- The OP is not anti-democratic. If you're not interested in the topic of the thread I'm not sure why you are posting in it. Adios.

- Your answers are sidestepping the purpose of the OP. The OP wants to have a substantive discussion about immigration. Why not enter into that discussion? Why not be one of the democratic citizens who marshals arguments in favor of a real position?

Edit 2: To continue the line of thought that ↪Leontiskos, if let's say a culture simply had built-in (extremely) violent responses to injustices, and then someone was not from that culture but promoted (extremely) violent responses to injustices, but advocated it out of philosophical regard, if we determined the extreme violence was "bad", would the philosophical regard agent be worse than the cultural agent? — schopenhauer1

Yes, because there is a greater level of intentionality involved in the badness of the second person. They are doing the bad thing more purposefully and intentionally.

You deny entry when the immigrant does not meet the countries established laws for entry. — Philosophim

Think of it as a question about what the laws should be.

-

- :up:

- When the antecedent of a material conditional is false, the conditional itself is necessarily true. That's all that is happening here, and then the modus tollens draws 'G'.

We could add the implicit step:

~G→~(P→A)
~P
∴(P→A)
∴G

(As a proof this runs into some of the exact same difficulties that were discussed in this thread.)

<"it is false that if I pray, then my prayers will be answered" translates to ~(P→A)>

We have scrutinized this sort of translation a great deal in the past months. This thread, for example:

However, what about ¬(A→B)? What can we say about this in English? — Lionino

However, I wouldn't take it as a badge of honor to be entirely ignorant of the basics of logic prior to the 20th century on account of this fact. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:grin:

The idea that there is "nothing but formalism" is the problem. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, but as I said earlier, I don't see much support for it generally or on TPF. Most people who think about this for more than 15 seconds realize that "nothing but formalism" is a complete dead end. Frank wants his square circles and Banno wants his logical pluralism. I would need to see other voices taking up such bizarre positions before I would be interested in engaging, and I don't see any. The same cannot really be said for things like nominalism or logical pragmatism, which have a wider base of support.

Not having experienced it so far doesn't rule it out, though. — frank

Right, and it is very important that we keep our eyes peeled for square circles. They are probably lurking just around the corner.

The framing in the OP seems to lean towards the idea that "logic" is "formal logic." Thus, we speak of "languages," "systems," and "games" and difficulties within or between formalisms as problems for "logic." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Formal logic is about "ways of speaking," but logic is not about "ways of speaking" tout court. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, very good. In my opinion this all gets a little tricky because what is at stake is a ratio, not a concept. For instance, to use a formal logical system is not thereby to commit oneself to the view that logic is formal logic. Lots of people who used and even created formal systems recognized that their formal system is not identical to logic itself.

Anyhow, to the extent that logical nihilism will tend to imply that things have no causes, that there is no metaphysical truth, etc. I think it's open to the criticism that:
A. This seems demonstrably false on all the evidence of sense experience, the natural sciences, etc.;
B. No one actually has the courage of their convictions on this matter and really acts as if causes and truth are "just games," and;
C. This makes the world inherently unintelligible and philosophy pointless. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Very good. :up:

Plus, to the extent that someone still tries to justify logic on "pragmatic" grounds it seems to be the case that any "pragmatic" standards bottom out in arbitrariness, there being no truth about what is truly a better standard or what truly ranks higher on any given standard. Hence appeals to the "usefulness of certain games," are unsupportable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agreed. :up:

(I am tagging @Srap Tasmaner given that we were talking about similar issues elsewhere.)

How do we determine which logic is appropriate for a given situation/problem? Sorry if this is a banal quesion. — Tom Storm

This is a fine question, but I want to say that the better question along these same lines is this: How do we differentiate an argument which is invalid from an argument which is merely pluralistically different? There is no differentiation between the two at the level of the object language, and this inevitably pushes the formalists into a metalanguage.

Stated more simply, if different approaches to logic are just different tools, are there nevertheless tools that won't work? Are there any bad arguments at all? And can someone who says that there are no bad (or good) arguments really call themselves a logician?

↪Leontiskos ↪Banno To what extent does your disagreement on this involve, perhaps, one being a conservative and the other liberal? — Tom Storm

It's an understandable trope, but in this case I think it is just that Banno is concerned with what I call metalogic/metamathematics and I am concerned with what I call logic. He was trained in that emphasis and so he thinks of it as logic. Would Banno actually bite the bullet and accept full-blown logical pluralism? I doubt it. I think he is just flirting with it as a contrarian who discovered an exotic idea. And I don't see enough support for that position on TPF or elsewhere to expend much effort critiquing it. Srap's logical pragmatism is an example of an approach which is much better represented.

But the substantive question relates to knowledge, which is why my first post in this thread concentrated on that topic.

(At the end of the day the principle of non-contradiction is the issue, and Aristotle showed long ago why attacks on the PNC can never succeed.)

And that is where we stand. Presuming that there is one true logic is no longer viable. — Banno

Lol. I suppose that's where things stand if you just ignore the rest of the article and/or appeal to SEP as some sort of normative source, setting out what is allowed and what is not, even though it doesn't present itself that way. (Michael has that difficulty as well). In your case it is less excusable given what I have already pointed out to you. Dialetheism qua dialetheism is the flat-earthism of the logical world. Yet the inquiries of dialetheists can and have been interesting, even if they don't ultimately achieve their purported aim.

I don't consider this at all unique. I take it that logical pluralism (and nihilism) is just the logical extension of what has occurred in all other areas of discourse, i.e. pluralism and/or nihilism. Historically speaking, such developments look to be inevitable given our overarching ideation. This all perhaps began when religious pluralism was baptized with modern liberalism. The hold-outs seem to be things like scientific and physical pluralism, but maybe that will eventually come too.

Logical pluralists seem to argue that different contexts require different logics and this seems to be determined by the kinds of reasoning or the goals of inquiry involved. — Tom Storm

No, that's really not it. See:

Logical pluralism takes many forms, but the most philosophically interesting and controversial versions hold that more than one logic can be correct, that is: logics L1 and L2 can disagree about which arguments are valid, and both can be getting things right. — SEP | Logical Pluralism

For example, someone who believes in deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning is not a logical pluralist. It is in no way controversial that there are different ways of reasoning.* Even SEP's phrase, "getting things right," is weasel language. The controversy and uniqueness of logical pluralism arise with the idea that there are conflicting logics that are all correct.

Each time I look into these theories they turn out to be smoke and mirrors. It looks a lot like the pseudoscience of the logical world. But even on TPF this is largely acknowledged, so there seems little reason to argue.


* Similarly, someone who utilizes different logical languages or formalisms for different arguments is also not a logical pluralist.

- Not just you, but there are also fewer up there than you suppose. Most people recognize that contradictory conclusions cannot both be the result of sound arguments—even and especially laymen.

Sounds fair. Is there a risk with pluralism that one might simply select the logic one wants to suit ourselves? How do we determine which logic is appropriate for a given situation/problem? Sorry if this is a banal quesion. — Tom Storm

Banno looks like the cat who has climbed and climbed and now cannot get down, and does not know where he is. What is logic? Banno thinks it is something like the arbitrary manipulation of symbols - and of course there are many ways to arbitrarily manipulate symbols. But that's not what logic is.

Historically logic is the thing by which (discursive) knowledge is produced. When I combine two or more pieces of knowledge to arrive at new knowledge I am by definition utilizing logic. If logical pluralism were true then you could know X and I could know ~X, and we would both have true knowledge, which is absurd. When, "two logics over the same domain reach opposite conclusions," we do not arrive at an "interesting question." We arrive at contradictory conclusions and conflicting arguments, one of which must be wrong.

- If you managed to read my posts it wouldn't be necessary. You're a pro at talking past people.

Not one logic, but many. — Banno

The foundational topic here relates to the Meno, which you are welcome to weigh in on:

Here's how I would start a thread about logic. I would post the dilemma of Meno 80b. I would basically say that if that dilemma can be overcome then logic exists, and if it can't then logic does not exist. Per Rombout, someone like Wittgenstein doesn't think logic exists. But the thread would not use the word "logic," for that word is an equivocal quagmire. — Leontiskos

On the one hand, it's a ridiculous point because you can't *say* one word on top of another -- gotta say them in order. But on the other hand, spoken language is pretty much always accompanied by gestures, so you can imagine an accompanying gesture to convey the "on". On the third hand (the gripping hand), this won't work over a telephone. But on the fourth hand, language is spoken in person long long long before telephones, and pretty damn long before writing. And even writing has its own story, a little different from the story of speech. — Srap Tasmaner

Rombout has a nice section on linguistic differences, such as Frege's spatial notation. For example, the author she appeals to considers the difference between the Roman and Arabic numeral systems. I would say it's not ridiculous, because written language is not somehow limited to linear left-to-right symbols. Even spoken language can have similar things, such as tonal languages like Vietnamese where inflection becomes centrally important.

Well, no, I didn't, — Banno

Well, yes, you did:

Have you ever noticed that when someone sets out a state of affairs, they do it by setting out a statement?

It's far from obvious that states of affairs are helpful, rather than just yet another thing to puzzle over. — Banno

Well, yes. What a statement sets out is a particular situation in the world. Do you then have three things, the true statement, the situation in the world and the fact? Or are we multiplying entities beyond necessity? — Banno

-

Folk are welcome to talk about states of affairs, but might do well to remember that they are a turn of phrase, not a piece of ontology. — Banno

I don't know what it would mean for state of affairs to be a "piece of ontology." In all likelihood you don't either.

This is a classic Analytic move of claiming that natural language has gone astray and "states of affairs" is unnecessary. In natural language "state of affairs" and "fact" do not mean the same thing. I'll stick with natural language rather than the artificial simplifications.

- Yes, @Banno began by claiming that talk of states of affairs is redundant and superfluous, and then went on to continue conflating states of affairs and statements in subtle and not so subtle ways. For example:

SO how does a state of affairs differ from that which a statement sets out? — Banno

A statement and what a statement sets out are not the same thing, and it is not redundant or superfluous to talk about what a statement sets out. Thus Banno is arguing for a different thesis here than his original one (i.e. equivocating). Even if we agree that a state of affairs does not differ from what a statement sets out, it does not follow that a state of affairs does not differ from a statement. A statement is a locution; a state of affairs is not.

---

- Good posts. :up:

- So the goal is an attitude of indifference. How does one get to that goal? Is it just by practicing indifference? Or is there some better way to get there?

What is your approach to achieving your Stoic goals? Presumably it doesn't occur just automatically.

- A characteristically punchy quote from Hart, but on point. :up:

The analytic school of philosophy is the dominant way of doing philosophy, nowadays. — Shawn

Is it? It holds a large share of English-speaking philosophy, but it is largely ignored outside that limited area.

- Fair enough. I now see you were saying something a bit different than Banno.

Analytic philosophy is a toolkit and not a school of philosophy? Then why do analytic philosophers tend to focus on the same basic set of problems? Or else, why do we call people "analytic philosophers" at all? Is that a misnomer?

When the grid goes down, the crypto-heads will discover the difference between gold and crypto as a store of value. — fishfry

They will. :up:

Even if they are low quality, which I don't think they are, a lot of crap is allowed here. — T Clark

So do you think low quality posts should not be moderated? Every time a low quality post is moderated are you going to come along and try to make an argument in favor of low quality posts? What in the world are you supposed to be arguing here?

Besides, it was moved to the Lounge. It wasn't deleted or closed.

- That's pretty interesting. Plato would surely approve!

Hence, lounge. — fdrake

No offense to the OP, but I am glad to see the bar being raised and the lounge being utilized. I think this will improve the quality of the site in the long run, and will give users an opportunity to write more focused OPs.

Beyond that, the forum is full of opiniated fluff and vague assertions. I don't know why Carlo Roosen is being singled out. — T Clark

"The house is full of dirt, so why are you cleaning!?"

I did. A cyst is not a person. — Banno

That's propaganda, not an argument. It does not help you that the emotional post you dredged up from six years ago contains propaganda, nor is it surprising that it does. Nor does it help the thread.

- Okay, and to be clear, Socrates proposes "recollection" and a form of reincarnation to respond to the dilemma. Aristotle proposes logic: that we can learn things that we did not know before, and that there is a manner in which this is done. I'm obviously thinking about Aristotle's answer rather than Socrates'. :smile:

Generally, there are thousands (at least) of cryptocurrencies, and there will be thousands more created in the future. The barrier to creating them is quite low. Given this, are cryptocurrencies truly scarse? — hypericin

I suppose their scarcity presupposes investment in a single kind. They are not scarce in their genus, for there are many species of cryptocurrency. But they tend to be scarce in their species, e.g. Bitcoin is designed to include scarcity.

Fast-forwarding to the end: cryptocurrency is silly. The means of exchange probably needs to have some kind of inherent value, such as gold has.

Scientific investigations of how we perceive already, to some extent, presuppose the a priori modes by which we intuit and cognize objects, being that we must study the intuited and cognized version of our own representative faculties, and so the Kantian question is still very much alive and puzzling. — Bob Ross

Right. :up:

Let's take the words of Albert Einstein as an example — Michael

Einstein? The more you post the more evangelistic your approach becomes. This is a site for philosophical argument. Evangelism is literally against the rules.

Heh. I taught my phone "Kimhi" but it ignored me this time. — Srap Tasmaner

@J might not object. "It doesn't taste good, but it is healthy!" :grin:

(A) "Dogs are nice"

and on the other

(B) "For all x, if x is a dog, then it is nice."

We just need a neutral word for the relation between (A) and (B), and, if you start with (A) and recast it as (B), we need a neutral word to describe what you're doing there. Maybe you believe you are "revealing (A)'s logical form," and maybe you don't. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, I don't think this Fregian move can plausibly present itself as something other than a schematization, so I agree with you in cases such as this one. But this is probably the weakest point of Frege's system. It's harder to tell if distinguishing force from content is artifice.

Again, for me it begins with the puzzle of the Meno. I want to say that if logic is artifice then knowledge is artificial. And of course some of what we involve ourselves in when we do logic is artifice, but that doesn't mean that there is nothing more than that involved.

Or we could put it this way: "Even if Frege's is not perfectly correct, it correctly points us in the direction of a real rational faculty that humans possess." To what extent can we speak about and explicate that faculty? And form and strengthen it? It's not altogether clear, but that it exists seems obvious.

This bypasses my question, and doubles down even. It is assumed "virtue building" such as a program that one might enter into as an Aristotlean or Stoic or whatnot, would seem to be a freely chosen philosophy that one is intending to follow. A culture seems to be something one generally falls into, though one can take it on too. — schopenhauer1

Virtue is a kind of habit of or a use of a kind of habit; it is not habit per se. I drew the parallel between culture and habit, not culture and virtue.

What if one is about virtue-building but isn't following any particular program, just their own.. Is that culture? — schopenhauer1

I've said that a culture is a kind of societal habit. On that view nothing an individual does in themselves has any necessary connection with culture (because the action or habit of an individual is not necessarily the action or habit of a culture).

Is the practitioner of a philosophy and an individual acting under the enculturation of a subgroup's culture the same thing? — schopenhauer1

One is intentional and the other is not necessarily intentional, no?

Is there a substantive difference or is it all culture all the way down? — schopenhauer1

Suppose we have a norm, "Do not treat others as you would not like to be treated." Suppose a culture instantiates this norm. Suppose there are two people in the culture that are baptized into the cultural norm, Bob and Joe. Bob is under the influence of the cultural norm, and it influences his actions. Joe, on the other hand, while being under the influence of the cultural norm, also perceives that it is a moral norm, which he then freely assents to in a rational manner. Bob and Joe are different. Bob holds the norm in a merely cultural manner, whereas Joe also holds it in a moral manner. Joe is therefore rationally and intentionally invested in the norm in a way that Bob is not. We could argue whether Bob is virtuous for following the cultural norm, but it is certainly true that Joe is more virtuous than Bob.

(We could go on to consider a third person who intentionally rejects the cultural norm.)

But they haven't paid their dues! We've earned this, by banging our heads against Kimchi. Oh sure, they'll join in *now*, for the fun part, but where were they when we were slogging through the mud, I ask you. — Srap Tasmaner

Those who only agree to come after the kimchi has already been served. :lol:

Here again, this may not contribute to a neutral presentation of (2), but I have to treat language as being first for communication and other uses come after. — Srap Tasmaner

Well if language is essentially for communication then the answer to the question has again been foreclosed.

All I'm arguing for is slowing down the moment of schematization so that we can see frame-by-frame what's happening, regardless what we say about how before and after are related. — Srap Tasmaner

But the classical logician says that it's not a schematization at all, and on that account you have begged the question.

Here's how I would start a thread about logic. I would post the dilemma of Meno 80b. I would basically say that if that dilemma can be overcome then logic exists, and if it can't then logic does not exist. Per Rombout, someone like Wittgenstein doesn't think logic exists. But the thread would not use the word "logic," for that word is an equivocal quagmire.

Worth also pointing out that it is far from clear what "thoughts" are, yet the term is used with gay abandon throughout Martin's paper. — Banno

Have you actually put any effort into Martin's paper? Have you tried to understand any of this on its own terms, as fdrake invited you to do? In section 4 Martin spends a lot of time on thoughts.

The objection here looks like self-fulfilling laziness. "Martin doesn't give an analytic-stipulatively precise definition of 'thought', therefore logical nominalism holds." This is classic Wittgenstenian question-begging. Martin is damned either way. If he gives an analytic-stipulative definition then he is barred from contact with reality (i.e. barred from logical realism). If he instead works his way towards a real definition of thought then the Analytic rejects it as imprecise. For the Analytic, only what is stipulated can be precise, only what is precise is allowed, and therefore logic is the realm of tautology divorced from reality. Three cheers for circular reasoning. The corrective here is to stop being lazy and to start challenging yourself by thinking about things on their own terms, as they are in themselves, rather than as you stipulate them to be. Anyone who makes the simple observation that arguments presuppose thoughts should be willing to wrestle with the "a posteriori" question of what thoughts are. If they are not willing to wrestle with such questions then I'm not sure what they take themselves to be doing.

I didn't follow your reasoning that turned my "not necessarily" into an even bigger "necessarily not". I do hope this was clearer. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, very helpful.

All of this agnosticism about (3) depends on being able to formulate (2) neutrally. — Srap Tasmaner

Right, and that is the difficulty. I’m not sure (2) can be formulated neutrally as a claim. Probably it can only be approached neutrally as a question. The question is something like, “What is logic?” Or, “What are humans rationally capable of?”

We can be more conservative and ask whether Frege’s distinction between assertoric force and thought has a real correlate in human reasoning, and I think it surely does. We are truly able to think things without judging them true. This is why Martin thinks the distinction needs to be redrawn rather than abandoned. If this is right then Frege’s logic represents something true about reasoning itself, even if what he says is skewed or off kilter.

-

second, clarity is obviously negotiated between speaker and audience, and thus our practices of making better, clearer arguments arise from the efforts of ordinary speakers — Srap Tasmaner

This looks like that same conflation between speech act theory and logic. Can we form sound arguments and thereby gain knowledge without engaging in interpersonal speech acts? This is precisely what logic means in the classical understanding.

It's a fantastic invention — Srap Tasmaner

Each time you state the problem in terms of artifice or invention you fail to capture a neutral (2). Do you see this? To call logic an invention of artifice, or a schematization or formalization, is to have begged the question. If that's all logic is then the answer to (3) is foreclosed.

(We are now knee-deep in the topic I was hoping would become a new thread. Is it worth breaking off? The general membership would find this topic more interesting than Kimhi's.)

Short response before I head out for the evening...

So is culture akin to addiction in that it is a mechanism whereby free will is limited to an extent? — schopenhauer1

For Aristotle habit is the basis of both vice and virtue.

But can't certain cultural customs be immoral? — schopenhauer1

Sure, and that's why the caution I spoke of is required. If we condemn based solely on our own customs then at best we are imposing a non-moral norm, and at worst we are imposing an immoral norm.