Appeal to tradition


Appeal to tradition is a claim in which a thesis is deemed correct on the basis of correlation with past or present tradition. The appeal takes the form of "this is right because we've always done it this way", and is a logical fallacy. The opposite of an appeal to tradition is an appeal to novelty, in which one claims that an idea is superior just because it is new.
An appeal to tradition essentially makes two assumptions that may not be necessarily true:
  • The old way of thinking was proven correct when introduced, i.e. since the old way of thinking was prevalent, it was necessarily correct.
  • The past justifications for the tradition are still valid.
Appeal to tradition imports the value of not needing to reinvent ways to do things for which effective ways have already been established. But, "is fallacious when it confuses a long tradition of careful testing with the mere tendency to hold on to ideas because they are old".
An appeal to tradition can be complicated by the possibility that different people might have different views, each with their own tradition to appeal to. For example, "Augustine's appeal to tradition against the Donatists is more complicated because the Donatists had appealed to tradition against the Catholics".

Argument from inertia

A close relative/variant of the appeal to tradition is the argument from inertia or appeal to inertia, which states a mistaken status quo, potentially related to existing customs be maintained for its own sake, usually because making a change would require admission of fault in the mistake or because correcting the mistake would require extraordinary effort and resources
Its name derives from inertia, a concept in physics representing the resistance of any physical object to any change in its velocity.

Contrasting fallacies

  • Where appeal to tradition might seek to avoid expending resources and effort on making the necessary change, the sunk-cost fallacy resists change due to that which has already been expended in the past to contribute to the present condition.
  • The appeal to tradition counterpoints with the appeal to novelty, where the alternative is sought simply on the basis that it is new, or that old customs are incorrect because of being traditional.