[quote=“wysinwyg, post:131, topic:18722”]
(3) People who blindly accept the conclusions of science because they have been raised to do so
[…]
My argument all along is that someone in (3) is in the same exact position with respect to epistemic justification as someone in (1).[/quote]
I think you are overestimating the number of people who are in this group. A large part of the normal science curriculum for children includes examples of ways that scientists have been wrong throughout the years. Although the U.S. education system has been degrading for some time, I really doubt there is a large population of people who couldn’t easily name at least a handful of high-profile cases where the conclusions of science were later found to be wrong or incomplete. Some of the incidents they would name probably wouldn’t be completely accurate (like the “world is flat” story of Columbus), but still…
If all you were saying is that someone in authority believes dark matter exists, that would be an argument from authority. You can go farther than that, though: you can say that physicists believe it based on the available evidence, and that for someone to say it doesn’t exist they would need to contradict that evidence.
This doesn’t require you to know what that evidence is; in either situation, you’re pointing to the evidence. If you don’t directly know the evidence then you’re telling the person to go argue at someone who does know the evidence. If you personally wanted or needed to argue with your hypothetical opponent about it, the only rational way to do so would be to seek out that evidence yourself so you would be armed - which you are capable of doing, because the evidence is available and being discussed and tested by others.
And just because those scientists may be wrong doesn’t mean that accepting the current scientific understanding of the available evidence is the same thing as blind faith.
