I don't think you are following this part of the argument.

I say they are wrong. You and apparently agree, but refuse to put it in those terms. That despite your previous insistence on honesty.

So you think they are not wrong?

What happened to your "Just say it. You don't need to defend it. It's how you feel."

You can't see how ridiculous it is to say that you agree that it is relevant, but insist that it must be objectively relevant?

This is ethics. It's about how you want things to be. Don't discount your view about how you want things to be.

Drop the enchantment of "objective". Those who think the worth of a bag of cells outweighs that of an adult human are wrong.

I'll again point out that the interests and preferences of the person carrying are far more apparent than those of the zygot or cyst or foetus.

This argument does not rely on essentialism. One ought not need an agreed definition of the essential characteristics of a person in order to see that a bag made of a few cells does not have the same value as a person, be they an infant, a mute, deaf, or even, in the extreme, a woman.

And again, the motivation of those who claim that the bag of cells has such value that it must be privileged above the woman carrying it are suspect. They overwhelmingly tend to hold these views becasue they wish to remain in agreement with their invisible friend. They hypocritically support capital punishment. They refuse to provide for the needs of the economically disadvantaged, who are the very people most at risk. They exhibit misogyny and authoritarianism. These facts are supported by repeated demographic studies.

In democracies worldwide, this issue has been settled for years. There is one major exception to this. If a referendum were held in the United States, the right to an abortion would be supported by sixty to seventy percent of the population.

This issue is predominantly about the parochial failure of democracy in the USA.

Another one of these threads.

The trouble is that the folk arguing so vehemently against direct realism have not understood where it stands. Those here of a scientific bent are talking about something quite different to those of a philosophical bent.

The SEP article is detailed and broad, and ends with the following:

The question, now, is not so much whether to be a direct realist, but how to be one. — The Problem of Perception

How can it be?

Edit: Added "here". Philosophers who are arguing for direct realism are not always at odds with the science. The comment is directed at those hereabouts insisting that they are. Response to .

I thought the IEP article was pretty good, actually. — Wayfarer

Yes, I agree. A bit hard on Ryle. Monk has his own issues.

, I'll again point out that the interests and preferences of the person carrying are much more apparent than those of the zygot or cyst or foetus. We do not need an agreed definition of personhood in order to understand that while the mother can tell us what she wants, the conceptus' needs are only ever inferred. They are not of equal standing.

Nice quip.

Sure. It's not so common now, given the aforementioned "eclecticism"– more of historical interest. Many years ago I made an attempt to consolidate the Wiki article on Analytic Philosophy, but gave it away as a bad job. I could not find a framework that gave a neat contemporary account, and now think that none can be given. Rather, the historical approach found in IEP is the only option.

Some folk supose that the turn against linguistic philosophy marked the end of analytic philosophy, but that would be to exclude the likes of Davidson, Kripke, Putnam... all of whom rely on the formal logic and linguistic analysis that grew from Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and so on. It seems better to think of analytic methods as being more widely applied since the seventies.

A recent article analysed a few thousand papers to see who cited who, expecting to see tow group, roughly analytic and continental. But instead it found three, the third being a group who focus more on empirical method and science. I think these three groups can be seen in the posts hereabouts.

Further on your point...

That's part of what the Russell article in this thread is addressing - the idea being, roughly, that if we reached the sort of impasse you describe, we might do well to develop a logic that frames the problem by adding more bits - "lemma incorporation" in the article. A logic to decide between competing logics.

The discussion would then be ongoing, keeping Logicians in paid work...

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

Well, theism is interesting. So take the sorts of arguments that treat existence as a first-order predicate - ∃!. Free logic takes this seriously, but goes on to show that one cannot deduce the existence of some individual in a valid free logic without question-begging. It seems existence is presumed, not proven. That is, taking the theistic supposition seriously does not lead to the desired conclusion. What it does do is clarify what is going on when one claims that something exists. (See Inexpressibility of Existence Conditions)

But how we might deal with a case where, say, two logics over the same domain reach opposite conclusions remains an interesting question.

Why what? If there are no valid arguments left, then there is no One True Logic, and monism is defeated.

It's just the continuation in the next paragraph...

Perhaps if we construe “every case” broadly enough, we will find that there are no valid arguments left, and hence the result will not be logical monism, but a form of logical nihilism, or something close to it.

I doubt that the SEP article – co-authored by Russell – is much easier. I find the extensive use of acronyms unsettling.

I'm not sure why the liar is your focus. As the article suggests, a para-consistent logic might assign it "both true and false" and move on.

Fixing the typo: 'The One True Logic, then, is the one that describes the relation of truth-preservation over all cases—where “all” is construed as broadly as possible'. That section then goes on to set out that construing "all" as broadly as possible may well lead to there being no valid arguments left. Logical monism would lead to logical nihilism.

The interesting issue here is, if there is One True Logic, which logic is it?

Just to give a taste of what is being discussed, here are some of the articles on "alternate" logics in SEP:
Classical Logic
Connexive Logic
Dialetheism
Free Logic
Infinitary Logic
Intuitionistic Logic
Modal Logic
Paraconsistent Logic
Relevance Logic
Second-order and Higher-order Logic
Substructural Logics

Not a complete list, but you might get the idea. Each of these is useful in some circumstance, and each is studied in its own right. Logical monism must in some way make sense of the many and varied treatments of validity, domain and truth in these logics, and either rejecting or incorporating them.

That there are multiple logics is a fact. The meta issue is how to understand the relation between them. Monism rules some in and some out - but which? Nihilism rules them all out - so no logic. Pluralism suggests we might use each as appropriate.

Now it seems to me that Pluralism is the better of these options, but the devil is in the detail, and the discussion is on-going.

What is relevant for the discussion at A challenge to Frege on assertion is that one can no longer simply presume that there is One True Logic, which is what @Leontiskos appears to do.

Applying one of the basic analytic tools, it's not at all clear here what "analytic philosophy" might be.

Maybe we can find some facts. The PhilPapers survey asked about method, allowing multiple choices. The highest rating went to "conceptual analysis". It ranked 71% overall, 69% in The USA, and, in Continental Europe, ten percent higher at 79%. Ranked next was 'Empirical Philosophy", then "Formal Philosophy", again ranking higher in Continental Europe than in anglophone countries. Out of 1733 respondents, fully 24 mentioned phenomenology. Make of that what you will.

Take a look at the web page for the ESAP. Alive and thriving, associated with over a dozen national analytic philosophy organisations and as many research centres. Hardly insignificant.

Nor is analytic philosophy equivalent to linguistic philosophy.

SEP has no article on "Analytic Philosophy". The IEP has an historical essay, tracing the developments in anglophone philosophy until the sixties, when analytic philosophy became ubiquitous. "On account of its eclecticism, contemporary analytic philosophy defies summary or general description."

Where does this lead? Nowhere. Like this thread.

It's muddled to think of analytic philosophy as a way of "doing" philosophy.

It's more a set of tools.

And there is a reason it is ubiquitous. They are useful tools.

(Just noticed beat me to it.)

The pro-choice spokesperson said abortion is not a matter of morality, it's about the right to choose. — frank

That's muddled. Morality is about how we relate to each other, and comes in to play as soon as you expect me to do something for you, or you for me. So they were wrong.

Yep, abortion is a moral issue.

Your own morality isn't based on arguments. It comes from the way you feel. — frank

I agree. But with the caveat that what you feel is very much to do with what you think, hence what you think can change what you feel as much as what you feel changes what you think.

It's an interaction. Complex. Iterative. Human.

Your opponents aren't going to hear you because there's no mutual respect. — frank

I don't much give a fuck.

Have the guts to say it. — frank

You suppose I have qualms about such things? No. Kill the foetus.

All this talk about me is fun, but can we get back on topic?

What you're referring to as the "wider picture" is basically logic. How does logic have any force for you if you're a logical pluralist? — frank

Well, no, not just logic. I'm "referencing" all the things that make a person more interesting and worthy of the "respect" you so value, in comparison to a conceptus.

We can use logic in examining the coherence and consistency of a group of claims. Nihilism, not pluralism, would deny this.

So far as your claim, you seem to think that reasons and arguments are irrelevant to moral decisions, that what counts is that "people decide for their own reasons", and that discussion of those reasons is BS.

So I'm puzzling as to why you are even here on a discussion. Are you trying to convince us that we ought not be having any discussions, by having a discussion?

Seems to me your position is self-defeating.

Now you can either show me how I have misunderstood you, or you can abuse me. Again, your choice.

You continuous need to center yoursel — AmadeusD

My friend, it is you who are incessantly talking about me.

...you have no respect for the other side — frank

Well, not much. Yep. Their arguments hereabouts do not do much to build that respect.

He's infuriating. — frank

Thanks. One does what one can.

Ironically, you're comparing slaves (and centuries of suffering) to tiny bits of flesh that lack consciousness. — praxis

So, on your own argument, @frank, if we don't look to the wider picture but only our "feels", how are we to deal with disagreement? If you would rule out discourse, what would you rule in? But moreover, why?

On your own account, you can give no reason.

You would give moral recognition to slaves but not to blastocysts, but can't say why.

I find that quite odd.

Thanks. Tell us more stuff about me,

Not so much. More like different ways of speaking.

The preference angle is just mumbo jumbo because for some odd reason one is resistant to saying "I value the mother's life over that of the fetus.". Just say it. You don't need to defend it. It's how you feel. — frank

If you like. I value the woman's life over that of the foetus because she is much more capable and interesting. Others value the foetus over the interests of the woman becasue of what they think their invisible friend thinks. The reason for analysing reasons is to track down inconsistencies and sources for those opinions. I also think that what someone else's invisible friend might say is irrelevant to the discussion.

So, which do you choose? Woman or cyst? And yes, I am obviously intentionally using extreme language, setting otu the extreme case, to show that folk who think abortion indefensible becasue of "ensolement" or some such are shown to value the cyst above the women. And as I have said, I think that morally bankrupt.

We could do a read through. — frank

Happy to. Might be best if you take the lead, so you can highlight the points you see as salient.

Right. The preferences-angle is BS. People decide for their own reasons. — frank

An odd conclusion. That people make their own choices does not make those choices arbitrary. The preference angle can ground the choice between the woman and the cyst. Your choice as to which to preserve is about you. Which will you chose?

Yep.

Well, I think not. Thurman was "a Black 28-year-old mother to a young son who had dreams of becoming a nurse" who "died a painful, preventable death". A cyst is just a cyst.

But you can decide for yourself.

All life demonstrates preferences. — frank

Ok, if that is so, should we prefer the preferences of a cyst to those of Amber Thurman?

It might also indicate that logic has limits — Wayfarer

You'd love that.

Rather I take the flow of the argument here to be that there are a multiplicity of logics, to be applied in many and various cases. It's more about the removal of limits to logic. Roughly, if you come across a case in which logic seems not to apply, then you are using the wrong logic.

Statements of opinion aren't true or false — frank

Why not? "Frank thinks statements of opinion are neither true nor false" seems to be true...

Does the situation compare to moral nihilism? — frank

The Philosophy Now article draws that analogy. I don't think it goes very far, partly for the reasons given above. Perhaps the logical monist says "this is how you ought think", the nihilist says "It doesn't matter what you think", the pluralist, "this is how we show if your thinking is consistent"

So "there are no logical laws" becomes a logical law, with the obvious problematic. In the article Russel formalises logical laws as of the form Γ⊨φ:

The reason is this: a natural interpretation of the claim that there is no logic is that the extension of the relation of logical consequence is empty; there is no pairing of premises and conclusion such that the second is a logical consequence of the first. — P.4

On that account "there are no logical laws" is not of the form Γ⊨φ, avoiding the problematic.

You are right, and in your terms, for a logical nihilist, the truth of "there are no logical laws" cannot be the result of a strict inference.

That leaves open other forms of ratiocination. If, as they argue, for every given logical law a counterexample can be presented, then one might induce that there are no logical laws.

...would some forms of postmodernism amount to logical nihilism? — Tom Storm

Some post modernists might well reject deduction. It takes all sorts to make a world.

...ensoulment... — Moliere

That's hardly going to be clearer than "humanity" or "personhood". The reference to Singer went mostly un-noted, but there is something to the idea that a woman has preferences while a cyst doesn't. I'd broaden that to include other capabilities had by a person but not by a foetus. The argument then is simply that the wellbeing of the woman had overwhelming precedence over that of the conceptus.

It seems necessary to point out that one does not need an account of the essence of personhood in order to realise that a fluid-filled sack of tissue can be removed without moral import.

It might have human tissue, but it is not a human. Nor is it a person. Nor does it have preferences .

Overwhelmingly this thread has focused on the foetus, without consideration of the person bearing it. What is at stake in the discussion of abortion is the dignity of the person who is to carry the foetus. Now unlike a blastocyst, there can be no doubt as to their humanity, their personhood.

This is why arguments as to the nature of humanity or personhood ought be sidelined. The needs and capabilities of the person are present and undeniable. Those of the blastocyst, in comparison, are minute.

It looks like logical nihilism is going to hinge on the Liar. — frank

I don't see why you would think that.

Logical monism claim that there are logical laws that hold in absolutely all case. Logical pluralism claims that no law holds in absolutely all cases. Logical nihilism holds that logical laws do not hold in any case.

Laughable.

The image is of a sack of fluid. That's what a cyst is. There really is no point in discussing this with you when you deny what is before you.

But go ahead, make more posts about me.

You'd have to add the problem of which Wittgenstein, and not just Tractatus vs Investigations, but the differing accounts of each. His early belief in a crystalline perfect language was pretty much in line with Frege, I supose. But that is rejected in the later, much messier account of meaning in terms of use.

I suspect that the difference of opinion between @Leontiskos and I is that he thinks of logic as an account of how we either do, or perhaps how we ought, to think. In contrast I don't see how such a view survives the multiplicity of divergent logics we now have available, and rather treat logic as a choice, a set of tools we can apply depending on what we are up to.

So Srap offered

(A) "Dogs are nice"
and on the other
(B) "For all x, if x is a dog, then it is nice." — Srap Tasmaner

But earlier Leontiskos offered an example that would have come out as

(C) There are things that are both dogs and nice

What this shows is how logic can be used to clarify the somewhat ambiguous English of "Dogs are nice" by making explicit the difference between a universal and existential quantification. Of course, we could have done the same thing in English by asking "Do you mean that all dogs are nice or that some dogs are nice?".

Not one logic, but many.

Lucky we're talking about blastocysts which are not sacks of fluid. — AmadeusD

You are factually incorrect. Again.





And again, the point that seems to escape you, these are not images of people.

I'm not too sure what you want me to take from the stuff you quote. I went into some detail about extensionality - the topic of your quotes - earlier in this thread. It's central to Frege's account and so to this thread. So far as my previous posts on this page, I was making the point that we can talk about our utterances with greater lucidity that about our thoughts, simply because our utterances are public.

I agree with your two points. And yes, logic is useful even if it is not the foundation of our language. There are multiple logics, and we chose a logic to use in order to set out a coherent account.

It seems to me that we agree in rejecting logical monism.

I read musical notation (sheet music) only very slowly, but quickly master tabs. I choose the latter, rejecting musical monism for reasons of utility. I recognise that I would need to move to notation if if I moved to keys rather than strings. Much the same as for choices between predicate, propositional, free, or any of the various other logics. Depends what you are doing.

I'm not interested in a precise stipualtive definition. Such a thing is anathema to much of analytic philosophy, and certainly against the spirit of Philosophical Investigations. It's worth noting that those who are critical of analytic approaches usually begin by misunderstanding them. Again, I was making the point that we can talk about our utterances with greater lucidity that about our thoughts, simply because our utterances are public.

Yes, a convenient ambiguity. In the Begriffsschrift "⊢" is an explicit judgement of what follows is known. In the Grundgesetze this has changes significantly; ⊢ to something like "The following names the true". This is recounted in the SEP article on Frege's Logic. Subsequently truth was substantially replaced by satisfaction.

From what I understand, in the Begriffsschrift "⊢" is an explicit judgement; what follows is known, while — would prefix "a mere complex of ideas", un-affirmed (SEP). In the Grundgesetze this has changes significantly; ⊢ now says something like "The following names the true" (SEP). That's much closer to it's modern use, where ⊢ρ is "ρ is a theorem" and ψ⊢ρ says "ρ is derivable from ψ". Notice that in these more recent uses, truth is not mentioned. That's important. — Banno

One of the problems here is that focusing on Frege may give the false impression that his account remains paradigmatic for modern logic. It isn't.

A cyst is a sack of fluid. A sack of fluid has no moral standing. If you think otherwise, then present an argument.

The emotional aspect here is found in a refusal to recognise that a sack of fluid is not a person. But having an emotional response is fine. Emotions are a part of the mechanism of action, we do what we want to do, and we don't do what upsets us. So if you are upset by abortion, then don't have one.

But your emotional response is in itself insufficient to justify forcing others to comply. That you do not like lime ice cream is not a moral reason to ban lime ice cream. More is needed for the argument to be moral. It is allowable for the local ice creamery to sell lime ice cream, and indeed it would be immoral to ban that sale only on the grounds that you do not like it.

Your own argument, that for a species to kill it's young is unnatural, is both factually incorrect and morally irrelevant. Animals do kill their young. But what animals do is not a guide to what humans ought do. Animals do not talk - should humans then also not talk? There is a gap in your argument.

Keep going.