Logical Fallacy Part II

 

As I discussed in Logical Fallacies Part I, the rhetorical device employed by Intelligent design proponents is the Logical Fallacy of the False dichotomy.  Once I get agreement that a false dichotomy was improperly employed, we can discuss the real issues.

First we can address the question, “Is Intelligent Design science?” Here, a second problem surfaces. For every PZ Myers, there is a Michael Behe. For every William Dembski there is a Jason Rodenhouse or Mark Perakh.  For every Robert Pennock there is a David Berlinski. For every Gary Hurd, there is a Fritz Schroeder. And then there’s James Shapiro, in a class by himself. In short, upon superficial observation, there are apparent “experts” on both sides of this scientific question. That is, there are people with a doctoral degree in the field or in an apparently related field, or perhaps a scientific field or perhaps with a general interest in science, expressing an opinion on the subject. All these people claim the mantle, "expert."

That’s not all. Many of the so called experts, such as Phillip E. Johnson, Jonathan Witt, Denyse O’Leary or any number of evangelical and religious apologists, also hold forth some claimed expertise on evolutionary biology. I’m sure the biologists are more amazed than I am that people with little or no training in biology can pontificate so confidently on a subject despite their lack of qualifications. When they do so they rely on Johnson (who has the same qualifications I do) or one of the usual characters. When I point out that these people are simply not experts in the field I am accused of the Logical Fallacy of Appeal to Authority.

Should I plead guilty?

No, I should not. I am correctly relying on authority! This “Appeal to Authority" fallacy has to be one of the most frequently misunderstood and misused ideas since people started believing that Einstein said, “Everything is relative."

The Fallacy of the Appeal to Authority is something I happen to know quite a lot about because I work with some version of it every day. It’s perfectly legitimate to appeal to appropriate authority. Most people don’t realize that the full name of the fallacy is Appeal to Inappropriate Authority

I call this the "Advertiser’s Fallacy" because it’s so prevalent in commercials, such as the one where a famous baseball slugger gives medical advice on erectile dysfunction (that should pick up the hit count!). No. See a properly qualified doctor for ED, see Rafael Palmiero only if you want to improve your baseball swing.

An appeal to Authority is improper if any of the following are true:

1. The matter is one that can’t be decided by recourse to an “authority.” What’s better, opera or country music?” Experts really can’t resolve some things and everyman’s opinion is just as valid as that of any claimed “authority.” (Country.)

2. The “authority” doesn’t’ have sufficient expertise to be relied upon. I’ve had people correct my California legal interpretation because they once took a business law class and,      besides, their cousin is a paralegal in Texas and told them something different. Well, pardner, we’re not in Texas, here, and one business law class is just a start on the road to expertise, not the destination. The minimum requirement to practice law in California is a bar ticket. Mine is # 114001.

3. The “authority” doesn’t have any expertise in the field. Phillip E. Johnson, Denyse O’Leary, and Jonathan Witt are all examples of people with no qualifications in biology, evolution or science. An appeal to any of them or the entire combination for an opinion on evolution can only be mocked and ridiculed. Nevertheless, each could be a recognized authority in criminal law (Johnson) journalism (O’Leary) and beauty in literature (Witt). All are probably authorities, to a greater or lesser extent, on the beliefs of fundamentalist Christians.

4. The “authority” is affected by bias. We see this in court all the time. Mold testing experts, not surprisingly, always seem to come down in favor of extensive testing. Chiropractors always seem to require months of adjustments for an indefinite length of time, while the orthopedic surgeons can solve the same problem on the same person with a few swipes of a surgical knife in one afternoon, often for about the same amount of money.

5. The “authority” is not consistent with other authorities in the same field. Authorities such as Behe are not consistent with the great weight of authority in biology. This can best be demonstrated, ironically, by examination of theological discussions. There are several      streams of opinion by experts in biblical interpretation, for example. There is often no consensus of experts in such cases and an appeal to authority is, therefore, misplaced. I also consider an appeal to authority when you know that authority is a minority position to be dishonest. Publishing a list of ID books as representative of current thinking in biology, for   example, is deceptive.

 

6. The field of expertise for the authority is not legitimate. It’s pretty obvious that an appeal to authority on UFO abductions to prove the existence of UFO’s would not be valid. The Psychic Stock picker is not a good authority for future stock market trends. The field of expertise has to meet a threshold of establishing that it is somehow a legitimate discipline. So far, Intelligent Design has not been able to meet this test. For example, what is the Intelligent Design position on the age of the earth? If it pretends to be science, the answer should be concise and brief. The truth is ID doesn’t have an answer to that question.

7. The authority is unidentified. It is invalid to appeal to the authority of “Time Magazine” because we cannot evaluate whether the authority is actually an authority or has any      expertise at all.

In summary, an appeal to authority is a valid method of argument and of making decisions. It recognizes the obvious fact that we cannot all be experts in everything. It would be a mistake to have your neurosurgeon change the brakes on your car and your car mechanic to operate on your brain tumor. If you see a neurosurgeon for your brain tumors and a car mechanic for your disc brake adjustments and you don't know much about either, you are essentially betting your life on an appeal to authority.  We all reasonably do that every day.

Analyzing Intelligent Design under the appeal to authority fallacy immediately  presents several problems.

1. This is a matter that can be decided by expertise. The study of biology, including evolution, is a coherent scientific field that also uses elements of physics, chemistry and mathematics, confirming its overall validity.

2. Public figures pontificating on Intelligent Design such as Phillip Johnson, Denyse O’Leary and Jonathan Witt are not authorities. They have no expertise, qualifications or training. Fritz Schroeder, although he has a degree in chemistry also is unqualified. He is an “expert in something else”-- the biological equivalent of reliance on a proctologist for neurology questions. Pennock, Miller, PZ Myers and any number of biologists are authorities whose      opinions simply eclipse those of non-scientists and scientists who don’t deal with biology in their day to day work.

3. Behe should be judged by his peer-reviewed output on the subject in contrast to the peer-reviewed work of, for example Miller, Mayr, Myers or any number of biologists. Otherwise, we must conclude he does not have sufficient expertise in the field to give weight to his opinions. Certainly a psychiatrist who gets the facts bluntly wrong is an authority, but not on evolution. 

4. Anyone connected with the Discovery Institute is biased. Here’s how you can tell. Compare the links and bibliography of talkorigins to that of the Discovery Institute,  or here and here. Despite the claims of the Discovery Institute and its fellow travelers to teach the controversy, none of them have any interest whatsoever in teaching or even acknowledging any other viewpoint but its own. That’s intellectually dishonest. Yes that's right, it's lying. When they put up a bibliography like this maybe they can claim to be unbiased with a straight face.

5. The overwhelming majority of biologists and scientists recognize that evolution is essentially correct. That’s why Project Steve is relevant and not an Argument ad populam fallacy.

6. There’s a real question as to what is even meant by Intelligent Design. Does it exclude Young earth creationism? We can’t be sure. Does it even exclude evolution? We can’t be sure. What claims about the physical world does it make? What actual research is ID performing? Any at all? Apparently not. This has all the hallmarks of a UFO hunt. Come to think of it, ID doesn’t even exclude UFO’s either. So what does it do? Whatever it does, it's not science.

We can reasonably and safely rely on the combined authorities of Darwin, Gould, Mayr, Myers Rodenhouse, Miller, Pennock, Hurd and Perach when deciding whether Intelligent design is science. they unanimously conclude it is not.

Comments

[Ed Darrell]

Really brilliant piece, Joe. Thank you.

[Glenn Branch]

I agree with Ed! One nit to pick: you mean Fritz Schaefer, i.e. Henry F. "Fritz" Schaefer III of the University of Georgia, not to be confused with Gerald Schroeder, author of The Hidden Face of God, etc.

[Johnny C.]

Joe

Have you heard Wagner's "Parsifal"?

It's about as good as Merle's "Mama Tried" LP.

Check it out.

[DonkeyKong]

Its called appeal to authority. That it was origionally called appeal to inappropriate authority or whatever is rather irrelevant.

You are trying to use appeal to "inappropriate" authority in order to justify why your own personal "expert" opinion on what appeal to authority is should in some way trump the understanding of all ( or almost all ) who commonly use the term and have found it to be a useful detector of BS. And you are using appeal to authority while you do it which causes me to call BS.

For example, a common appeal to "authority " for the evolution zealot is that evolution has been proven or in some way shown to be consistent or possible or likely etc by a "computer simulation". All these "expert" programs are actually examples of intelligent design and achieve nothing more than to strain random numbers (or functions which can be represented by a number) inefficiently for a desired number or numbers. It is left as common "expert knowledge" that nature must strain in the same way.

The actual part where an "expert" might actually be useful is left unaddressed. That being does nature reward partial success more often than it penalizes it (within geological viable timeframes)? This is a very simple concept to claim and would seem very logical. But to prove it....ah that might just take an "expert"

Simple example using my "expert opinion" so that you will be able to follow what I am talking about. Meet og a caveman chief, and ugg his wimpy but smarter brother. It is quite easy to imagine that og gets the first pick of the women and the food in fact he gets two women and ugg gets none. Ugg has a superior memory and is able to locate plants and small animals but only enough to keep the tribe from starving if everyone followed his lead, or with ogs help he can find and kill big game and they all eat well but they will reward only og for this as he kills the meat. Og can kill any animal that he comes across due to his amazing skills throwing stones but when there is no food he gets thinner than ugg (due to higher matabilism from hunting) and women don't want to mate with him and would choose ugg instead. Will uggs intelligence benifit or hinder his mating prospects?

On the one hand more food would indicate more oppertunities to mate but in a food rich enviornment Ugg is not desirable and Og gets all the women. In a food poor enviornment Ugg has a better chance to mate but a smaller chance to survive. Given that Ug is not smart enough to understand this delima due to his belief in fate will intelligence be selected for or against?

I could write an "expert" computer simulation if you wanted and run it on a big fancy machine but I am sure those among you who would appriciate it realize what the answer would be....So are these "expert" computers on your side or mine???

[James]

First you say that "there are people with a doctoral degree in the field or in an apparently related field" on both sides of the argument. Then you justify appealing to an authority. However, how you pick *which* authority to appeal to is beyond me.

[Arun]

Appeal to authority is meaningful in settling a point of dispute only when both sides agree to the authority. (Otherwise, e.g., the world would be Christian, via appeal to the Bible. Obviously, an enormous number of people don't admit to the authority of the Bible.)

The purpose of a scientific citation in a scientific paper is not appeal to authority. It is to acknowledge previous work, not to falsely claim originality, and to not have to repeat previously experimental and theoretical arguments. In principle, the academic pedigree, etc., of the author of the cited paper is irrelevant, all that matters is the quality of the exposition.

[icecube]

``All these `expert' programs are actually examples of intelligent design and achieve nothing more than to strain random numbers (or functions which can be represented by a number) inefficiently for a desired number or numbers."

What do you mean? [and may I suggest that when talking about these programs, you talk about them on the conceptual scale on which they are meant to be interpreted (on which they were programmed), and not reducing them to algorithms involving numbers]

[RPM]

What's great about your list of "authorities" in evolutionary biology is that most aren't even the leaders in evolutionary biology research. I'm not trying to undermine the list or the people on it -- they have all made great contributions to the fight against anti-intellectualism. I'm just pointing out that the IDist you list are the so-called leaders of the ID movement, whereas many biologists carry more authority even though they are merely members of the research community. If I have a question about some aspect of evolutionary theory, I would rather ask a post-doc studying evolution than a tenured faculty member studying structural biochemistry.

[John]

My opinion is that science represents a special case in which appeals to authority are never valid. Scientific arguments appeal to the data, which are found in the primary scientific literature.

You can throw ID and the misinformation of the animal-rights movement out on this basis even more easily; they both quote mine (appeal to authority) and nearly always cite papers and books with no data.

You also can offer less highly charged cases: Linus Pauling, a Nobel Laureate in chemistry, touted vitamin C. The data didn't support his claims. As a graduate student in virology in the '80s, I saw that everyone thought Prusiner's prion hypothesis was hooey. What did Prusiner do? Did he write books and theoretical papers, lobby school boards, or did he do experiments?