By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
An authority may indeed be a reason for believing something, but it can never—logically never—verify our belief. For "an authoritative pronouncement may give us good reasons for believing that what has been said is true, but an authoritative pronouncement can never make it true, in the way that an authoritative command or decision in law may make something legal" (Watt: 46).
Significantly, while a command or a decision may indeed make something legal, it cannot make it right, any more than a pronouncement can make something true.
July 1996
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