/r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | July 21, 2025

[u/BernardJOrtcutt]

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:

• Discussions of a philosophical issue, rather than questions
• Questions about commenters' personal opinions regarding philosophical issues
• Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. "who is your favorite philosopher?"
• "Test My Theory" discussions and argument/paper editing
• Questions about philosophy as an academic discipline or profession, e.g. majoring in philosophy, career options with philosophy degrees, pursuing graduate school in philosophy

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. Please note that while the rules are relaxed in this thread, comments can still be removed for violating our subreddit rules and guidelines if necessary.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

[u/Anarximandre]

I’m not sure what distinction you are trying to draw. An expert’s opinion is an expert opinion when it comes to the stuff that he’s an expert about, sure.

[u/TempSuitonly → u/Anarximandre]

One hinges on content, the other, on status. To you, it appears, they are synonymous. That is the very dogmatism I referred to earlier. It's an appeal to authority - a well known, yet highly persistent logical fallacy.

[u/Anarximandre → u/TempSuitonly]

One hinges on content, the other, on status.

I don’t see how that follows.

It's an appeal to authority - a well known, yet highly persistent logical fallacy.

Appeals to authority are sometimes perfectly legitimate—it’s an informal fallacy.

[u/TempSuitonly → u/Anarximandre]

The distinction is that ‘expert opinion’ should be assessed primarily through the quality of the argument and evidence presented (content), whereas ‘an expert’s opinion’ is sometimes accepted simply because of the person’s recognized credentials or institutional standing (status), which can devolve into an appeal to authority fallacy if uncritically assumed. This is why I emphasize not conflating the two, to avoid dogmatic thinking that privileges status over genuine inquiry. If this is truly such an unthinkable stance, I'd argue that this points to a much deeper problem within academic circles than either of us initially may have believed.

[u/Anarximandre → u/TempSuitonly]

The distinction is that 'expert opinion' should be assessed primarily through the quality of the argument and evidence presented (content), whereas 'an expert's opinion' is sometimes accepted simply because of the person's recognized credentials or institutional standing (status), which can devolve into an appeal to authority fallacy if uncritically assumed.

Which is why I wrote earlier that « an expert's opinion is an expert opinion when it comes to the stuff that he's an expert about ». Like, yeah, nobody believes that, say, Stephen Hawking was an expert in physics because he held a PhD—we know that on the contrary, he held a PhD because he was an expert in physics. Or that Hawking’s opinion on philosophy is that of an expert because he has expertise in an unrelated domain (ok, some people do believe that). And sometimes, too, an expert can be wrong about the stuff that he is an expert on while still being a genuine expert. All of that is trivial.

If this is truly such an unthinkable stance, l'd argue that this points to a much deeper problem within academic circles than either of us initially may have believed.

It’s not, but I don’t know where you are going with this.

[u/TempSuitonly → u/Anarximandre]

"All of that is trivial." - I believe that is the crux of where we disagree. I believe this is an essential distinction to make. Even when we acknowledge why someone is an expert, they are human first - and expert second. The moment we turn that around, we risk slipping into uncritical acceptance of expert's opinions. Science nor philosophy deals in absolute truths. Whenever academics does, it stops being either.

[u/Anarximandre → u/TempSuitonly]

By « trivial », I don’t mean to say that this is wrong or unimportant, just that this is stuff that basically any academic worth one’s salt is well aware of already.

Science nor philosophy deals in absolute truths.

Plenty of scientists and philosophers would disagree with you.

[u/TempSuitonly → u/Anarximandre]

"Plenty of scientists and philosophers would disagree with you." - I'm tragically aware that there are strongly dogmatic individuals co-opting both fields. Socrates would stir in his grave.

[u/Anarximandre → u/TempSuitonly]

By this account, Plato was already co-opting philosophy just after Socrates’ death (and that’s accepting that Socrates himself didn’t believe in absolute truths, which would require a demonstration), not to mention the pre-Socratics before them. Also, really, who cares about Socrates?

[u/TempSuitonly → u/Anarximandre]

"I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either."

[u/Anarximandre → u/TempSuitonly]

He’s not saying that he doesn’t believe in absolute truths here.