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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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A famous person believed something...
    #26121996 -


Therefore I should, too! :cookiemonster:

This is the very common 'appeal to authority' fallacy. Now this does not pertain to a field where the famous person is an actual authority, but in an unrelated field having nothing to do with his expertise.

Example: Sir Isaac Newton believed in God.

Example: Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies.

Example: The Reagans believed in astrology.

Example: Benjamin Franklin and General George S. Patton believed in reincarnation.

The examples are endless.


The "thinking" goes something like this: "Those people have amazing minds and accomplished things I could never do, so I should trust their judgment." My question is why? How does being awesome in one field make you an expert in an unrelated field? Simple: it doesn't! Despite this being well-covered in Diploid's fallacies sticky, this same error appears on this board time and again.


I would be magnitudes more impressed by the relatively unknown person who actually demonstrated the truth of an idea or hypothesis than a genius who convinced himself (and others) of a hypothesis with no empirical evidence.


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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #26122017 -

I'm going to go ahead and guess this was inspired by a couple of my recent posts about Emersons beliefs on reincarnation.

First of all I'll just say that I didn't and wouldn't argue for something being factual from that point of view I merely pointed out that it was the belief of the person because I am interested, think it is interesting, and it does inform my own personal beliefs. So that fallacy doesn't really apply in the way I have expressed these views.

Second of all my reason for trusting to some extent in the beliefs of certain people has nothing to do with their fame or lack thereof. It has everything to do with my own personal judgements about their character and how close to the truth I feel their own philosophy is. I also do believe some men have greater insight and access to knowledge and higher states of consciousness than others. Just look at the ignorance/blindness of the psychopath to see for yourself that at least in some basic way this is true.

Third of all some truths cannot be arrived at by empirical means, this seems fairly self evident to me.

Why should I place at least a modicum of faith in their judgements? Simply because a great deal of what else they have said resonates with me, so really it's my own judgement on the strength of their own philosophy that allows me to place some, but not all my trust in what they are saying.


--------------------
Little left in the way of energy; or the way of love, yet happy to entertain myself playing mental games with the rest of you freaks until the rivers run backwards. 

"Chat your fraff
Chat your fraff
Just chat your fraff
Chat your fraff"

Edited by Grapefruit (07/21/19 02:58 PM)

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: Grapefruit]
    #26122028 -

Well there goes my faith in Oprah and Rush because Orgone said so but wait a minute :confused:

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: Grapefruit]
    #26122033 -

If "resonating" was a measure of Truth then all religions, philosophies and political ideologies would be true because they resonate with some people.

However, we know this is not possible.

It seems to me that you are merely stating that you trust your judgment about someone else's judgment; therefore others should trust your judgment of another's judgment.

Please demonstrate another kind of evidence besides empirical.


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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #26122091 -

let's resonate on that!


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:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #26122093 -

I actually do believe that most religions do hold a lot of truth in a particular sense. I don't want to go into that right now as it seems like a long digression but see Plato's or Jung's theories about archetypes to see how that could be reasonable.

I don't think there is any kind of evidence except empirical, I said nothing of the sort either. You know Orgone, for someone who spent a good deal of time ranting about twin flames on here you're not very tolerating of people wanting to discuss things that perhaps can't be proved by empirical means. I don't see why every single bloody point we make on this forum has to be described in only the coldest and most analytical of ways, why we can't bring up some random facts that we think might be interesting and relevant to the conversation and to other people.

Here's the simplest way I can explain what I'm saying about placing some modicum of trust in the words of those worthy of your respect (I think we all naturally do in some way little or large). Say I get a day job as a mechanic's assistant. I can see he has fixed many cars before. I can see he has a machine shop and makes his living repairing cars. If he tells me to tighten that bolt there to work the car, I am not going to whip out the manual and try to teach myself something that I may not have the inclination or capability of learning and would anyway take a long time to learn, I am just going to tighten the bolt.

In the case of Emerson this looks something like this to me. I can see he has written a great deal, that his words have great poetic power. That he has elucidated many things I had not the wherewithal or awareness to spot before. That he has great respect from the wide literary and intellectual community. If he tells me that we reincarnate, I probably don't have the capability to grasp those higher states as it seems to me that he has, that may be needed to see this for myself, and in any case it would take me years to. To some extent I am going to take his word for it and this is going to cause me to think that maybe there is great importance in developing myself in this life and to not falling into a despair and bad habit. Otherwise I might have been certain that death was the end and decided that actually life and development was hardly worth the trouble due to my certain imminent demise. Then that might not happen and if so I have done myself a great injustice.


--------------------
Little left in the way of energy; or the way of love, yet happy to entertain myself playing mental games with the rest of you freaks until the rivers run backwards. 

"Chat your fraff
Chat your fraff
Just chat your fraff
Chat your fraff"

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: Grapefruit]
    #26122116 -

Quote:
It seems to me that you are merely stating that you trust your judgment about someone else's judgment; therefore others should trust your judgment of another's judgment.



Just as an addendum I want to point out the complete falsity of this too. I have not said others should trust my judgement on anything. I am merely bringing things up that I believe may be of interest to others as they have been of interest to me. There's nothing more sinister than that behind my intentions.


--------------------
Little left in the way of energy; or the way of love, yet happy to entertain myself playing mental games with the rest of you freaks until the rivers run backwards. 

"Chat your fraff
Chat your fraff
Just chat your fraff
Chat your fraff"

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: Grapefruit]
    #26122133 -

Because nobody can beat the Randi Challenge is empirical proof that God doesn't see fit for it to happen.

Theories can abound on why this should be, as do arguments concerning the existence of the supernatural itself, but without empirical evidence to the contrary we can't say for sure that the super natural doesn't exist.

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #26122220 -

On the other hand, a famous person believing something doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.

Likewise, someone who is not an expert in a subject and doesn't actually know anything about it could still believe in accurate information about the subject despite their lack of actual knowledge.

If I believe in something that I have no evidence to support and no reason to believe in, it might still accidentally be true in spite of my ignorance.

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: Grapefruit]
    #26122223 -

Quote:
Say I get a day job as a mechanic's assistant. I can see he has fixed many cars before. I can see he has a machine shop and makes his living repairing cars. If he tells me to tighten that bolt there to work the car, I am not going to whip out the manual and try to teach myself something that I may not have the inclination or capability of learning and would anyway take a long time to learn, I am just going to tighten the bolt.


*yawn*

What is your non-point?


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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: nooneman]
    #26122224 -

nooneman said:
On the other hand, a famous person believing something doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.

Likewise, someone who is not an expert in a subject and doesn't actually know anything about it could still believe in accurate information about the subject despite their lack of actual knowledge.

If I believe in something that I have no evidence to support and no reason to believe in, it might still accidentally be true in spite of my ignorance.



*double yawn*

More non-points.


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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: Grapefruit] * 1
    #26122225 -

Quote:
I actually do believe that most religions do hold a lot of truth in a particular sense. I don't want to go into that right now


Let's all mention things we are unwilling to discuss or unable to defend. Won' that be productive! :elmo:


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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #26122229 -

Actually I just brought up a major discovery in philosophy that someone wrote a one page PhD thesis on that was heavily influential in the field of philosophy, believe it or not.

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: nooneman] * 1
    #26122235 -

I recently invented a real free energy device, but I refuse to share it.

:superiority:


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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #26122250 -

OrgoneConclusion said:
Quote:
I actually do believe that most religions do hold a lot of truth in a particular sense. I don't want to go into that right now


Let's all mention things we are unwilling to discuss or unable to defend. Won' that be productive! :elmo:


Why mention it yourself then? Just skip over it if you're not interested.


--------------------
Little left in the way of energy; or the way of love, yet happy to entertain myself playing mental games with the rest of you freaks until the rivers run backwards. 

"Chat your fraff
Chat your fraff
Just chat your fraff
Chat your fraff"

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #26122322 -

The idea is that we traditionally think that "true" knowledge is "justified true belief," but in fact there are many cases where we can "know" something that doesn't meet one (or all) of these criteria. This was come up with by the American philosopher Edmund Gettier who got a PhD in philosophy in 1963, but (so the story goes) by the time he did he hated philosophy so much that he wrote a flippant one page dissertation meant to be a joke just to show how stupid philosophy was. He even attempted to have it published in spanish in an obscure spanish language journal first just as a further "fuck you" to philosophy. He titled the paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?"

Instead, the paper he meant as a joke went on to become one of the most famous and influential papers in modern philosophy. He had "invented" or "discovered" (depending on how you want to look at it) the Gettier Problems that challenge the traditional view of knowledge as being "justified true belief:"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Gettier

The wikipedia pages say the paper is 3 pages long, but I always heard it was just one page.

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: OrgoneConclusion] * 2
    #26122350 -

OrgoneConclusion said:
[A famous person believed something...]Therefore I should, too!



Actually one can go further as regards beliefs:

"Even the truth, when believed, is a lie."
by Werner Erhard

Of course anyone who is a compulsive thinker, could say " I don't have to believe this ! Where is his evidence, or I don't care if he's famous" & miss the point. The point is to explore ones own mind, for beliefs and see what happens if one chooses to be more skeptical.

(Werner was of course influenced by Buddhism and particularly Zen, which generally speaking take a more experiential view, of matters, than other religions which lay great emphasis on belief. In this sense Buddhism and Zen are not religions.)

Edited by laughingdog (07/21/19 06:08 PM)

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: laughingdog]
    #26122377 -

What was so significant about Werner Erhard that we should consider his perspective on belief and experience?

(ok so you edited your response and he was someone who tried to make a point that could be better presented as 'Even the truth, when believed, can be a product of misinformation'.)

Edited by Buster_Brown (07/21/19 06:29 PM)

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Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: laughingdog]
    #26122546 -

I like that but I wouldn't see it as going further, seems like he's making a different point.

Buddhism does actually place at least some emphasis in belief which seems to be "belief in dharma". I've never really been sure what that means but they do, or at least Bodhidharma did. .


--------------------
Little left in the way of energy; or the way of love, yet happy to entertain myself playing mental games with the rest of you freaks until the rivers run backwards. 

"Chat your fraff
Chat your fraff
Just chat your fraff
Chat your fraff"

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: A famous person believed something... [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #26122673 -

OrgoneConclusion said:
Therefore I should, too! :cookiemonster:

This is the very common 'appeal to authority' fallacy. Now this does not pertain to a field where the famous person is an actual authority, but in an unrelated field having nothing to do with his expertise.

Example: Sir Isaac Newton believed in God.

Example: Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies.

Example: The Reagans believed in astrology.

Example: Benjamin Franklin and General George S. Patton believed in reincarnation.

The examples are endless.


The "thinking" goes something like this: "Those people have amazing minds and accomplished things I could never do, so I should trust their judgment." My question is why? How does being awesome in one field make you an expert in an unrelated field? Simple: it doesn't! Despite this being well-covered in Diploid's fallacies sticky, this same error appears on this board time and again.


I would be magnitudes more impressed by the relatively unknown person who actually demonstrated the truth of an idea or hypothesis than a genius who convinced himself (and others) of a hypothesis with no empirical evidence.




i trust my own judgement, and that's all.  it hasn't failed me yet; and in times when i've failed, it's because i let my brain convince me my judgement was wrong.

only a fool gives up the wheel [to Jesus or anyone/anything else]



edit:  one's own judgement(s) can be made up of or inclusive of others' experiences, but ultimately, imo, only one's own judgement should be relied upon.

Edited by Tulipslave (07/21/19 09:02 PM)

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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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