[tbirrell]

Benjamin Franklin is a Founding Father and has been generally accepted as an authority for more than 200 years, especially on the subject of freedoms and rights. He was a renown political theorist, politician, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat in his own day, not to mention the fact his reputation has stood the test of time.

William Barr is none of these thing.

[EpicEng]

So... Appeal to authority then?

[noja]

Can you call it that though?

One is a person with a well-earned a reputation, the other.. well you get the point.

[EpicEng]

>Can you call it that though? >One is a person with a well-earned a reputation, the other.. well you get the point.

Yes

>An argument from authority, also called an appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam, is a form of defeasible argument in which a claimed authority's support is used as evidence for an argument's conclusion

You're not defending the point logically; you're only supporting argument is that someone with a good reputation supports it as well.

[kryogen1c]

> You're not defending the point logically;

He absolutely is

The annoying thing about "logical fallacies" is that if anyone season argument they disagree with that resembles a "fallacy", that quote it and act like theyve won.

He is not saying that everything Benjamin Franklin has ever said is true. Obviously. However, if a well renowned and respected Authority has an opinion that some evil schmuck disagrees with, it provides evidence as to who is more likely to be correct. That's not what an appeal to Authority is

[EpicEng]

>He absolutely is

Show me where that happened.

>The annoying thing about "logical fallacies" is that if anyone season argument they disagree with that resembles a "fallacy", that quote it and act like theyve won.

That is annoying and I agree, but that's not what's going on here.

>He is not saying that everything Benjamin Franklin has ever said is true.

No one said he was.

>However, if a well renowned and respected Authority has an opinion that some evil schmuck disagrees with, it provides evidence as to who is more likely to be correct.

No it doesn't. It absolutely _does not_. Reputation isn't irrelevant in so far as it lends credibility to a person's statements, but the discussion doesn't stop there. If you're going to defend a quote then defend it. Saying "this is true because X is trustworthy and Y is an 'evil schmuck'" is not an argument.

If this is not a prime example of Appeal to Authority then show me why it's not and provide an example. You're just throwing out your opinions as if they were fact.

[tbirrell]

This is not an example of Appeal to Authority because Ben Franklin is an accepted authority. If all parties agree on the reliability of an authority in the given context it becomes a valid inductive argument. Otherwise every Citation or Source or Bibliography would be a "logical fallacy". An Appeal to Authority would be if the quote was attributed to someone like James Polk. Sure he was president, but he has no authority on this sort of subject.

[kryogen1c]

>Saying "this is true because X is trustworthy and Y is an 'evil schmuck'" is not an argument

Great! I didnt say that and neither did the gp you originally replied to. Whats your point?

[zknz]

And yet he owned slaves.

[onetimemanytime]

and...? For example, you can be a Nazi and a great mathematician or be a pedophile and a great philosopher....etc etc