FirmhandKY
Posts: 8948
Joined: 9/21/2004 Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Dubbelganger Not only is he not being fair, but he is mistakenly asserting that you are making an argument in which you are appealing to authority. Rather, you are simply saying that you would give preferential weight to, say, a physicist concerning an equation involving a force vector instead of an insurance adjustor. That is, if I am reading you right. She did not say that she would give greater credibility to an expert in a particular field, on the subject matter of the field. In her post # 105, she quotes Peter Atkins, from the source I cited: Similarly, Oxford University scientist Peter Atkins commented on our 1996 survey, "You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs. But I don't think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of knowledge." Icarys, in post #110 makes a joke about the way that this sentence was phrased: Yes but they wouldn't be true scientists! That's why I was laughing at it..I find it very ironic..It sounds like a lot of other bs you here around here at times :> In post 113, she displays that she didn't get the joking reference to "twue" subs and "twue" doms and "real" scientists: You admittedly didn't even go to college. What do you know about the qualifications of a scientist, true or not, and why should your opinion be considered over someone who is an expert in the field? In post 117, MusicMystery tried to explain it to her: He's talking about "twue" scientists, vs. perhaps "sub"scientists. Hence the joke. In post 123, Icarys addressed her "didn't get it post 113": Expert in the field of what? Conjecture? I didn't know I needed college to learn that? It's evident in everyday life. She responds in post 133: No, expert in a field of science. If I want to know something about science, I prefer to listen to the experts. You were laughing because scientists said that some were greater and some were lesser. I think they are better qualified to make that determination than you are. But if you can offer a definition of a scientist that is different than what they themselves use, then let's hear it. I'm all ears. This is where she is making the mistake of appeal to authority. What is Peter Atkins an authority in, in order to make him an expert in the study of all scientists, all scientific knowledge, all non-scientific knowledge and how open is his mind to critical analysis of the differences? She is deferring to him to define what is an acceptable "real scientist". He's a chemist (albeit, no doubt, a good one), and an active partisan for atheism. He is not an expert on the theory of epistemology. He is an expert in a particular field of science. This does not make him an expert in "what a real scientist is", outside of his own field. His definition of a "real" scientist is self-serving and reinforcing of his own biases. It's a circular definition to fit his own agenda. Open minded scientist? I gave some quotes above of other scientist who apparently have markedly different opinions. If Atkin's definition was something concerning his particular field (chemistry), then it wouldn't be an "appeal to authority", because it would be in his field of expertise. This would fit your comment above: "give preferential weight to, say, a physicist concerning an equation involving a force vector instead of an insurance adjustor." Firm
_____________________________
Some people are just idiots.
|