On Whose Say-So?

The Appeal to Unqualified Authority

Sometimes, highly intelligent and influential scientists say really dumb things. Stephen Hawking declared that philosophy is dead¹ (while in the same context doing philosophy of science²); Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted that people in the Middle Ages believed the earth was flat;³ and Richard Dawkins .   .   . well, Richard Dawkins wrote The God Delusion.⁴ In each of these cases, an expert in one field made a proclamation in or about another field. This is not necessarily bad, but it’s risky since expertise in one area does not equate to expertise in another. As physicist Richard Feynman famously said, “a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.”⁵

Misplaced Trust

The fallacy of misplaced trust lies not with these scientists, but with people who appeal to their authority to justify the truth of their non-scientific claims. This fallacy—appeal to an unqualified authority—occurs whenever someone cites as evidence for a claim the say-so of one who is not an authority on the subject of that claim. If an atheist justifies his claim that arguments for God’s existence are bad by simply citing The God Delusion, he’s committed this fallacy. The appeal to Dawkins is fallacious because, on philosophy or philosophy of religion, Dawkins is “just as dumb as the next guy.” We have no more reason to think that his claim on the existence (or non-existence) of God is true than we do for anyone else’s claim. It’s not rational to appeal to Dawkins’s authority on biology as evidence for the truth of his claims on metaphysical reality.

Christians can fall into this error as well. When a pastor speaks on economics or politics and congregants accept those claims simply because he’s the pastor, they’ve committed this fallacy. Unless a pastor is knowledgeable in economics, he may be no more qualified to speak on it than the people in the pew.

Some Qualifications

However, we can rightly know all kinds of things based on authority. For example, why do you think that the earth revolves around the sun? It’s probably because you were taught that. Unless we want to say that we can’t know if the earth revolves around the sun until we’ve proven it personally, we’re justified in appealing to others who have established it. As another example, all beliefs based on testimony are beliefs based on authority. When we believe something on the testimony of another, we’re trusting the word of the person testifying to his experience. He’s an authority on the matter precisely because he’s the one who had the experience. So  it’s not necessarily fallacious to cite someone’s account of an event as evidence that the event happened.

People err when they justify a claim by citing unqualified authorities, but there’s another error in the opposite direction. This occurs when we reject someone’s claim for the sole reason that he’s not an authority. My dad is a plumber. If he makes a claim about physics, I shouldn’t just dismiss his claim because he’s not a physicist. Rather, I should verify it.

The Facts of the Matter

Simply because someone is an expert in one area doesn’t mean he’s an expert in all. When experts speak outside of their expertise, rather than accepting or rejecting their claims outright, we should investigate them. While we are often justified in believing something based on authority, ultimately, the truth does not lie in anyone’s say-so, but in the facts of the matter.

Notes
1. Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design, 5.
2. Paul Thagard, “Is Philosophy Dead?” Psychology Today (Nov. 24, 2010).
3. Tim O’Neill, “The Great Myths 1: The Medieval Flat Earth,” History for Atheists (June 1, 2016).
4. For a critical review of The God Delusion, see Alvin Plantinga, “The Dawkins Confusion,” Books & Culture (March/April 2007).
5. Richard Feynman, “The Value of Science,” a public address given at Caltech, November 1995.