a form of defeasible argument in which a claimed authority's support is used as evidence for an argument's conclusion From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Argument from authority or appeal to authority is a form of argument or reasoning that argues if a person with authority in a field makes a statement about it, it is probably true. It could become a fallacy if it is misused.[1]
In informal reasoning,[2] the appeal to authority is an argument of the form:
The argument is good in some conditions. For example, a person says, "I need to take my medication because my doctor told me to."[3] Doctors are trained, know much about medication, and probably have experience giving medication before. The person is appealing to a real authority with supported data that makes the authority probably right.
The argument is bad when there is a false authority or unclear authority. For example, "I know X is true because it said so on the internet."[3] The complete internet has no authority because any person on the internet can say anything they want. A part of the internet may have authority, but it is unclear because the argument was not specific.
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