re: Pay Attention Politards: THIS Is How You Win A Real Debate

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I understand your point, but let's just say that one of the debaters on the subject of the President's war powers was a combat veteran. Wouldn't that particular experience be relevant to the subject? Should that person's experience be kicked out as conjecture because it cannot be validated?

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Appeal to Authority
Explanation
An appeal to authority is an argument from the fact that a person judged to be an authority affirms a proposition to the claim that the proposition is true.

Appeals to authority are always deductively fallacious; even a legitimate authority speaking on his area of expertise may affirm a falsehood, so no testimony of any authority is guaranteed to be true.

However, the informal fallacy occurs only when the authority cited either (a) is not an authority, or (b) is not an authority on the subject on which he is being cited. If someone either isn’t an authority at all, or isn’t an authority on the subject about which they’re speaking, then that undermines the value of their testimony.

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