Talk:Appeal to tradition/Archives/2012

Anyone speak Latin?

This page refers to this argument as being argumentum ad antiquitam, but the logical fallacy page refers to it as argumentum ad antiquitatem.

I don't know which is correct (or whether both are correct, simply being different forms of the same term). Perhaps someone who has studied Latin could set this right?

Meanwhile, I have created redirects to this page from both Latin terms.

antiquitatem is correct; it is the accusative of anitiquitas. Nevertheless a Google search reveals antiquitam is a pretty common misspelling, so it's good to have both redirects. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 10:50, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Same-sex marriage example

It has been deleted three times today, first two with no justification, last two by the same person. NPOV has been called upon, but I sincerely think its deletion is NPOV. The example, far from inflammatory, is a highly representative example of an appeal to tradition, both because the right to same-sex marriage is a hot topic and because that fallacy is widely used to deny it. I'd like to settle the issue with some comments here, instead of perpetuating the edit war. Should it be deleted? — Isilanes 21:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Keep, unless someone comes up with a good reason for the opposite. Narssarssuaq 21:48, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Delete - I am opposed in general to all examples involving issues of current controversy, so as to avoid the NPOV or simply irrelevant implication that one side or the other of a current controversy is more or less illogical than the other. That is an argument for a different medium. Pusher robot 08:31, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

• I see your point, but precisely "current controversies" are better tools to illustrate points. Using subjects long ago settled only promotes the false idea that the fallacy of the argument depends on the conclusion being "correct" (like driving cars instead of riding horses). Even if the reader is (in this case) against same-sex marriage, he or she should recognize the argument for the fallacy it is, instead of just being "for" or "against" (which is irrelevant for logic). I think that point is worth making. — Isilanes 13:52, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

• But that puts us in the uncomfortable position of having to be scrupulously even-handed in which "side" we use to illustrate logical fallacies, lest we appear to demonstrate an obvious political bias that undermines NPOV. You see? I think it would violate NPOV to have ten examples where one side is using a fallacy and the other is not, even if all the fallacies were properly illustrated. It is the lack of balance created by your proposal that I mainly object to, but because such balance is so subjective and difficult to achieve, I think it wiser not to avoid taking sides in the first place. Your main critique about illustrations of fallacies tracking the wrongness of the conclusion is meritorious, but that simply requires more creative examples, e.g., "murder is wrong because it has been a crime since the dawn of civilization." This example addresses your complaint because the conclusion - murder is wrong - is obviously correct, but the reasoning is illogical. This in no way requires taking sides on modern controversies. Pusher robot 17:25, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

• I think you made it clear... and I have to agree. — Isilanes 19:24, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

REINSTATE - Speaking as the person who first put the example in (the first time only): "Marriage has always been between one man and one woman, therefore same sex marriage is wrong."(rebuttal: society changes with time, therefore things that were acceptable at one time may not be acceptable today.) I would take issue with the idea that using this example is in any way anything other than 'even handed.' I agree that it is not an encyclopedia's charge to express a political opinion, however the fact remains that this is not a statement, it is a fact. Appeal to tradition in this example IS a logical falacy. I would argue that it is the people who keep deleting it that are the ones trying to use wikipedia to express a political/social opinion. As to the idea that it should not be used simply to avoid this conversation, I would say that the use of an example that relates directly to a current issue is far more effective than using a generic, and odd, horse/car example. Again, I think that this article should be concerned with best illustrating and defining this type of logical falacy, and I believe that uses real world examples. The example of same sex marriage is not a 'side' or opinion, it is a current and valid appeal to tradition - which I thought this page was supposed to be about. It's not subjective, it is fact. Thanks all! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 149.101.1.124 (talk) 14:06, August 23, 2007 (UTC)

• I tend to agree with you, but probably because I am ideologically biased myself, which automatically pushes me in the opposite direction (not including the example). I agree that the example is perfectly valid. However, there is a potentially infinite number of "valid" examples, and making any choice (as including them all is obviously impossible) leads us to bias, want it or not. So, to minimize such bias, we can agree to use "neutral" statements, which illustrate the point equally well. The reader must (after reading this article) be able to realize for herself if the example you propose is or is not a fallacy, so its inclusion should be (ideally) superfluous. If it must be explicitly stated, then the reader didn't get the point, and the article needs improvement. — isilanes (talk|contribs) 12:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I have expanded the specific issue to illustrate how this fallacy can be used both for and against a modern controversial issue and to illustrate how factual debunking is not the same thing as rebutting a fallacy as a fallacy. If somoene says "We must enslave all blue eyed people because blue eyed people have always been enslaved in all cultures." Proving that cultures with blue eyed non-slaves existed or exist does not rebut the fallacy. It merely shows that the fallacy is used in that particular instance with a false-to-facts statement of support. It does not address the underlying logical flaw. Likewise, the fallacy of appeal to tradition is that one uses the tradition as the justification for making an argument. Thus, a claim that presence of tradition justifies same-sex marriage is exactly as fallacious as a claim that lack of tradition justifies never permitting same-sex marriage. This may set some people off into cloud-cuckoo land due to the emotional touchiness of the issue. So, I will illustrate thus:

Statement:

"We should not permit same-sex marriage because same sex marriage has never existed in history."

is equivalent to:

If perpetually([not](existed(A))) then ([never](implement(B)).

This is the fundamental "policy argument" based on this fallacy, where operators in square brackets are optional as appropriate by issue.

As a fallacy, this statement is logically invalid. It is logically invalid regardless of whether or not "A" happens to be true.

Attacking the "A" statement does not attack the fallacy. Instead, it allows for the fallacy to be logically valid in and of itself, as a method of argument. Instead, it merely quibbles over the truth-state of "A". Another way of looking at it would be that the person thinking that precedents for same-sex marriage somehow "rebut" the fallacy is forced by his own choice of attack route to admit that, if those precedents did not exist, their lack would be a valid rationale for forever prohibiting the practice.Dogface (talk) 17:53, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

"Unreferenced" tag

Anyone else find the addition of this tag to this precise article ironic? The article is about a self-evident logic subject, so in principle no reference is needed (or even able) to back it up. Actually, requesting references is in this case an appeal to authority, because the soundness of the article is independent of the references we could gather, so the tag is itself denied by the article it's been applied to! — isilanes (talk|contribs) 19:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

• Ha! Good point. (And good eye!) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 149.101.1.124 (talk) 14:12, August 23, 2007 (UTC)

Why is murdering wrong?

In the article it says:

"Had it [murder] always been considered correct, it would still be wrong."

This sentence should not be used in an article about a logical fallacy, since it presumes murdering is wrong, and this isn't an article about ethics. I won't change it because the start of the paragraph states the following (implying murdering is not necessarily wrong):

"Rebuttal: the conclusion might be correct"

Still worth considering in my eyes.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.114.197.100 (talk • contribs).

• Good point. It is even more worth rewriting, because the point is not whether murder is right or wrong, but whether it is so because of tradition. — isilanes (talk|contribs) 13:09, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Red telephone boxes

I have removed the telephone box example, reproduced here:

• In 1984 in Britain, the former General Post Office (which handled all communications) was split into two; Royal Mail which dealt with physical communications, and British Telecom which dealt with electronic communications. BT wanted to mark the change by repainting telephone boxes from red (the corporate colour of the GPO and of Royal Mail) to their new corporate colour, yellow. This was bitterly opposed on the grounds that "red telephone boxes are traditional"; this ignored the fact that the reason for this tradition had disappeared.

The example is highly questionable. If you look at the page red telephone box, you will see the sentence "The colour red was chosen to make them easy to spot." and not because it was the corporate colour of the GPO. Nevertheless, it neglects to consider that although the original choice of red was for one reason, the sight and familiarity of a British red telephone box became something of British heritage, a piece of nostalgia. The opposition wasn't saying "it is wrong to paint a telephone box yellow" but rather "we'd prefer to have them red because we're used to it and we have fond memories of red phone boxes." Not only that, but tradition is an important part of the British tourist industry -- people come to see the bearskins and beefeaters and red phone boxes and red buses and all that nonsense. It is not at all clear that "red telephone boxes are traditional" is invalid due to an appeal to tradition. rhebus (talk) 01:04, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree. As I recall it, virtually everything BT did back then set people's teeth on edge, because it was shifting from being a staid public service provider to being a thrusting go-ahead etc that took an interest in advertising, and building corporate image etc. The opposition was mostly that changing the colour of telephone boxes involved spending (public)money, and the only reason BT could give was that "they wanted to mark the change". Nobody had spelled out to the great British public what the change was intended to lead to; at the time it appeared to be a minor administrative reorganisation, in no way justifying everybody having to relearn what a phone box looked like. (An ad currently running says 'why should a parking meter always look like a parking meter?' to which my answer is 'so that people don't waste time working out from scratch whether and how to pay for their parking every time they park the car' , but I digress.) The argument on phone box colour was a proxy argument : the opposition was not saying "it's wrong to paint a telephone box yellow !", but "what sort of an organisation thinks it's a good idea to spend money changing the colour of phone boxes? ". "Time for a change" is no more intellectually respectable than " it ain't broke, leave it alone" . --Rjccumbria (talk) 00:15, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The "exceptions" section was pointless

A situation or context can be contrived to "demonstrate" an exception to ANY logical fallacy. In this case, a change in context STILL does not change whether the base fallacy is fallacious or not. A "belief" in the value of the fallacy to some particular religion still does not make it any less a fallacy and therefore makes the section biased and violates the Wikipedia requirement of maintaining a neutral, unbiased point of view.

I am pasting the section text here and then editing the page to remove it:

Exceptions

In some contexts, particularly in various religions such as Judaism, Hinduism or Catholicism among many others, a belief in the importance of tradition is axiomatic and thus in discussions internal to those beliefs, an appeal to tradition is not fallacious[citation needed]. The traditions are supposed to be true because they are from an omnipotent deity that created "truth" so to people that believe in that deity the traditions are true.

If you wish to refute my assertion, please discuss. Stimpson65 (talk) 05:36, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The rebuttals seem unnecessary

Once you understand a fallacy the rebuttals are all the same. I find the rebuttals a waste of space and failed to find them in the other logical fallacy pages that I visited (haven't been thorough). Someone who's used to editing might want to consider their removal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.239.45.4 (talk) 21:04, 20 December 2011 (UTC)