How Good Is the Evidence: Intuition, Personal Experience, Testimonials, and Appeals to Authority?

Question 1

To Determine Dependability

Answer 1

What is your proof?
Where is the evidence?
Are you sture that's true?
How do you know that's true?
Why do you believe that?
Can you prove it?

Question 2

Factual Claims

Answer 2

Conclusions, Reasons, or Assumptions made by the writer

Question 3

Examples of Factual Claims

Answer 3

Descriptive Conclusions
Reasons used to support either descriptive or prescriptive conclusions
Descriptive Assumptions

Question 4

When Factual Claims Should be Accepted as Dependaple

Answer 4

When the claim appears to be undisputed common knowledge
When the claim is the conclusion from a well-reasoned argument
When the claim is adequately supported by solid evidence in the same communication or by other evidence that we know.

Question 5

Evidence

Answer 5

Explicit information shared by the communicator that is used to back up or to justify the dependability of a factual claim
Prescriptive arguments - needed to support reasons that are factual claims
Descriptive arguments - needed to directly support a descriptive conclusion

Question 6

Kinds of Evidence

Answer 6

Intuition
Personal Experience
Testimonials
Appeals to Authorities
Personal Observations
Case Examples
Research Studies
Analogies

Question 7

Intuition

Answer 7

Relying on common sense, gut feelings, or hunches; private, others have no way to judge its dependability; provides no solid basis for deciding which ones to believe; Relies on unconscious processing that largely ignores relevant evidence reflects strong biases

Question 8

Personal Experience

Answer 8

Very vivid in our memories, we rely on them as evidence to support a belief; not enough to give a representative sample of experiences

Question 9

Hasty Generalization Fallacy

Answer 9

A person draws a conclusion about a large group based on experiences with only a few members of the group

Question 10

Personal Testimonials

Answer 10

Quoted statements based on personal experiences of other people

Question 11

Problems with Testimonials

Answer 11

Selectivity
Personal Interest
Omitted Information
The Human Factor

Question 12

Selectivity

Answer 12

Those trying to persuade us have usually carefully selected the testimony they use. What was the experience like for those whom we have not heard from?

Question 13

Personal Interest

Answer 13

People’s gain from their testimony

Question 14

Omitted Information

Answer 14

Testimonials rarely provide sufficient information about the basis for the judgement

Question 15

The Human Factor

Answer 15

They come from human beings and they are very vivid and detailed, a marked contrast to statistics and graphs, which tend to be abstract

Question 16

Appeals to Authority

Answer 16

Appealing to sources that are supposed to know more than most of us about a given topic-so-called experts;

Question 17

Questions about Authorities

Answer 17

How much expertise or training does the autority have about the subject about which he is communicating?
Was the authority in a position to have especially good access to pertinent facts?
Is there a good reason to believe that the authority is relatively free of distorting influences?
Has the authority developed a reputation for frequently making depandable claims? Have we been able to rely on this authority in the past?

Question 18

Questions about Personal Testimony

Answer 18

What biases or interests might be affecting the person’s testimony?
Does the person have any expertise to asist his or her judgment?
How do the person’s value assumptions affect his or her testimony?
Whose personal testimony might be helpful is assessing this person’s testimony?
What information has been left out in this personal testimony?