Some men alive today may well be rendered immortal by means of technological progress. — Arkady

The verification of immortality is a practical impossibility. Since immortality can only be verified at the end of time - and the end of time would make a man mortal by definition.
Think this over if it does not make sense.
Immortality is definitively impossible.

Practical impossibilities aside, this says nothing about the logical impossibility of an immortal man, only that it would be inductively difficult to verify. It also makes unwarranted assumptions about "the end of time." Even assuming such a thing, it would be a contingent feature of the universe, and would be inapplicable to the supposed definitional mortality of men. There may well be possible worlds in which the universe goes on forever, and thus immortal men can persist forever. There are no possible worlds where cats are not cats or where ~(A V ~A).

EDIT: in any event, this is all rather beside the point, as what is at issue here is the derivation of non-tautological premises from tautologies, not the derivation of tautologies from tautologies.

Practical impossibilities aside, this says nothing about the logical impossibility of an immortal man, — Arkady

EDIT: in any event, this is all rather beside the point, as what is at issue here is the derivation of non-tautological premises from tautologies, not the derivation of tautologies from tautologies. — Arkady

Man is mortal is tautological is man is mortal is definitive. And since none are claiming there are immortal men, then the point is mute.
Whatever your 'in any event' is, may I remind you of the thread title???

Man is mortal is tautological is man is mortal is definitive. And since none are claiming there are immortal men, then the point is mute. — charleton

Sorry, but that first sentence isn't even grammatical. I know that no one is claiming that there exist any immortal men: my point was simply to contest that "all men are mortal" is tautological. Again, even if contingent features of the universe made it true that no man can live forever, it doesn't follow that man is definitionally mortal.

Whatever your 'in any event' is, may I remind you of the thread title??? — charleton

I know. I was speaking of my discussion with Sam26 (re: whether tautologies can imply substantive - here defined as "non-tautological" - conclusions), which is what prompted your response. But this still has little to do with ID per se, so my comment is also applicable to the title topic.

Man is mortal tautological IF man is mortal is definitive. — charleton

it's late!
G'Night

"Definitive" is not the same as "definitional." I agree that it's pretty definitive that man is mortal (again, at least at present), but I disagree that that implies that man is thereby mortal by definition. There can be accidental features or properties which apply to every member of a class.

Actually a tautology is true due to it's logical structure, so it would be something like, "Either George Washington was the first president of the U. S., or he was not the first president of the U. S.," i.e., "X or not X." So my first premise in the argument is not a tautology, and the example I gave in the deductive argument is not a tautology. I think we both were wrong.

Statements can also be tautological by virtue of their semantic structure, however, e.g. all cats are cats.

P1 from your argument (underlining mine): any human contrivance where the parts are so arranged that the completed whole is able to achieve or be used to achieve activities of a higher order than any part alone (e.g., a watch), are the result of intelligent design.

My critique was that this statement seems tautological, in that it essentially boils down to saying that "everything which is the result of intelligent design is the result of intelligent design," given that humans are intelligent agents, and given that "contrivance" can here be taken to be synonymous with "design."

Perhaps I'm missing something, but that's the way it looks to me. At the very least, everything in between the underlined phrases seems superfluous, in that every human contrivance whatsoever is the result of intelligent design.

EDIT: given that "human contrivance" entails "intelligent design", but not vice-versa (as, at least in principle, the contrivances of humans needn't exhaust the possibilities of intelligent design) perhaps (P1) is better read as saying something more akin to "all cats are mammals", rather than "all cats are cats." Under such a reading, I think it would escape my accusations of being tautologous. However, there may be another problem. One could re-write (P1) as follows:

(P1*): any human contrivance where the parts are not so arranged that the completed whole is able to achieve or be used to achieve activities of a higher order than any part alone are the result of intelligent design.

(P1*) is no less true than (P1), and yet does nothing to support (either deductively, inductively, or otherwise) the conclusion of your argument.

That's all I got for now. I'm tired, and I want my blankie.

↪charleton
"Definitive" is not the same as "definitional." I agree that it's pretty definitive that man is mortal (again, at least at present), but I disagree that that implies that man is thereby mortal by definition. There can be accidental features or properties which apply to every member of a class. — Arkady

Off topic and overly pedantic. I see no value in pursuing this line of enquiry.

Off topic and overly pedantic. I see no value in pursuing this line of enquiry. — charleton

Suit yourself. However, I don't know that it's "pedantic" to point out that "definitional" and "definitive" are distinct, as "all men are mortal" is definitively true, but not defintionally so. Kind of an important distinction regarding our conversation...

Kind of an important distinction regarding our conversation... — Arkady

LOL Define definitional!!

Not sure why it's funny. We may be talking at cross purposes here. I believe I've ably explained why "all men are mortal" is not tautologous. Anyone reading this can draw their own conclusions.

Not sure why it's funny. We may be talking at cross purposes here. I believe I've ably explained why "all men are mortal" is not tautologous. Anyone reading this can draw their own conclusions — Arkady

Please refer to the post I made above.

It's hard not to compare the behavior of quarks and such to the bits and bytes in the computers we program. — CasKev

Speaking of which, it is unimaginable to me how a computer functions, based only on electricity travelling through circuits, turning little switches on and off. (The number of circuits and complex logic required for a simple calculator to function is mind-boggling on its own.) That billions of circuits could be constructed and compressed to such a microscopic level seems completely absurd. The more I consider such things, the more I feel like I'm living in a simulated reality that operates according to unfathomable laws.