If you are a believer, and you are wrong you will be in, oh wait you won't care.
You know, you wrote so sensibly, then you ended on Pascal's Bargain - which sadly has been completely and utterly discredited for the utterly horrible and illogical trash-argument it always was.
>I've only seen conservatives and the religious get their panties in a twist over fetal stem cell research. Back in the day, W made it as explicit as possible that he was only banning fetal stem cell research.
1) Back in the day when he made that ban, there wasn't any other kind. The adult stem-cell harvesting techniques only got invented to get around the ban.
2) Even then it was stupid. Nobody was proposing doing special abortions for stem cells, just using the ones from the abortions happening anyway. Even then that wasn't required - fetal stem cells don't require abortions at all and could even then be harvested in quantity from things like the placenta and umbilical cord. So there was a massive ready supply being dumped in the medical waste basket at every hospital maternity ward in the world for no reason whatsoever.
Now while the discovery of adult stem-cell harvesting opened up some useful new avenues of treatment, the fact is that the gap between the ban and that development greatly slowed down massive areas of research and many treatments that may have been becoming available now will still be away for several years - years during which many patients will die who would have lived if not for that ban. So much for a pro-life law.
Aah, well never done catalogue stuff. My photos usually accompany interviews. Anyway, I prefer art photography so most of my printwork is A3 blow-ups. I just take the occasional magazine job to pay bills.
>I have no idea what photographer you are, but we do use 16bit per channel data. But perhaps you do not work in this kind of print area. It probably depends for what publication you do your work for.
I work freelance, but when magazines ask me for print quality what I give them is uncompressed jpeg scaled to size at 300dpi. Never once have any of them requested anything different.
> Is an observed event from the past that can never be witnessed again or repeated not empirical evidence?
I did. I said it's not empirical evidence. There's a good reason for that. Remember the old (but very true) observation that if 12 people all saw the same accident you would get 12 conflicting eyewitness accounts ?
>See, this is the problem I have. You keep using arguments like this, and I don't have a problem with these arguments as arguments, I do have a problem with the fact that you insist that you're correct in your definition of fallacious appeal to authority, but you still keep using a type of argument you're claiming is always fallacious to argue for your definition. You have me pulling my hair out.
No, I'm not. I don't consider evidence is empirical because a scientists SAYS so. I consider evidence empirical because it conforms to the definition of the damn word. Most importantly: repeatedable. If OTHER scientists can't replicate the results then they aren't empirical. In fact - ANYBODY can replicate the results if it's empirical - a scientist is just more likely to have practical access to the required equipment.
Aaah yes, because photographers actually use those colors... oh wait, we don't and even the best cameras couldn't capture them anyway. No point really as the human eye cannot discern them.
Out of the entire list, you found the one feature that is actually completely and utterly useless and made an issue about it. But if you so desperately need that feature for something - well it IS in the snapshots so it DOES do that one as well - this is open source - development versions are available to users you know.
>So, the ancient Greeks were authorities on the subject of fallacies? And you wish me to accept their claims on that basis?
No, but one of the valid measurements of the truth of a theory is how long people have tried and failed to prove it wrong. Theories that remain unchanged since ancient times are incredibly rare - and the few there are, are about as close to "truth" as any human knowledge will ever be.
>So, you're something of an authority on the subject of ancient Greeks? And you wish me to accept your claims on that basis?.
Clearly you know nothing of "philosophy". I studied PHILOSOPHY - that did include ancient greek philosophy but also most other historical philosophers and major centers of it - I even studied African philosophy and all that was just - background. My speciality within the field of philosophy was logic - so while history is very valuable in the study of philosophy - it's by no means the entirety or even the focus of philosophy - and least of all in logic.
>Perhaps so, but what if I'm not seeking a degree in the subject? What if I just want to know whether the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants?
Then fuck quotes and do some actual research and make up your mind based on empirical data. What empirical data exists ? They are called history books. If you see a recurring pattern that supports this theory that's strong evidence for it. If not - then there isn't. Then you know how it's always been - that's half the problem. The other half is: "does it always have to be like that?" - and on that one, since there isn't any real way to prove it, the question is up to you. That somebody like Jefferson seemed to believe "yes" is NOT evidence (that's where the appeal to authority comes in).
>So what physical evidence exists that call-to-authority is always a fallacy, and how does the physical evidence relate to its meaning?
I said empirical, not physical. As it happens the field of logic is the underlying field of mathematics and it obeys mathematical rules. Every single established fallacy can be mathematially PROVEN. They are as certain and reliable as 2+2 = 4... in fact - they are part of the REASON why 2+2 = 4.
>So, relying on Thomas Jefferson is also not an appeal to authority fallacy.
There's a difference between relying on an expert for the rendering on a service and relying on an expert for the discovery of truth. I clearly ONLY meant the former. Comparing a doctor's visit to Jefferson's ideas on history is a very weak analogy as the two scenarios have nothing in common. The doctor can do 90% of his work by looking at established and empirical scientific fact (as it stands at any given moment). Any scholar of history will tell you that in history there is no such thing as established and empirical fact. The physical evidence is little to nothing at best and ANY theory that accounts for them is as valid as ANY other theory that also does. Indeed the best way to get an A in university history is to write a theory that directly contradicts what your lecturer believes - if you can back it up from the tiny amount of evidence that ever exists (past historians are always rejected as a source by the way) then you've done your job. So Jefferson was speaking about a subject where the very idea of an expert is... well... ludicrous. There is no such thing as an expert on history - only theorists of history can ever exist as there is simply not enough evidence for anything more. In fact to use proper scientific parlance: you can't even find a theory on historical events - hypotheses is the best you can hope for. Sure you can know the date of the Boston tea party. That's not useful to a historian. We have some evidence of the context from writings of the time - but we have no proof that those writings were anything but false propaganda. Consider that they allign with some written British laws... well that's more evidence, but again. What REALLY motivated Paul Revere ? Did he really get
>But when you include the evidence they give, you're still fundamentally saying X says Y.
When they are scientists that evidence is empirical - so you are NOT saying that. You are pointing to empirical evidence, just about the only thing that ISN'T a fallacy is empirical evidence.
Wikipedia doesn't offer proof, it only offers links to what it is based on. It's not a research source and rightfully any decent school will fail you for citing it. It relies on the authority of external sources. As I said that is not fallacious in itself- unless you accept a wikipedia page "as is". If you however investigate those sources and evaluate them independently on the basis of the empirical evidence they present then THAT is NOT a fallacy.
Empirical evidence is never an appeal to authority - even if quoted since by definition ANYBODY could replicate the results - if not, then it isn't empirical evidence.
The appeal to authority has been held as a fallacy and proven to be one since ancient Greek times. I know it because I studied philosophy. Now as it stands I don't know about American Universities but in the rest of the world if you want a degree in a subject you are expected to do independent RESEARCH - merely knowing what the lecturer says - even if you know all of it by heart - will NOT let you pass. In the humanities the research requirements are even HIGHER. Classes literally consist of telling you what physical evidence exists - and exams of writing your own theories about what that evidence might mean.
Now relying on an expert is NOT an appeal to authority fallacy. The appeal to authority is ONLY a fallacy if that is your ONLY source of evidence. We don't go to a doctor because he as a sign saying "doctor" in front of his door. We go to a doctor because he has a paper on his wall where a reputable institute of learning decrees that they have evaluated his skills at applying the empirical SCIENCE of medicine. Indeed when a doctor comes up with a new treatment we expect him to follow the scientific method to prove it's efficacy.
We didn't just BELIEVE Christiaan Barnard when he said heart transplants could save lives (long before any other organ transplants were possible). He had to present empirical evidence that what he was proposing could work in theory before he was allowed to attempt one on a real person - and it had to be somebody who would be CERTAIN to die anyway if she didn't get a new heart. We didn't believe him until he PROVED it. Even though he was at that stage already one of the most respected cardiologists in the world.
>. The problem is, when you cut things finely enough, all knowledge is collected by authorities, so appeal to any knowledge in any way is a form of appeal to authority. So, if all appeals to authority are fallacious, where are we then?
And THAT is why science is meant to be open and freely shared. So that the claims of a scientist don't just rest on his reputation - but on empirical EVIDENCE.
You're right further debate is pointless as you apparently don't speak English. You argue with me on points when I'm busy agreeing with you for crying out loud.
Suffice to say - stick to the basic definition: an appeal to authority WITHOUT OTHER EVIDENCE is fallacious. It's not the appeal -it's the appeal BY ITSELF. Fallacious doesn't make it untrue - but it does make the argument invalid so it ought to be dismissed and the issue settled in some other manner.
In this particular case Jefferson was making a generalized statement about all governments anywhere and anywhen - by definition there can be no true expert-by-involvement in THAT (unless you own a time machine I suppose). Even the greatest scholars of history would hesitate to speak in such absolutes but Jefferson was something else too: a politician - and they do it all the time. That in my book makes them - even on subjects where they have particular expertise - highly untrustworthy. So even if an appeal to authority by itself was not a fallacious argument then an appeal to authority involving a politician should be assumed to have a selfish or self-justifying true goal. At least, in my experience.
>Diamonds are made of carbon and carbon is not metal under usual conditions.
Metals are a specific set of elements. They have a specific set of properties caused by the way their atoms combine with themselves and each other. This allows them to form unique types of compounds we call "alloys", to be highly effective energy conductors (notably electricity and heat), and causes them to shine (yes, being shiny is an attribute of metals). Many other substances (both elements and compounds) share some of these attributes under certain conditions (for example - glass is shiny) but only metals have them all because the combination derives from the unique lattice structures that metal atoms form.
In essence metals are those elements that don't form molecules at all (at least, not the way anything else does). Metals arrange their nuclei in intricate lattices with electrons flowing through these and capable of passing from one atom to the next. All those macroscopic identifiable properties I mentioned are caused by this structure. When metals combine with each other they merge their lattices and form alloys rather than compounds. When metals combine with non-metals they form "traditional" molecular compounds (Sodium is a metal, Chlorine is not - when they combine they don't form an alloy they form salt). Another attribute of metals is that because of their electron structure they are always reactive to acids and all acid+metal reactions have the same result. The hydrogen in the acid gets replaced with the metal, releasing the hydrogren as a gas and forming a salt.
So erm... under what possible conditions can carbon ever change it's atomic structure and chemical behavior to become a metal ? Short of nuclear transmutation - in which case the result is NOT carbon.
>There. Modified versions that are not claims of authorship, but are appeals to authority, and are non-fallacious.
Actually they ARE they claims of authorship. The only thing you argue in those lines is that Person X said Y.
You said nothing about Y itself. It only becomes a fallacy if you add: "therefore Y is true".
The GP did so - he gave a quote implying he believes it true, with no evidence of his own. Now if all he was saying was that Thomas Jefferson said that, it wouldnt' be a fallacy (we can look up if it's true but the argument is fine) - but if, as in this case, he is saying that BECAUSE Jefferson said that it is TRUE - then that IS a fallacy (especially as he offered NO other proof).
>"My physics professor says that the clear meaning of _Harrison Bergeron_ is Z, and he's a really smart guy, so it must be Z, so there, argument closed." There, I think that still works well as an example of a fallacious appeal to authority.
Yes, it's a perfect example. Now replace "Physics professor with "Thomas Jefferson" and everything after "that" with the GP's quote - and you have the argument that I responded to the in the first place. Hence I called it a fallacy.
>When you cite an authority as your only evidence, it's generally a weak argument, to be sure, but it's not a fallacy.
Sorry, but it is, this is one reason why wikipedia cannot be considered a reliable research source - since the only evidence it offers for it's content is citations from authority. That is not proof - therefore the entire wikipedia is fallacious. Not all fallacy's are untrue of course, but you cannot consider a fallacious argument proven. In the wikipedia example - it need not be a fallacy, it only becomes so if you use it that way. If you see wikipedia not as a source of data, but as a source of refferences from which data may be gathered and then evaluate those citations yourself - then your research is valid. If you use the wikipedia information by itself and say "it's right because it had citations" then you are committing a fallacy.
>Original authors are generally considered to be very reliable experts on their own original works.
True - to an extent - but every original author worth his salt will also tell you that critics FREQUENTY see things in their works that they had put there and not REALIZED they were doing so until it was pointed out to them. Writing, being creative, is influenced by subconscious thoughts. Part of the message of your work is unknown even to the writer (and as a writer I've had exactly this happen to me - particularly at university I've had lecturers praise me for deeper levels of meaning in my writing, some of which I had not REALIZED I had put there until somebody else pointed it out). To give an example, I wrote a play in 2nd year called "The power of God" about two soldiers manning a nuclear missile turret during the cold war. I named them Michael and Damon. While they were both insane, Michael had a morality to his insanity while Damon had lost all control. That Michael is the name of an Angel and Damon sounds like Demon I didn't realize until a lecturer remarked on it - and then I realized I'd done it on purpose without knowing I was doing it.
That by itself shows why authority by itself isn't evidence.
>Their own assertions about those works are therefore constitute very strong arguments all by themselves.
See above.
> If you insist that there's some special case when the subject of an appeal to authority is an author, then you can substitute any other expert who really should know.
My point was that saying "X said Y" is not an appeal to authority since the only claim in that argument is "said". That is verifiable. It only becomes a fallacy if you say: "X said Y, therefore Y is true"
>Your other examples are pretty good. I will point out that I'm not sure your first example actually is the fallacy of appeal to authority. Is there a variant that covers putting words in the mouth of a respected a
And this is partly why most gimp users don't use.xcf formats. It's incredibly rare at least for photographers to use psd's as well (in design it's a different matter), photographers generallly save as compressed tiff files, so whether you are using gimp or photoshop is fairly immaterial.
That said, it's been a very long time since I tried but I believe gimp can actually open (and at one point could save) psd files anyway. Of course it's a moving-target-closed-format so I imagine they have the same difficulties as libre-office has with MS-Office formats - and this may not be perfect/up-to-date (I don't use the functionality myself so I wouldn't know for sure).
By itself it isn't. That's the call to popularity -another fallacy. But again - it's only a fallacy if used by itself. If you provide other evidence, it's not.
The reason we support democracy isn't because the majority is more likely to be right (they aren't) but because the minority IN POWER is more likely to be corrupt.
Your first examples aren't appeals to authority at all. Saying "Einstein says the theory of relativity is X" is only a claim of authorship - that's easy to verify. The third example is an extreme one but still an example - your mistake is to think that only that particularly extreme form is a fallacy. ANY case where you cite authority WITHOUT other evidence is a fallacy.
Here are some less extreme (but equally fallacious) examples: "Einstein said the universe follows the theory of relativity. Einstein was an expert on the universe. Therefore the universe follows the theory of relativity" - Fallacy.
VS. "Einstein said the universe follows the theory of relativity and offered significant scientific evidence for this which has thus far stood up to experimental verification and supported numerous other theories that have likewise stood up to testing" - NOT a fallacy.
Or: "Einstein said that God does not play dice with the universe. Einstein was an expert on the Universe. Therefore God exists" - Fallacy.
VS. "Einstein said that God does not play dice with the universe. His choice of words and subsequent rejection of the uncertainty principle therefore strongly suggests that Einstein believed God exists" - Not a fallacy.
That description you quoted is 1) Wrong (well incomplete) 2) Not applicable to what happened here anyway.
The definition of the appeal to authority fallacy is: Stating that an argument is (more) valid since a (supposed) authority agrees with it without offering other proof of it's validity.
So citing authority is not a bad thing, but MERELY citing authority IS. So the description you show is true - in that it doesn't have any OTHER reasoning for the argument EXCEPT the authority figure. But you missed that bit.
Now in this particular example the parent said that he used the quote: "to show who else agrees" - that is an appeal to authority fallacy as the GP didn't give ANY other evidence in favor of this argument. The only evidence offered was the authority of Thomas Jefferson - that's a classic case of the fallacy at work. The fact that Thomas Jefferson said it does not make it more or less true. Newton was an authority in his field - but he also believed in alchemy. Authority does not constitute evidence by itself, it can at best provide additional support to an ALREADY proven argument.
You're points are valid, and that is how we're supposed to evaluate somebodies argument. Who else agreed is NOT however a useful metric of it's validity.
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My mint 11 it works fine. Except er... wtf are you using putty on Linux for? Open a terminal and use SSH sheeez...
>And that's just in the capture - the reason you'd want 16bit in the software is so that those 10bpc values don't keep getting re-converted to 10bit values while working with the file, accumulating error as you go (aspects of GEGL looks promising on this front, but for other reasons). You still do that in 16bit, but the error is much smaller.
But you just made my point - even the best camera captures only capture in 14 bpc values. I am sorry if I was unclear about what I meant. Either way - this is not a crucial feature for professional art photography with heavy post processing.
http://silentcoder.co.za/photography/art/Inside-Out/ http://silentcoder.co.za/wp-content/gallery/art/boudoir/Caryn%20and%20Caity/thumbs/IMG_6181.jpg
Perfect quality - heavy (though very subtle) post processing.
So while you may find higher bit depths useful, they are not in fact required for good quality post processing. That is, if you know what you're doing (for starters, once you import your RAW, don't change the bit-depths again, EVER - and never scale unless you have to and if you must scale use liquid-rescale).
>P.S. If I had to pick anything out of The GIMP that I find lacking, it would be the transform tools rather than bit depth issues - but that's getting addressed in a future version and I happily use The GIMP in favor of e.g. Photoshop most of the time.
This is true - they aren't quite as good as they could be, but they are already much better than they were in the past and will only improve. Personally I prefer to limit my transforms to cropping for composition anyway so it doesn't bug me much. As far as I'm concerned if you're rotating an image you took it wrong in the first place.
Either way - my point is still simple. I'm a professional art photographer. I've been published in several international magazines. I use gimp and it does everything I've ever needed.
>I want to use it to develop an exoskeleton!
Now THAT will be a hit with the ladies !
Oh ? You're mouse doesn't have a middle-button ?
That's okay - just hit both buttons at once.
> If you are a non-believer, and you are wrong, when you die you will be in for a very rude awakening. If you are a believer, and you are wrong you will be in, oh wait you won't care.
You know, you wrote so sensibly, then you ended on Pascal's Bargain - which sadly has been completely and utterly discredited for the utterly horrible and illogical trash-argument it always was.
>I've only seen conservatives and the religious get their panties in a twist over fetal stem cell research. Back in the day, W made it as explicit as possible that he was only banning fetal stem cell research.
1) Back in the day when he made that ban, there wasn't any other kind. The adult stem-cell harvesting techniques only got invented to get around the ban.
2) Even then it was stupid. Nobody was proposing doing special abortions for stem cells, just using the ones from the abortions happening anyway. Even then that wasn't required - fetal stem cells don't require abortions at all and could even then be harvested in quantity from things like the placenta and umbilical cord.
So there was a massive ready supply being dumped in the medical waste basket at every hospital maternity ward in the world for no reason whatsoever.
Now while the discovery of adult stem-cell harvesting opened up some useful new avenues of treatment, the fact is that the gap between the ban and that development greatly slowed down massive areas of research and many treatments that may have been becoming available now will still be away for several years - years during which many patients will die who would have lived if not for that ban.
So much for a pro-life law.
Aah, well never done catalogue stuff. My photos usually accompany interviews. Anyway, I prefer art photography so most of my printwork is A3 blow-ups. I just take the occasional magazine job to pay bills.
>I have no idea what photographer you are, but we do use 16bit per channel data. But perhaps you do not work in this kind of print area. It probably depends for what publication you do your work for.
I work freelance, but when magazines ask me for print quality what I give them is uncompressed jpeg scaled to size at 300dpi. Never once have any of them requested anything different.
> Is an observed event from the past that can never be witnessed again or repeated not empirical evidence?
I did. I said it's not empirical evidence. There's a good reason for that. Remember the old (but very true) observation that if 12 people all saw the same accident you would get 12 conflicting eyewitness accounts ?
>See, this is the problem I have. You keep using arguments like this, and I don't have a problem with these arguments as arguments, I do have a problem with the fact that you insist that you're correct in your definition of fallacious appeal to authority, but you still keep using a type of argument you're claiming is always fallacious to argue for your definition. You have me pulling my hair out.
No, I'm not. I don't consider evidence is empirical because a scientists SAYS so. I consider evidence empirical because it conforms to the definition of the damn word. Most importantly: repeatedable. If OTHER scientists can't replicate the results then they aren't empirical. In fact - ANYBODY can replicate the results if it's empirical - a scientist is just more likely to have practical access to the required equipment.
Aaah yes, because photographers actually use those colors... oh wait, we don't and even the best cameras couldn't capture them anyway. No point really as the human eye cannot discern them.
Out of the entire list, you found the one feature that is actually completely and utterly useless and made an issue about it. But if you so desperately need that feature for something - well it IS in the snapshots so it DOES do that one as well - this is open source - development versions are available to users you know.
>So, the ancient Greeks were authorities on the subject of fallacies? And you wish me to accept their claims on that basis?
No, but one of the valid measurements of the truth of a theory is how long people have tried and failed to prove it wrong. Theories that remain unchanged since ancient times are incredibly rare - and the few there are, are about as close to "truth" as any human knowledge will ever be.
>So, you're something of an authority on the subject of ancient Greeks? And you wish me to accept your claims on that basis? .
Clearly you know nothing of "philosophy". I studied PHILOSOPHY - that did include ancient greek philosophy but also most other historical philosophers and major centers of it - I even studied African philosophy and all that was just - background. My speciality within the field of philosophy was logic - so while history is very valuable in the study of philosophy - it's by no means the entirety or even the focus of philosophy - and least of all in logic.
>Perhaps so, but what if I'm not seeking a degree in the subject? What if I just want to know whether the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants?
Then fuck quotes and do some actual research and make up your mind based on empirical data. What empirical data exists ? They are called history books. If you see a recurring pattern that supports this theory that's strong evidence for it. If not - then there isn't. Then you know how it's always been - that's half the problem. The other half is: "does it always have to be like that?" - and on that one, since there isn't any real way to prove it, the question is up to you. That somebody like Jefferson seemed to believe "yes" is NOT evidence (that's where the appeal to authority comes in).
>So what physical evidence exists that call-to-authority is always a fallacy, and how does the physical evidence relate to its meaning?
I said empirical, not physical. As it happens the field of logic is the underlying field of mathematics and it obeys mathematical rules. Every single established fallacy can be mathematially PROVEN. They are as certain and reliable as 2+2 = 4... in fact - they are part of the REASON why 2+2 = 4.
>So, relying on Thomas Jefferson is also not an appeal to authority fallacy.
There's a difference between relying on an expert for the rendering on a service and relying on an expert for the discovery of truth. I clearly ONLY meant the former. Comparing a doctor's visit to Jefferson's ideas on history is a very weak analogy as the two scenarios have nothing in common. The doctor can do 90% of his work by looking at established and empirical scientific fact (as it stands at any given moment). Any scholar of history will tell you that in history there is no such thing as established and empirical fact. The physical evidence is little to nothing at best and ANY theory that accounts for them is as valid as ANY other theory that also does. Indeed the best way to get an A in university history is to write a theory that directly contradicts what your lecturer believes - if you can back it up from the tiny amount of evidence that ever exists (past historians are always rejected as a source by the way) then you've done your job. So Jefferson was speaking about a subject where the very idea of an expert is... well... ludicrous. There is no such thing as an expert on history - only theorists of history can ever exist as there is simply not enough evidence for anything more. In fact to use proper scientific parlance: you can't even find a theory on historical events - hypotheses is the best you can hope for. Sure you can know the date of the Boston tea party. That's not useful to a historian. We have some evidence of the context from writings of the time - but we have no proof that those writings were anything but false propaganda. Consider that they allign with some written British laws... well that's more evidence, but again. What REALLY motivated Paul Revere ? Did he really get
>But when you include the evidence they give, you're still fundamentally saying X says Y.
When they are scientists that evidence is empirical - so you are NOT saying that. You are pointing to empirical evidence, just about the only thing that ISN'T a fallacy is empirical evidence.
Wikipedia doesn't offer proof, it only offers links to what it is based on. It's not a research source and rightfully any decent school will fail you for citing it. It relies on the authority of external sources. As I said that is not fallacious in itself- unless you accept a wikipedia page "as is". If you however investigate those sources and evaluate them independently on the basis of the empirical evidence they present then THAT is NOT a fallacy.
Empirical evidence is never an appeal to authority - even if quoted since by definition ANYBODY could replicate the results - if not, then it isn't empirical evidence.
Yes you can - provided you also include the evidence they gave. In which case - it's not an appeal to authority.
The appeal to authority has been held as a fallacy and proven to be one since ancient Greek times. I know it because I studied philosophy. Now as it stands I don't know about American Universities but in the rest of the world if you want a degree in a subject you are expected to do independent RESEARCH - merely knowing what the lecturer says - even if you know all of it by heart - will NOT let you pass. In the humanities the research requirements are even HIGHER. Classes literally consist of telling you what physical evidence exists - and exams of writing your own theories about what that evidence might mean.
Now relying on an expert is NOT an appeal to authority fallacy. The appeal to authority is ONLY a fallacy if that is your ONLY source of evidence. We don't go to a doctor because he as a sign saying "doctor" in front of his door. We go to a doctor because he has a paper on his wall where a reputable institute of learning decrees that they have evaluated his skills at applying the empirical SCIENCE of medicine. Indeed when a doctor comes up with a new treatment we expect him to follow the scientific method to prove it's efficacy.
We didn't just BELIEVE Christiaan Barnard when he said heart transplants could save lives (long before any other organ transplants were possible). He had to present empirical evidence that what he was proposing could work in theory before he was allowed to attempt one on a real person - and it had to be somebody who would be CERTAIN to die anyway if she didn't get a new heart. We didn't believe him until he PROVED it. Even though he was at that stage already one of the most respected cardiologists in the world.
>. The problem is, when you cut things finely enough, all knowledge is collected by authorities, so appeal to any knowledge in any way is a form of appeal to authority. So, if all appeals to authority are fallacious, where are we then?
And THAT is why science is meant to be open and freely shared. So that the claims of a scientist don't just rest on his reputation - but on empirical EVIDENCE.
You're right further debate is pointless as you apparently don't speak English. You argue with me on points when I'm busy agreeing with you for crying out loud.
Suffice to say - stick to the basic definition: an appeal to authority WITHOUT OTHER EVIDENCE is fallacious.
It's not the appeal -it's the appeal BY ITSELF. Fallacious doesn't make it untrue - but it does make the argument invalid so it ought to be dismissed and the issue settled in some other manner.
In this particular case Jefferson was making a generalized statement about all governments anywhere and anywhen - by definition there can be no true expert-by-involvement in THAT (unless you own a time machine I suppose). Even the greatest scholars of history would hesitate to speak in such absolutes but Jefferson was something else too: a politician - and they do it all the time.
That in my book makes them - even on subjects where they have particular expertise - highly untrustworthy. So even if an appeal to authority by itself was not a fallacious argument then an appeal to authority involving a politician should be assumed to have a selfish or self-justifying true goal. At least, in my experience.
>Diamonds are made of carbon and carbon is not metal under usual conditions.
Metals are a specific set of elements. They have a specific set of properties caused by the way their atoms combine with themselves and each other. This allows them to form unique types of compounds we call "alloys", to be highly effective energy conductors (notably electricity and heat), and causes them to shine (yes, being shiny is an attribute of metals). Many other substances (both elements and compounds) share some of these attributes under certain conditions (for example - glass is shiny) but only metals have them all because the combination derives from the unique lattice structures that metal atoms form.
In essence metals are those elements that don't form molecules at all (at least, not the way anything else does). Metals arrange their nuclei in intricate lattices with electrons flowing through these and capable of passing from one atom to the next. All those macroscopic identifiable properties I mentioned are caused by this structure. When metals combine with each other they merge their lattices and form alloys rather than compounds. When metals combine with non-metals they form "traditional" molecular compounds (Sodium is a metal, Chlorine is not - when they combine they don't form an alloy they form salt).
Another attribute of metals is that because of their electron structure they are always reactive to acids and all acid+metal reactions have the same result. The hydrogen in the acid gets replaced with the metal, releasing the hydrogren as a gas and forming a salt.
So erm... under what possible conditions can carbon ever change it's atomic structure and chemical behavior to become a metal ? Short of nuclear transmutation - in which case the result is NOT carbon.
Please, do explain as I would love to know.
http://www.diamondedgeband.com/
See, it's rock not metal :P
>There. Modified versions that are not claims of authorship, but are appeals to authority, and are non-fallacious.
Actually they ARE they claims of authorship. The only thing you argue in those lines is that Person X said Y.
You said nothing about Y itself. It only becomes a fallacy if you add: "therefore Y is true".
The GP did so - he gave a quote implying he believes it true, with no evidence of his own. Now if all he was saying was that Thomas Jefferson said that, it wouldnt' be a fallacy (we can look up if it's true but the argument is fine) - but if, as in this case, he is saying that BECAUSE Jefferson said that it is TRUE - then that IS a fallacy (especially as he offered NO other proof).
>"My physics professor says that the clear meaning of _Harrison Bergeron_ is Z, and he's a really smart guy, so it must be Z, so there, argument closed."
There, I think that still works well as an example of a fallacious appeal to authority.
Yes, it's a perfect example. Now replace "Physics professor with "Thomas Jefferson" and everything after "that" with the GP's quote - and you have the argument that I responded to the in the first place. Hence I called it a fallacy.
>When you cite an authority as your only evidence, it's generally a weak argument, to be sure, but it's not a fallacy.
Sorry, but it is, this is one reason why wikipedia cannot be considered a reliable research source - since the only evidence it offers for it's content is citations from authority. That is not proof - therefore the entire wikipedia is fallacious. Not all fallacy's are untrue of course, but you cannot consider a fallacious argument proven.
In the wikipedia example - it need not be a fallacy, it only becomes so if you use it that way. If you see wikipedia not as a source of data, but as a source of refferences from which data may be gathered and then evaluate those citations yourself - then your research is valid. If you use the wikipedia information by itself and say "it's right because it had citations" then you are committing a fallacy.
>Original authors are generally considered to be very reliable experts on their own original works.
True - to an extent - but every original author worth his salt will also tell you that critics FREQUENTY see things in their works that they had put there and not REALIZED they were doing so until it was pointed out to them. Writing, being creative, is influenced by subconscious thoughts. Part of the message of your work is unknown even to the writer (and as a writer I've had exactly this happen to me - particularly at university I've had lecturers praise me for deeper levels of meaning in my writing, some of which I had not REALIZED I had put there until somebody else pointed it out). To give an example, I wrote a play in 2nd year called "The power of God" about two soldiers manning a nuclear missile turret during the cold war. I named them Michael and Damon. While they were both insane, Michael had a morality to his insanity while Damon had lost all control. That Michael is the name of an Angel and Damon sounds like Demon I didn't realize until a lecturer remarked on it - and then I realized I'd done it on purpose without knowing I was doing it.
That by itself shows why authority by itself isn't evidence.
>Their own assertions about those works are therefore constitute very strong arguments all by themselves.
See above.
> If you insist that there's some special case when the subject of an appeal to authority is an author, then you can substitute any other expert who really should know.
My point was that saying "X said Y" is not an appeal to authority since the only claim in that argument is "said". That is verifiable. It only becomes a fallacy if you say: "X said Y, therefore Y is true"
>Your other examples are pretty good. I will point out that I'm not sure your first example actually is the fallacy of appeal to authority. Is there a variant that covers putting words in the mouth of a respected a
Yes, it does all those things.
And this is partly why most gimp users don't use .xcf formats. It's incredibly rare at least for photographers to use psd's as well (in design it's a different matter), photographers generallly save as compressed tiff files, so whether you are using gimp or photoshop is fairly immaterial.
That said, it's been a very long time since I tried but I believe gimp can actually open (and at one point could save) psd files anyway. Of course it's a moving-target-closed-format so I imagine they have the same difficulties as libre-office has with MS-Office formats - and this may not be perfect/up-to-date (I don't use the functionality myself so I wouldn't know for sure).
By itself it isn't. That's the call to popularity -another fallacy. But again - it's only a fallacy if used by itself. If you provide other evidence, it's not.
The reason we support democracy isn't because the majority is more likely to be right (they aren't) but because the minority IN POWER is more likely to be corrupt.
Your first examples aren't appeals to authority at all. Saying "Einstein says the theory of relativity is X" is only a claim of authorship - that's easy to verify.
The third example is an extreme one but still an example - your mistake is to think that only that particularly extreme form is a fallacy. ANY case where you cite authority WITHOUT other evidence is a fallacy.
Here are some less extreme (but equally fallacious) examples:
"Einstein said the universe follows the theory of relativity. Einstein was an expert on the universe. Therefore the universe follows the theory of relativity" - Fallacy.
VS.
"Einstein said the universe follows the theory of relativity and offered significant scientific evidence for this which has thus far stood up to experimental verification and supported numerous other theories that have likewise stood up to testing" - NOT a fallacy.
Or:
"Einstein said that God does not play dice with the universe. Einstein was an expert on the Universe. Therefore God exists" - Fallacy.
VS.
"Einstein said that God does not play dice with the universe. His choice of words and subsequent rejection of the uncertainty principle therefore strongly suggests that Einstein believed God exists" - Not a fallacy.
That description you quoted is
1) Wrong (well incomplete)
2) Not applicable to what happened here anyway.
The definition of the appeal to authority fallacy is:
Stating that an argument is (more) valid since a (supposed) authority agrees with it without offering other proof of it's validity.
So citing authority is not a bad thing, but MERELY citing authority IS. So the description you show is true - in that it doesn't have any OTHER reasoning for the argument EXCEPT the authority figure. But you missed that bit.
Now in this particular example the parent said that he used the quote: "to show who else agrees" - that is an appeal to authority fallacy as the GP didn't give ANY other evidence in favor of this argument. The only evidence offered was the authority of Thomas Jefferson - that's a classic case of the fallacy at work. The fact that Thomas Jefferson said it does not make it more or less true. Newton was an authority in his field - but he also believed in alchemy. Authority does not constitute evidence by itself, it can at best provide additional support to an ALREADY proven argument.
You're points are valid, and that is how we're supposed to evaluate somebodies argument. Who else agreed is NOT however a useful metric of it's validity.