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Wiki MarkupIt is essential to De George's analysis of legitimate epistemic authority to argue that "\[a\]s a way of knowing," it is "secondary," because it depends on "alternate ways of knowing that are prior to and presupposed by legitimate epistemic authority." In this connection, he allows that "\[t\]hough it is not common usage, one might speak of the authority of facts or the authority of reason, meaning that in some sense, human beings, in order to attain knowledge, must submit to or conform to reality, to facts, to the rules of logic, or to the power of reason. If we choose to describe such cases as instances of submitting to authority, we might describe such conformity as submission to 'ontological' or 'logical' authority. Submission to such 'authorities' constitute\[s\] some of the alternate ways of knowing that are prior to and presupposed by legitimate epistemic authority" (_The Nature and Limits of Authority_: 36).

Clearly, De George is here allowing, in effect, that "authority" can be used in another analogical, or symbolic, sense, distinct from the sense it has in the properly social context in which we commonly use it. Moreover, it is clear that the "ontological" or "logical authorities (sic!)," submission to which he takes to be prior to and presupposed by legitimate epistemic authority, could only be "executive" as distinct from "epistemic," or any other kind of "nonexecutive" authorities -- naturally, in the same analogical or symbolic sense of "authority. "

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