So why do we accept as logically valid a premisse that will result in a logical contradiction under one value of the antecedent? It seems we do this because of formal rules and in theory we could change those. What would be the implications if we would say for any given argument under all values of the antecedent the conclusion may not result in a logical contradiction or the argument will be deemed invalid?

@Banno maybe you have thoughts about that too?

It's not accurate to consider regret a major factor. It's 1 to 2%.

There was an extensive and interesting discussion about transgenderism between @fdrake and @Isaac here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13830/positive-characteristics-of-females/p1

I already did previously. There's no contradiction in that case because it is vacuously true. But that's a bit of a bait and switch.

I guess my gripe is that I would expect any statement to be logically consistent under all values of the antecedent. The fact that logical inference ignores it because under one of the values of the antecedent it does make sense is all very counter-intuitive to the point I feel the need to reject it.

There's a joke in there about wanting minimal government.

Clearly, lots of people are gullible and vote against their interests. Yet there is also manifest stupidity and ignorance. — Manuel

These people are no more stupid or ignorant than those voting for Democrats.

Fuck me. — 180 Proof

Seems gratuitous since you've just been fucked by several million of your countrymen.

Give me liberal tears!

That remains to be seen.

"All is chaos under the heavens, the times are excellent." Not sure quoting a mass murderer for wisdom is wise but everybody getting their panties in a twist because Trump won; remember it. There are opportunities here. Here's my list:

1. As the U.S. scales back on environmental regulations, the EU could solidify its global leadership in climate action. This moment could further the European Green Deal and enhance the EU's position as a hub for green technology innovation and investment. By strengthening partnerships with like-minded regions (e.g., Canada, Japan), the EU could lead a coalition to tackle climate change and attract global investors focused on sustainability.

2. The EU could also capitalize on a more protectionist U.S. approach by attracting foreign investors looking for stable markets.

3. The EU can leverage its more stable stance to exert greater influence in institutions like the UN, WHO, and WTO. By doing so, the EU could shape international policy in ways that align with its standards on trade, human rights, and environmental protection.

4. Given Trump's prior skepticism toward NATO and multilateral security, the EU could take a stronger stance on European defense and autonomy. This might involve further funding for the European Defence Fund and strengthening PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation).

5. Policies may lead to a U.S. shift away from renewable energy production, possibly leading to increased oil and gas prices. The EU may want to fast-track its transition to renewables to mitigate potential price shocks and reduce reliance on external energy sources, especially in a time of political instability.

@ssu anything to add?

Too much noise to do any predicting. I was hoping along with you.

As Mao said: "All is chaos under the heavens, the times are excellent." The EU is too inflexible to take advantage of this but we know Russia, India and China will. And of those I'd rather have India do well than the other two.

:cry:

I think the similarities between Clinton's situation and Harris is quite different. — Manuel

That sentence doesn't really make sense but I still understand what you're saying; for one, people actually like Harris.

Nice tu quoque fallacy there. What a tool you are.

No I think you did understand me and we are disagreeing. I find the discussion interesting and I see where people are coming from concluding the argument is valid. If I approach it formalistic I would say: normal modus ponens, fine, valid, because I don't care what it says.

However, the reductio shows that the first premise is unsound but why is it unsound? It's unsound because it's logically contradictory. If A then not-A necessarily implies A and not-A, which tells me the argument must be invalid.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Aside from the truth US elections are there for Democrats to lose, we can probably add the GOP doesn't understand women.

Terms are ambiguous but it's also not modus ponens. More a play on words than logically interesting.

No, with a false antecedent the conditional is true, sometimes described as 'vacuously true'. It's the conditional that is deemed true when the antecedent is false. — TonesInDeepFreeze

:up: :100:

I think the error is yours though. Truth tables say nothing about the Truth of the statement but are about consistency of logical systems. Yes, there are different formal representations and truth tables but that's more about convention. With a false antecedent, the consequent is vacuously true. But that situation, where the antecedent is denied, is irrelevant because the second premise assumes A to be true. And it necessarily follows from the first premise that not-A is simultaneously true. This is self-contradictory and violates the LNC.

It violates the LNC, which is foundational and introduced by Aristotle before modus ponens so he certainly didn't intend that the inference can work.

It all defies reason because it is about feelings.

Trump hasn't done shit other than having a perfect sense of the direction in which US democracy is falling. Trump is a symptom of the righteous distrust common people have of the political elites and rich people. Distrust informed by their moral intuition that something simply isn't right and most things are unfair. This will not go away unless the US government repairs and regains trust by - I don't know - actually improving the material conditions of all its citizens instead of those that are already rich enough to lobby for favours.

And that distrust is fueled by selfrighteous pricks decrying they are deplorables, garbage or aren't voting in their self-interest, thereby really only affirming that they don't trust "the other side" and therefore aren't to be trusted by "the other side". The best way to win someone's trust, after all, has always been to call the other side "dumb shits". :roll:

They're tone policing, cry-bullying, joy-killing, emotionally incontinent hacks, whose attempts at imposing their "Progressive" theocracy onto the rest of us has created a society in which we're more lonely, loveless, depressed and stupid than ever, and in which our youth are more lost and hopeless than ever. — Chisholm

Give me liberal tears!

Not by their own standards, I'm sure.

How is it so hard to draw the line? Are people so morally illiterate to not be able to judge if Trump is suitable as a presidential candidate or not? — Christoffer

You find it difficult to answer this question? If so, you're not paying attention. Hint: they're not morally illiterate.

Wasn't there a speech from Harris but Biden made a dumb comment and now I'm having flashbacks from the deplorable basket case that was Hillary?

Make no mistake: Democracy is on the ballot. — Wayfarer

Not really, since the US hasn't been a democracy for quite some time. You have to travel to Europe for that; although even there it is in decline in many countries.

Years ago when Obama was running against Hillary, I predicted his candidacy early and his win as president. I felt like I could make that call based on the available information. Everything since Obama is so distorted by noise, I cannot manage it any more.

We will have a first referendum on the quorum necessary for a referendum to pass. It's questionable this is resolved because it doesn't answer if this referendum meets the quorum. If it is resolved, the quorum will be set high for fear or tyranny of the majority. Then a referendum on the question. Then the quorum will not be met and there will be deadlock. A new referendum will be started if people should be obligated to vote in a referendum. If it passes, the deadlock is resolved if not the deadlock remains. And probably not, because those in favour of "Free-dumb" don't think we should obligate people. Instead, they will go back to the first referendum and see if we can lower the quorum. 80% of people just zoned out by the time the 3rd referendum is started.

I think the whole idea grossly overestimates people's interest in having an opinion on every political subject all the time when they are busy getting shit done - like writing obvious critiques of dumb ideas. Even voting once every 4 years is apparently too much of a hassle for large segments of the population.

Not sure this has been mentioned but a referendum is usually a binary choice, greatly influenced by the question asked. In almost all cases it reduces complex problems to idiotic simplicity. If the Brexit referendum would've been worded as follows: would you like more inflation, and more hassle to travel to Europe, yes or no? The result would've been different.

That one sentence goes to the heart of why the Orangutan called in the first place.

There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud or illegal voting in the 2020 election. Judges dismissed claims of illegal voting and improper vote counting across multiple states. As president, "dumb shit's" direct intervention with a state election official goes against the separation of powers and simply is abuse of executive authority to try to influence election outcomes. Elections are primarily managed by states, and federal officials, including the president, should respect state sovereignty in conducting and certifying elections. And this is really obvious; simply the conflict of interest here should've barred Dumpf from calling in the first place.

Pursuing unsubstantiated claims of illegal votes after courts had rejected such allegations undermines public confidence in the electoral process as do his claims of fraud and incompetence. Given such context, Trump was indeed pressuring Raffensberger to "find" votes or overturn results, especially after courts had ruled on the matter and that he shouldn't be calling him in the first place. The fact he personally did, was because he expected Raffensberger to agree to his bullshit despite the court rulings.

The fact he's not in jail yet is proof of the corruption inherent in the US system.

That's been on the table since December.

@BitconnectCarlos maybe hearing it from others will open a crack for you to listen and understand what I've been saying: https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/zionism/

Crop milk isn't from a maary gland.

also on bachelors:

How has the term bachelor evolved over time? Perplexity.ai:

The term "bachelor" has evolved significantly since its origins. Initially, in the 12th century, it referred to a "knight bachelor," a young squire training for knighthood. By the 14th century, it expanded to mean "unmarried man" and was also used for junior members of guilds and universities.

In the 13th century, it became associated with academic degrees, particularly the "bachelor's degree," indicating a low-level qualification. Over time, the term has taken on various connotations, including "eligible bachelor" in the Victorian era, referring to a financially and socially desirable unmarried man. Today, it primarily denotes an unmarried man without the historical implications of lower status.
---
So even bachelors are not as analytic as we like to pretend it is. But hey, everything frays at the edges of language. I'm not too worried about it.

I don't know, are they?

:lol: Yes, yes, don't be too literal. You do have a mammary gland though.

"If A then B" is logically equivalent to "if C then D." You're going to have offer a proof that is not the case without equivocating between deductive and inductive logic. I don't see how that can be done. — Hanover

This is quite obviously not logically equivalent. The statements "if A then B" and "if C then D" involve different propositional variables (A, B, C, and D). Unless we have additional information about the relationship between these variables, we cannot assume they have any connection. The truth value of "if A then B" is determined solely by the truth values of A and B, while the truth value of "if C then D" depends only on C and D. These are independent of each other.

Without additional information, there's no reason to believe that the truth value of one statement would always match the other for all possible combinations of truth values. It's therefore entirely possible for "if A then B" to be true while "if C then D" is false, or vice versa, depending on the specific truth values of A, B, C, and D.

This offers an equivocation of the term "true." The sylIogism "If A then B, A, therefore B" is true. The statement "I am at work today" is true. It's the analytic/synthetic distinction. It's for that reason why a statement can be deductively true and inductively false, which is what the OP showed. Analytic validity says nothing about synthetic validity. — Hanover

Yes, you're right to point out some equivocation here but the point I was trying to make stands. If the premisses of a deductive argument are true (and I'm assuming a form of correspondence theory) then a valid argument will have a logically true conclusion and necessarily correspond with reality.

The definition of "mammal" was arrived at a posteriori as opposed to "bachelor" which, as you've used it, (i.e. there is no probability a bachelor can be married) is a purely analytic statement. That is, no amount of searching for the married bachelor will locate one. On the other hand, unless you've reduced all definitions to having a necessary element for them to be applicable (which would be an essentialist approach), the term "mammal" could be applied to a non-milk providing animal, assuming sufficient other attributes were satisfied. This might be the case should a new subspecies be found. For example, all mammals give birth to live young, except the platypus, which lays eggs. That exception is carved out because the users of the term "mammal" had other purposes for that word other than creation of a legalistic analytic term. — Hanover

While scientific terms do evolve, they do function as relatively fixed definitions within the scientific community. The fact that definitions can change doesn't necessarily mean they are probabilistic or inductive in nature during their period of use and "giving milk" is a rather necessary condition in that definition since the name is derived from breasts because of the mammary gland. So no, nice try but nobody has ever used the term for any animal that doesn't produce milk and they never will.

I think “distal” is a better term than “ultimate” because ultimate causes are never really ultimate, and are always also proximal to some effect in a chain. — Baden

I see your point about "ultimate" causes never really being ultimate, as they’re always proximal to something else in a chain. Personally, I prefer the term "necessary cause," especially when applying the conditio sine qua non test ("but for" test). The idea is that if X hadn't occurred, the entire chain leading to A wouldn’t have happened. So, in practice, you look for the most proximate cause where this test holds true.

But this might just be my legal upbringing in Dutch law, where we assess which damages naturally follow from a tortious act or negligence. The focus is on finding the most direct necessary cause that can be reasonably linked to the effect, rather than something more abstract like an ultimate cause.