A Very Effective Rhetorical Strategy
PJ just drew my attention to the following "debate" between the makers of the 9/11 conspiracy "documentary" "Loose Change" and the editors of a new Popular Mechanics book that debunks the most popular 9/11 conspiracy theories. I tried watching "Loose Change" once, but found the sophistry of the whole thing unbearable after a while, so I didn't watch all of it. I did, however, read all of the Popular Mechanics article version of their debunking, mainly because I found it cathartic after trying unsuccessfully to reason a close friend of mine out of his own committment to various 9/11 conspiracy theories. I thought the Popular Mechanics article was quite good. It reminded me of an earlier article in Discover magazine, debunking the most common criticisms of evolutionary theory. (I just did a quick web search for that Discover article but couldn't find it. If anyone knows where it is, please let me know.) In both cases, I thought the magazines did a great public service by patiently going through how experts respond to conspiracy theorists/creationists.
Anyway, the most interesting moment in the "debate" linked to above is the following comment by one of the "Loose Change" film-makers:
"We’re just trying to tell people to go out and research for themselves."
This is an incredibly powerful rhetorical strategy, and conspiracy bluffs are not the only ones who understand its power. I've noticed that two other groups say this same same sort of thing to great effect:
(1) Creationists/intelligent designers
(2) Conservatives
Creationists use it as a burden-shifting move, in order to deflect the criticism that their view is unscientific and make it seem like they're just trying to "explore the options for themselves". Conservatives use it to undermine any scientific studies that might suggest we shouldn't adopt their public policies: think of their attitudes towards the expert consensus on global warming, for instance, or their response to the Lancet study last week reporting 655,000 additional deaths in Iraq because of our occupation.
The mistake, in all three cases ("Loose Change", creationists, conservatives), is to think that the type of research required is something just anyone can go out and do for themselves--with just a little elbow-grease, as it were. But in all three cases, in order to be in a position to research the topic, you've got to have a graduate degree in the relevant area. The kind of knowledge in question is so specialized that it's just a fantasy to think that non-experts have anything to say about it.
Taking an authority's word for it is (or once was) deeply un-American, and finding this rhetoric powerful obviously depends upon sharing a sense that it's always better to look and see for yourself, but this is a clear case in which we need to distinguish two very different senses of "authority":
(i) political authority
(ii) scientific authority
I agree with everyone else that we shouldn't take a political authority's word for things. But I think we should take a scientific authority's word for things that fall within his/her area of expertise; the success of science partly depends upon doing so, actually.
It's amazing how hard it is for people to accept that we should take a scientific authority's word for things. More on this later.
Anyway, the most interesting moment in the "debate" linked to above is the following comment by one of the "Loose Change" film-makers:
"We’re just trying to tell people to go out and research for themselves."
This is an incredibly powerful rhetorical strategy, and conspiracy bluffs are not the only ones who understand its power. I've noticed that two other groups say this same same sort of thing to great effect:
(1) Creationists/intelligent designers
(2) Conservatives
Creationists use it as a burden-shifting move, in order to deflect the criticism that their view is unscientific and make it seem like they're just trying to "explore the options for themselves". Conservatives use it to undermine any scientific studies that might suggest we shouldn't adopt their public policies: think of their attitudes towards the expert consensus on global warming, for instance, or their response to the Lancet study last week reporting 655,000 additional deaths in Iraq because of our occupation.
The mistake, in all three cases ("Loose Change", creationists, conservatives), is to think that the type of research required is something just anyone can go out and do for themselves--with just a little elbow-grease, as it were. But in all three cases, in order to be in a position to research the topic, you've got to have a graduate degree in the relevant area. The kind of knowledge in question is so specialized that it's just a fantasy to think that non-experts have anything to say about it.
Taking an authority's word for it is (or once was) deeply un-American, and finding this rhetoric powerful obviously depends upon sharing a sense that it's always better to look and see for yourself, but this is a clear case in which we need to distinguish two very different senses of "authority":
(i) political authority
(ii) scientific authority
I agree with everyone else that we shouldn't take a political authority's word for things. But I think we should take a scientific authority's word for things that fall within his/her area of expertise; the success of science partly depends upon doing so, actually.
It's amazing how hard it is for people to accept that we should take a scientific authority's word for things. More on this later.
posted by Charles P. Everitt at 5:30 PM
4 Comments:
Word.
Some arguments from authority are valid.
Such arguments have the form:
a affirmed that p.
So, p is true.
One book says there are three conditions of validity:
1. a affirmed what she believes;
2. Her belief is based on careful observation or sound reasoning;
3. No equally reliable source denies p.
(Another way to put this is that the source must be truthful, relevantly knowledgeable (in many cases this means having expertise), and there cannot be an equally relevantly knowledgeable and truthful source who denies that p.)
Now, what I think is tricky here is that one can undermine such an argument by attacking the credentials of the person making the argument. But this is not plain, old ad hominem. To attack the putative authority's credentials is to attack one of the reason's for believing the conclusion. It is not to distract one who might believe the conclusion by mentioning something irrelevant.
I also like the suggested comparison between creationists and conspiracy theorists.
The editors of Pop Mech draw a comparison between conspiracists and creationists as well, though it's with regard to a different similarity
The guy advising me on my dissertation offered two other instances of the problem (sort-of):
1. Current debate about informed consent in which a premium is placed on the patient's making a decision for herself or himself, despite lacking the expertise.
2. The age-old claim that parents know what's best for their children.
I believe he used the phrase "individualist epistemology" to characterize the general idea.
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