Ipse dixit

Ipse dixit is a Latin phrase meaning "He himself said it."[2] It refers to what is basically an appeal to authority, with oneself as the authority. In other words, the perpetrator of an ipse-dixitism makes an unfounded assertion and expects his word to be the final say.

Cogito ergo sum
Logic and rhetoric
Key articles
General logic
Bad logic
v - t - e
“”If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument.
—Neil deGrasse Tyson[1]

For example, Richard Mains asserts a privileged perspective because of his work in space industry without explaining the logic of the relationship between his claims and his claimed experience.[3]

Good old Ayn Rand used her genius to take ipse dixit to a quite superior level by quoting herself as an expert indirectly via some of her own made-up characters in novels. For instance, her book The Virtue of Selfishness states at the beginning, "Since I am to speak on the Objectivist Ethics, I shall begin by quoting its best representative — John Galt…"[4][5]:13 John Galt is a fictitious character in Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged.

Form
A says that X is true.
P2: (implicit) A gets to decide because A is an expert.
C: X is true.
gollark: > maximizing the number of your species is always good"Good" how? Good isn't objective.
gollark: But I think this is missing the major point that what's "good" in terms of maximizing the amount of humans or something (in the short term, anyway) is *not* necessarily good for literally any other values whatsoever.
gollark: Homosexuality is, as far as I'm aware, present in other animals and such.
gollark: Humans and humans' ancestors WERE subject to natural selection for billions of years.
gollark: > if you actually let natural selection work, anything other than straight would get selected outAnd yet it wasn't. Weird.

See also

References
  1. If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument by Neil deGrasse Tyson (12:41 PM - 23 Aug 2013) Twitter (archived from August 1, 2019).
  2. …And it's greatly to his credit, That he is an Englishman! That he is an E-E-E-E-Ennggglishman! HMS Pinafore, Gilbert and Sullivan.
  3. Spacefaring (2): Paths to Realization by Richard Mains (08/21/09) Commercial Space Gateway (archived from September 11, 2009).
  4. Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness by Glyn Hughes, Squashed Philosophers.
  5. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism by Ayn Rand (1964) Signet.
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