Argumentum ad populum

Many people have said I am the world’s greatest writer of 140 character sentences.

If we interpret the whole sentence as the premise and the last part as the conclusion, it becomes clear that the conclusion is cited in the premise, so the argument form is delta (q is A because q is Z): “I’m the world’s greatest writer of 140 character sentences (q) is acceptable (A) because I’m the world’s greatest writer of 140 character sentences (q) is said by many people (Z)”.

The premise takes a third-person perspective, so the argument substance is ‘III’: “I’m the world’s greatest writer of 140 character sentences is acceptable because I’m the world’s greatest writer of 140 character sentences is said by many people (III)”.

The keyword POPULARLY AUTHORITATIVE describes the relationship between predicates Z and A. The argument lever can thus be formulated as “Being said by many people (Z) is POPULARLY AUTHORITATIVE for being acceptable (A)”.

Source

The example is a tweet by Donald J. Trump on July 24, 2014.

Other examples

Notes

Some approaches use the more neutral “argument from the many” as a name for arguments with these characteristics and reserve “argumentum ad populum” for fallacious instantiations of the type.

The argument from expert opinion, argument from testimony, argument from moral authority, and argumentum ad populum are all specific forms of what is traditionally known as the ‘argument from authority’. The first three types involve qualitative authority: epistemic authority (someone with the right knowledge), situational authority (someone in a position to know), and deontic authority (someone with proper moral authority). The argumentum ad populum, however, relies on quantitative authority. In practice, mixed variants can occur, such as when an argument is endorsed by “the majority of economic experts in the country”.