Sunday 2 August 2015

Appeal To The Authority of Your Own Perceived Intelligence Fallacy

This particular fallacy is one that people use on themselves and attempt to use on others, albeit usually unsuccessfully. This is a sort of Ad Verecudiam Fallacy mixed with The Neglected Aspect Fallacy with shades of other fallacies mixed in here and there. Basically what happens is a person assumes, because they are an intelligent person or because they are a person who believes in logic, that anything they believe about a subject or issue is logical. Therefore they believe that they do not have to apply any sort of logical litmus test further than their own beliefs.

 This usually remains simply a matter of self deception unless the person can convince others that their perceived intelligence thumps that of others. This is not the same as a person who is withholding information from others to manipulate them. This is simply a person who believes in their own intelligence so much that they make up their mind on a subject or issue with out all of the knowledge in place and avoid or overlook the laws of logic to protect their precious opinion.

 How can you deal with such a person in debate? Usually you can't. Usually such people will react violently to any thing that might destroy their perception of authority on a given issue or subject. Note: By violent I do not mean just physical violence. Their violence can be emotional, intellectual, verbal, and so on. Pointing out neglected aspects or other logical or grammatical flaws in their argument to them will only increase their violence. Your only hope is to get them to think that they came to the realization of their errors on their own.

 Note: This is not from a formal list of fallacies. This is from my personal list of sub groupings of traditional fallacies.

 First published on Bubblews November 6 2014

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