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When ought we trust others instead of ourselves?

Since, I've noticed that it's particularly commonplace to cite authors, even if they weren't scientists. E.g. in political contexts. "Marx said ...", "... but according to Adam Smith". It's commonplace even among people with "scientific" training, e.g. popular economists.

Now if the theses of these cited people are unscientific, then how are they supposed to be interpreted? How broadly do they apply? Are they really more than personal opinions?

The power that e.g. popular political writers hold is so great that I believe people ought to be vary of their theses. If there's just belief, then almost anything can be justified. And in political contexts the theses can have tremendous consequences.

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    This is certainly a philosophical question.
    – mavavilj
    Jul 5, 2017 at 14:05
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    There's the argument of familiarity / authority - because they have spent so long looking at some subject, they are likely to understand the topic at a deeper level and hence be better able to speak authoritatively on that topic than those who haven't. But before we get much further on this, can you please explain: what you do mean by "ought"?
    – Lawrence
    Jul 5, 2017 at 14:05
  • @Lawrence "Should"
    – mavavilj
    Jul 5, 2017 at 14:36
  • Sorry, that doesn't help. In what sense is there a moral or other imperative ('ought' / 'should') to ever trust anyone else? I'm not saying there isn't any - I'm asking how you're framing your question. The later paragraphs in your question ask about accepting 'unscientific' theses, but there is no obligation ('ought' / 'should') to accept them. So I ask again - what do you mean by 'ought'? I think the answer to that question has some bearing on the answer to your question.
    – Lawrence
    Jul 5, 2017 at 15:18
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    In short: when we presuppose that they know more than us on a given topic - authority must be acknowledged in this case.
    – a_z_s
    Jul 6, 2017 at 9:26

3 Answers 3

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  1. There are no authorities in philosophy, so appeal should not be made to them. No matter how clever, even brilliant, and widely admired, a philosopher is, he or she is only as good as the arguments that can be used to support his or her position. To attempt to push anything through on the grounds that 'Marx said that' or 'Russell said this' is the wrong way - or one of the many wrong ways - to do philosophy.

  2. Usually when this kind of appeal to authority is made, one is in no position to check the claim that Marx did say this or Russell that. Either the reference is vague or, if precise, one cannot halt the argument to verify the claim. (Part of the pragmatics of argument.) It might matter to check the claim now, before a chain of bad argument has unfurled further.

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    @mavavilj. You have a new answer to your question.
    – Geoffrey Thomas ♦
    Feb 2, 2018 at 19:55
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Never should you trust anyone else more than you trust yourself!

Listen to your gut. And when your experience tells you you can't trust your gut, you might want to educate yourself. Do your own research and go for the raw data whenever possible! There's never a good excuse for trusting someone blindly!

To quote Terence McKenna :

We all must try to understand what is happening. We need to try to understand what is happening, and in my humble opinion ideology is only going to get in your way.

Nobody understands what is happening. Not Buddhists, not Christians, not government scientists. No one understands what is happening.

So, forget ideology. They betray. They limit. They lead astray. Just deal with the raw data and trust yourself. Nobody is smarter than you are.

And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you? People walk around saying, "I don't understand Quantum Physics, but somewhere somebody understands it." That's not a very helpful attitude towards preserving the insights of Quantum Physics.

Inform yourself. What does inform yourself mean? It means transcend and mistrust ideology. Go for direct experience.

What do YOU think when YOU face the waterfall? What do YOU think when YOU have sex? What do YOU think when YOU take psilocybin?

Everything else is unconfirmable rumor, useless, probably lies. So, liberate yourself from the illusion of culture. Take responsibility for what you think and what you do.

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    But "Never should you trust anyone else more than you trust yourself!" is impossible. No single person can know everything, so one must rely on others to some extent. What I would look for is that there are things where trusting others is "more reasonable" and when it's "less reasonable". Using traditional terms one could use the concepts objectivity and subjectivity here.
    – mavavilj
    Aug 6, 2017 at 14:22
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    @mavavilj : An educated man neither makes assumptions nor trust others when he's lacking the necessary data to make up his mind. An educated man will consider multiple options and not make up his mind until he finds sufficient evidence. To quote Aristotle : "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
    – John Slegers
    Aug 6, 2017 at 14:26
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I'm not sure that the distinction you make between scientists and other authors is as binomial as you suggest. In each case we are referring to actual people who have biases and intentions with which they will imbue their work. You have no more reason to trust a scientist simply because they say they have discovered X than you have to trust Marx.

What you trust (or don't) is rather the accumulated mass of people who also trust. We trust that scientists have indeed discovered something because so many of them agree, and so many non-scientists also trust them.

History is littered with the case of the single scientist having apparently discovered something new (using perfectly scientific methods), but whom the world only reluctantly believes until a critical mass of followers is gained. It is no different with Marx, or Smith. Had you never heard of them, but simply picked up one of their pamphlets on the street you would be no more compelled to take their arguments seriously than you would anyone else's. It is the critical mass of people who support them that give them whatever "power" they have.

Since, as was pointed out in comments, their arguments act, not so much as persuasive tools, but as justifications for already held beliefs, they act more as cameras, taking snapshots of society's beliefs at the time. Sartre didn't create the cafe culture. He was born from it. Neither did Marx create the working class struggle, nor Smith the Scottish enlightenment.

By and large the "tremendous consequences" you are concerned about have already happened, or at least been set in motion, by the time these authors wrote their pieces. Had they not captured the Zeitgeist, someone else would have.

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  • What I mean with scientists is that scientists usually have methodology that's more than just philosophy.
    – mavavilj
    Jul 7, 2017 at 10:48
  • No, you trust that scientists have a methodology that is more than just philosophy, they may well use a methodology that is even worse than philosophy, they may completely doctor their results, misinterpret them wilfully or unintentionally, they may try to follow a better methodology, but fail to do so. It is simply on trust that you presume (on the whole) these things do not happen. You personally don't have the data required to make that judgement, you trust others who have, just as those who follow Marx trust all the others who do so too.
    – user22791
    Jul 8, 2017 at 6:41
  • @mavavilj : The scientific method is a pretty good foundation to rely on. I totally agree with you on that. However, that doesn't mean that scientists or scientific journals can be trusted. One reason my girlfriend is no longer working as a research scientist, is because of the degree political, economical & other agendas had polluted her field. And we're not even talking about "fluffy" sciences like psychology, here, but about the fairly "hard" field of bioscience engineering. I'd already learnt to distrust the "soft sciences", but I learned from her to distrust even the "harder" sciences!
    – John Slegers
    Aug 6, 2017 at 14:37

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