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Shawn

What fallacy is the opposite of the appeal to novelty fallacy?

I’ve been looking for a specific fallacy that I remember seeing for a bit but I can’t find it. The fallacy is basically the opposite of the appeal to novelty fallacy

asked on Monday, Jan 03, 2022 01:42:47 PM by Shawn

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Shawn writes:

With this type of fallacy, (aka chronological snobbery) there appears to be a built-in assumption that something new (or novel) is better than something old or something done in the past.  Marketers resort to it a lot when selling their products, ("Buy our new product, which offers a novel solution to this old problem") as do politicians when promoting some new social policy.

I invite readers to refer to the article:   The Appeal to Novelty Fallacy: Why New Isn’t Necessarily Better in order to flesh out the fallacy a bit more. 

As Bo correctly points out, its opposite would be an argument from age in which it is assumed that "that previous generations had superior wisdom to modern man, thus conclusions that rely on this wisdom are seen accepted as true or more true than they actually are."

posted on Tuesday, Jan 04, 2022 07:03:34 AM

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Bo Bennett, PhD
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answered on Monday, Jan 03, 2022 01:57:19 PM by Bo Bennett, PhD

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Ed F
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I would say it's Appeal To Antiquity.
This from logicalfallacies.info:
"An appeal to antiquity is the opposite of an appeal to novelty. Appeals to antiquity assumes that older ideas are better, that the fact that an idea has been around for a while implies that it is true."

That’s different than Argument From Age, which is more about thinking our ancestors were wiser than us (e.g., the Founding Fathers knew better than current political thinkers).  

Appeal to antiquity focuses on the oldness of something, as opposed to Appeal to novelty which focuses on its newness.

answered on Saturday, Jan 15, 2022 11:19:14 AM by Ed F

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Bo Bennett, PhD writes:

The appeal to antiquity is generally synonymous with the appeal to tradition . This can be the opposite of the appeal to novelty especially when referring to the "old" thing being an idea or practice. But it is not a polar (exact) opposite, neither is the argument from age . The appeal to novelty is more generic in that simply being "new" is associated with "better." With the appeal to tradition/antiquity, the focus is on practices and ideas of the past. With the argument from age, the focus is more general as in anything in the past because it is a result of our ancestors (who are fallaciously seen as wiser). At least that is the way I see it. From my earlier research, the most common uses of "appeal to antiquity" literally refer to practices or wisdom of antiquity — times before the middle ages. Of course, these fallacies evolve but given how it was named, that seems to make the most sense.

posted on Saturday, Jan 15, 2022 06:48:03 PM