A Fallacious Appeal

In philosophy, a fallacious appeal to popularity is usually the charge when someone names a specific number of people and says that is why we should accept whatever they’re saying…”300,000,000 people can’t be wrong.” The reason it is called a fallacy is that whatever number is presented is not sufficient reason for accepting the premise. The flipside of this is what I call a Fallacious Appeal to the Herd. This is not something you are going to read in any text book on logic. It may go by an “appeal to common knowledge.” It is the “everyone knows x” fallacy. People toss about these kinds of fallacies for a variety of reasons, most of which have to do with some form of manipulation. Sometimes it’s to cover ignorance, “everybody knows that rule…” While they may know they’re supposed to do whatever it is, the truth is that they haven’t been doing it and want to cut short the questioning. Other times people appeal to the herd in order to cloud the truth. A while back Fmr. Sec. of State Colin Powell said in an interview, “…well everyone knows that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.” The reason it is a fallacy is that if we can find one case where it does not apply, like anyone who has never been to Iraq or seen WMDs in Iraq, then the argument fails. Powell’s use of it was part of a larger manipulation which works far too often. If one repeats absurdities often enough, people will believe them.