Citing yourself

Someone makes a claim and then links to their own website in support of their claim.

I'm guessing this is just plain old circular reasoning. Anything else? Yes, I know it's hilarious, but I mean any other logical fallacy being used here?

Careful, it may not be a fallacy at all. If the website in question provides factual information supporting the claim, or elaborates further with reasoning from information already provided, this is entirely fair game and not at all fallacious. If however, eg., the website simply repeats the claim and goes no further, we likely have a circular argument in place.

In academics, this is not only common, but required if you do reference your own work . So for example, when I talk about social intelligence in online and traditional educational settings, I would cite my own dissertation on this. In more informal settings, one might reference their own work rather than explaining everything multiple times. For example, people commonly refer others to FAQs, T&Cs, or even blog posts where they flesh out arguments in detail. So far so good.

Now take the Nigerian Prince who, in his e-mail asking for $5000 so he can arrange to transfer $20M to you, providing you with a link to his own website confirming that this is legitimate. Clearly this circular, and anyone who accepts the e-mail as any more legitimate because of this circularity clearly will not win the critical thinker of the year award.

Here are my suggestions that I try to follow when citing myself: I make it clear that the link I am using is where I wrote about the topic in greater detail already or I make it clear that the link has supporting documents (i.e., links to academic resources that actually support the point being made). Passing off your own work as scientific evidence (unless a scientist referencing academic work) is certainly problematic and even possibly deliberately deceptive.

I often make statements and then link to my own website. This is because my own website contains hundreds of links to scientific, historical and other sources, that back up the statements I make. This is no different than a scholar writing a book containing various statements with footnotes to outside research backing up the scholar's statements, which most of us learned how to do in high school. There is absolutely nothing fallacious about linking to one's own website, as long as statements made there are either presented as opinion or, are backed up by outside historical and scientific sources.

There is nothing wrong with stating something as one's own opinion, as long as it is either A) noted as their own opinion or B) backed up by outside historical and/or scientific evidence. Neil DeGrasse Tyson for example, does this frequently, sometimes stating something he says as being his own opinion while other times presenting what he says as generally agreed to "science" (even though he sometimes gets this wrong, as we all as fallible human beings tend to do). Mr. Tyson also directs people to his book and information websites, where additional opinions of his can be found, as well as more generalized accepted science can be found.

The late Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins do similar--Hawking had a website often containing opinions sometimes shared by many other scientists and sometimes not shared by most other scientists. Dawkins has a very large website containing all manner of fallacious nonsense, often without even bothering to note it being his opinion not shared by many and often, virtually all of his peers. Dawkins has an entire video about the beliefs of Albert Einstein, which quotes many of Einstein's statements out of context and otherwise, ignores many of Einstein's statements, in particular about God, which Dawkins doesn't like or otherwise doesn't agree with. Dawkins then presents himself with being in general agreement with Einstein, which is as big of a lie as any lie Donald Trump has ever told. According to Einstein's most recognized and respected biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein became extremely upset when anybody tried to link any of his ideas with atheism, which Dawkins goes right on doing to this day, as far as I am aware of. According to Walter Isaacson, Einstein himself emphatically stated, "I have never been an atheist" and Einstein also denied being a pantheist as many wrongly accuse him of being: www.aspeninstitute.org/ou. . .

And, I singled out Tyson, not to ridicule him but rather, because he is a well-known general spokesperson for science. The same can be said about Will Durant, a well-respected historian or about the Encyclopedia Britannica, a well-respected source for general information (unlike Wikipedia). The Britannica links to it's own body of work quite literally many thousands of times, using various information in other articles to back up, enhance and otherwise support statements that are made in a particular article. For example, according to the Britannica, modern science knows almost nothing about viruses compared to what is yet to be learned and, this agrees with other articles also found in the Britannica; as for example, the Britannica article "Evolution" concludes that science doesn't know how, when, where or why life arose on earth or what form it originally took, which is also what Neil DeGrasse Tyson says in the series "Cosmos".

And, one can find many outside scientific, historical and other links supporting all of the above and far more at my own website here: freedomtracks.com/theory.. . .