Talk:Appeal to tradition

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These are some pretty lousy "exceptions" to the appeal to tradition.

  • "In some theological contexts . . ." - it's pretty hard to see what this is getting at. Being part of a religious tradition doesn't make a belief any more likely to be true. At best we can say that a religion like Judaism has a weight of history and tradition to back it up, unlike something like Scientology which is cooked up out of nowhere, but that's more to do with how much cultural value a religion has than how much truthiness it has.
  • "Since false ideas tend to be rooted out over time, the persistence of an idea can provide some tentative evidence for its credibility." Bullshit. There are plenty of reasons for false ideas to be perpetuated, and plenty of cases of false ideas being held for a very long time before being rooted out. We can't assume that the ones not yet rooted out won't be rooted out some day.
  • "An appeal to common practice . . ." - this is about pragmatism rather than theoretical logic. It's saying that it's sometimes more convenient to perpetuate a technically wrong but conventionally accepted idea than to adopt what should be a better one. Surely that's a case of tradition holding us back & therefore not great as a counterargument in favour of tradition.

WëäŝëïöïďWeaselly.jpgMethinks it is a Weasel 22:30, 16 June 2012 (UTC)


Some content from Sir ℱ℧ℤℤϒℂᗩℑᑭƠℑᗩℑƠ (talk/stalk) 17:48, 31 July 2015 (UTC)


... on occasion 'tradition works': in number bases 5 and above 2+2 will always equal 4; willow bark may cure your headaches, and standing on the right hand side of the escalator in the UK will annoy fewer people. (talk) 21:12, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Precedent in law[edit]

Precedent boils down to saying "That's how we always did it" but in law there are obvious upsides (and few obvious downsides) to keeping settled questions settled and not having to re-argue every case ever every few years... Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 22:20, 22 August 2015 (UTC)