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TWO_LOGIC_REWRITES

                                            September 17, 2021

                                            From material originally published
                                            at the dailykos in 2015.

                                                                TWO_GATES
On re-writing the logical fallacies:
 
There are some long-established, well-known principles of
intellectual discourse, such as the various logical                 [link]
fallacies. 

These include the ever popular (and sometimes correctly applied)
"Argumentum ad hominem" and it's less heard from flip-side
"Argumentum ad verecundiam" (argument from authority).

With "ad hominem" you're asked to ignore a statement because of
who said it, and with "ad verecundiam" you're asked to accept it
for the same reason.
                             
The underlying principle is that you should "address the
speech and not the speaker", because logically they really are
separate, and a true statement can come from a poor source ("even
a stopped clock is right twice a day") and a false statement can
come from an impressive source ("even Jove nods").

All of this, however is an extremely high standard to
maintain, and many of the modern write-ups you see of these
classic principles include a lot of hedging if not outright
re-writing to soften them.

SkepticalRaptor (of the dailkos) sometimes links to a
version of "Argumentum ad verecundiam" of his own, which
he had reframed as "Argument from False or Misleading
Authority"

     [link]
     [link]

Re-writing one of the classical logical fallacies strikes
me as a bit high-handed, but I understand entirely where
SkepticalRaptor is coming from. He, like me, has a lot of
respect for trained experts speaking about their field of
expertise.  Arguably the entire body of knowledge of
modern civilization is based on a trust network of experts
in different fields, but the rule of thumb to "trust the
experts" looks like it's a direct contradiction of the
prohibition against "argument from authority".

This attempt at reframing this principle to dodge one
problem runs into a different one: one of the main
reasons we regard "argument from authority" as a fallacy
is to recognize that even someone who's an acknowledged
expert can be wrong, even in their field of expertise--
e.g. Louis Agassiz was a brilliant, well-respected
biologist, but he came down on the wrong side of the
theory of evolution.

I think you can see a similar re-writing of the classics in
other places such as the "rationalwiki", in the pages
"Argumentum ad hominem" and "Argumentum ad verecundiam"

     [link]
     [link]

Many reasonable people have noticed that there are some very
unreasonable things you can do with the standard logical
fallacies: a global warming denialist might very well
claim that citing the consensus among climate experts is
merely "argument from authority". 

     [link]

So evidentally, many of these reasonable people have
concluded that there are right and wrong ways of using the
fallacies, and you need to distinguish between the two when
defining them. My own feeling is that these are very awkward
intellectual maneuvers, and they may not be entirely
necessary.

I suggest that the resolution of this apparent contradiction
is not to complicate the definitions of the logical
fallacies, but just to recognize explicitly that we use two
different phases of evaluation with two different standards
of judgment.




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