In teaching logic to young students, we often start with the most popular logical fallacies. These are, of course, mistakes in reasoning that render an argument flaccid. It doesn’t mean the conclusion is wrong, it just means the argument is bad. Anyway, one of the first logical fallacies we teach young students is the appeal to authority, and it’s a very useful one to know.
The appeal to authority is made when we say a thing is true simply because some authoritative person said it’s true. So, if we said, “My cop friend says the Taurus Judge is the best revolver in the world, and he’s right because he’s a cop,” that’s an appeal to authority. It’s a pretty bad one too.
The reason we’re talking about this is that the entire ideological power-base of the Left is based on one great, huge appeal to authority. To put it simply, they believe what their college professors say to them simply because they are college professors. What’s really ugly about this kind of appeal to authority is that many of the people who make it know very well their professors could be wrong. But they know they can get away with repeating their declarations simply because they know the establishment will back them up. You might also say that is an appeal to power, another serious logical fallacy.
The end result is that freedom of thought and speech is under dire threat on college campuses- so much so that higher education is losing its appeal.
Here’s Philosophyinsights with more.
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