But quoting someone need not be an appeal to authority at all. As I explained, it may be just to express something I think is true, but is better expressed by the philosopher I quote. Or, because I want to quote someone who disagree with me, so I have a target. There are many reasons for quoting someone. It is fallacious to argue that because you are quoting someone, you are appealing to him as an authority. In any case, of course, even appeals to authority need not be fallacious, since the authority can be a good authority, and the appeal can be evidence for what you believe. It is not fallacious to appeal to a dictionary as an authority on how a word is spelled, is it? If so, I have committed that fallacy a lot.

well if we are arguing and you quote someone be prepared to read the entire book or at least enough to prove that you are not taking the quote out of context. while your at it you should read me every other book by that author so we can make sure that he never changed his mind. .

Why do I have to do that? I am not using the author as an authority, so why should I have to do that? I might just as well say, "As someone said" instead of the author's name, and it would do exactly as well for my purpose.

close but personally i would just paraphrase and say it without any inclination it is a quote. everything you or i say is a paraphrase. some things we just forget were we heard them or combined multiple things.

as for why, well because it is not hard to take something out of context. you may not be but i must make sure everyone knows the back ground. If we were debating god and i said something along the lines of like Nietzsche said "God is dead" it would be and has been used completely out of context. It seems to me to just be a bad habit.

To require an extensive burden of proof from a individual posting a text, outside of providing a reference to it if appropriate, would certainly prevent its use. One generally assumes that the person citing it does so for a purpose, and thusly understands the meaning of the text both in relation to the work or the philosophical position advanced in the author's works and its place in the corpus of the thinker.

Doesn't the burden of proof about its meaning and relevance devolve more on someone challenging the warrants for its use? And this is not to say that there is ONE meaning of a text and that it cannot be subject to several authentic interpretations.

I was speaking about a in person debate of the hypothetical kind. I would guess you guys are right as i am only speaking from personal opinion and most people do not think like me. here yes i would have to disprove that someones quote was false or out of context but in real life the person doing the quoting would have to prove its relevance and had better know for sure the person they have quoted can not be quoted as saying something contradictory or even said anything that can be viewed as contradictory when used out of context. If they cant they have lost the debate and have no reason to continue. This is why i was told to never quote during a debate.

Even in real life, outside of formal debates, very few situations arise in which someone must make a prima facie case for quoting someone either as illustration or as as part of an exposition of a position. Naturally, if someone is cited in an argument or expostulation, questions about its legitimacy can, and probably will, find their place; but it seems awkward and contrary to demand that a laundry list of such potential questions should be answered before they arise, assuming they arise (which is not always the case) at all.

Unless the debate is carried on, and understood to be so, from within a dogmatic position, very few philosophic discussions seem either begin or end with an appeal to authority that is decisive. The opposite is often true. Aristotle begins the first book of the Metaphysics by citing or discussing other philosophers, but only to show that each only partly understood cause. Aquinas will begin a question by presenting the arguments against which he will demonstrate the contrary. Hobbes, too, used Filmer's texts against which he argued. A great deal of philosophical thinking is triggered by dissatisfaction with a prior account of a problem.

Even in real life, outside of formal debates, very few situations arise in which someone must make a prima facie case for quoting someone either as illustration or as as part of an exposition of a position. Naturally, if someone is cited in an argument or expostulation, questions about its legitimacy can, and probably will, find their place; but it seems awkward and contrary to demand that a laundry list of such potential questions should be answered before they arise, assuming they arise (which is not always the case) at all.

Unless the debate is carried on, and understood to be so, from within a dogmatic position, very few philosophic discussions seem either begin or end with an appeal to authority that is decisive. The opposite is often true. Aristotle begins the first book of the Metaphysics by citing or discussing other philosophers, but only to show that each only partly understood cause. Aquinas will begin a question by presenting the arguments against which he will demonstrate the contrary. Hobbes, too, used Filmer's texts against which he argued. A great deal of philosophical thinking is triggered by dissatisfaction with a prior account of a problem.

People often think that a quote indicates an argument from authority (not, of course, that arguments from authority need be fallacious). But as you point out, quotations can have many other purposes than to argue from the authority of those who are quoted. I think that debate instructors sometimes tell students not to use quotations without certification because the teachers think that all quotes are used as arguments from authority, or at least, that is what students hear them as saying. Strange what people think they learn in school.

. I guess personally i would rather hear something original as it is more interesting and useful in my opinion and i am not really trying to have a discussion with what someone picks and chooses to quote from a dead man that can not defend himself.

What is wrong with quoting from Shakespeare, or from Descartes, even if they are dead. No one is attacking them just by quoting them. So what should they be defending themselves from? I don't understand what you mean? And even if I quote from Descartes (say) to disagree with something he wrote, that is not attacking him. As a matter of fact, I think that is honoring him by showing that he is someone important enough to discuss and whose views are worth considering. I think that Descartes would be happy to know that he is still being discussed so many years after his death, rather than being relegated to the dustbin of history. Don't you think?

Yes we should discuss them but not as proof in a debate. In my opinion it is bad form to quote a dead man knowing that someone with respect for the dead may have to rebuttal or lose and stick to their principles. At this point id have to say i have said enough on the matter. I will stick to what i consider the high road and you may of course do whatever you want but again this mostly applies only to formal debates.

Wittgenstein wrote that philosophy is a method, not a theory or a dogma. And, if this is true, then the method must be that of critical thinking as applied to philosophical problems. I am, of course, not talking about the history of philosophy, nor intellectual history. Both have their place, but they should not be confused with philosophy. Nor, of course, should the confused happy talk we sometimes see on this forum be confused either with philosophy, or anything except with confusion.

You surely know a philosophical answer when you see it. Given this answer, you would not say it is a "method". You would say it is a "philosophical answer". So, wittgenstein is a ******* moron to say it is a method.

I don't understand why you say that it is bad form to quote a dead man. People in Church are constantly quoting Jesus (for example, his sermon on the mount) What is wrong with that? And suppose I quote Albert Einstein (who is dead) as holding that the velocity of light is a constant. And suppose I use that quote to prove that the speed of light is a constant. Shouldn't I do that? After all, Albert Einstein was a very great physicist. Don't you think that what he says carries authority?

It is still under debate as to whether Einstein ever did any physics at all.

Actually, he said it was an activity. I misreported.

Einstein won two (not one, two) Nobel Prizes for physics. One for the discovery of the Brownian movement. The other for his theory of special relativity.

Still a ******* moron.

I do not care what authority said he was right or great or whatever. Some times you have to stand alone when you others blindly abide by and believe something based simply on someone elses authority and i am prepared to do that. My point is that no matter how true Einsteins theorys are they will never be scientific. a lot of his equations and proof is composed of undefined terms which by definitions can not be communicated thus by definition can not be science. He could have come by his equations just as easily by trial and error as he could of by smarts. This is the fundamental reason that there is no place in a scientific conclusion for undefined terms. If you take out all the reification of dynamic numbers as static objects and undefined terms every single work to stem from the pseudoscience of mathematical physics becomes a bunch of clear garbage as apposed to the beloved garbage it is today. mathematical physics can and will never be able to be considered science unless of course you have the same lax definition of scientific as you do for knowledge.