Comments

  • Abortion - Why are people pro life?
    ~~
    You are begging the question: whether or not my theory arrives at an “immoral position” is exactly the essence of the abortion debate, which you are supposed to be engaging with me on. — Bob Ross

    Again. How are theories of morality to be judged unless on the basis of the actions they justify? Unless you are claiming that the only criteria for a good moral theory is internal consistency, then there must be moral truths against which we can compare theories. And one of those moral truths is that Mrs Smith should turn out to have greater value than a cysts.
  • Logical Nihilism
    I think of validity and consistency being inseparable. — Janus

    Then presumably you conclude that paraconsistent logic is not logic proper? And isn’t the liar in ordinary language?

    All this simply to show what the interest here is.
  • I do not pray. Therefore God exists.
    ↪hypericin
    OK.
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪Janus
    Paraconsistent logic includes the study of logics with other than two truth values. Such logics might include those that are valid yet inconsistent, or inconsistent yet valid. If they are allowed, then there are valid inconsistent logics as well as invalid consistent logics.

    That there are such logics makes it difficult to maintain that all logics must be valid and consistent.

    And these logics do have some uses.
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪Janus
    You've suggested a third truth-value - neither true nor false. Is that right?
  • Logical Nihilism
    For me the liar sentence is neither true nor false, — Janus

    So it's para-consistent?
  • Logical Nihilism
    Someone the other day said of "The Selfish Gene" that it was most influential amongst those who had read only the title.

    I wonder if that is true to some extent here, too.     — Banno
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪Moliere
    And of course, if we have differing stipulations, the One True Stipulation will be correct.
  • Logical Nihilism
    What's the debate about? — Moliere

    It's about what "Logical Monism" is about. :wink:
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    You keep claiming monism to be the "dominant" position. I see no evidence of that. Indeed, any logician will be aware that there are various logical systems.
  • Abortion - Why are people pro life?
    Rights are not found in the world. They are given, by us.

    If @Bob Ross would have the argument framed in terms of rights, then we can evaluate it is terms of rights. The rights of Mrs Smith outweigh the rights of a mere cyst. If it seems that they do not, then the way rights have been allocated is in error.

    Talk of telos marks the theistic underpinnings of certain ethical views. Saying babies should be born with two arms marks ableism, failing to acknowledge the variety of human life. Presumably a person with one arm is to be pitied, but their impurity must debar them form the Temple. Talk of "should" marks the move from how things are to how you want them to be, or to how you think your invisible friend want them to be.
  • Logical Nihilism
    So, if it turns out that all proposed logical laws have exceptions, it doesn’t mean there are no laws of logic—only that they are more specific than we once thought. — Clearbury
    That's on the mark.
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    appears to think this amounts to nihilism. It doesn't. Nihilism would have it that there are no laws of logic, that logic is at best a rhetorical device. That is not what Russell, or I think, @Clearbury, is claiming.

    But Tim's view remains obscure to me. I don't see a confusion in Russell or SEP or IEP.
  • Abortion - Why are people pro life?
    Whatever “right to life” entails or means, it must be absolute if it is a right. E.g., if you have a right to practice any religion (peacefully) that you want, then there is absolutely no circumstances where the nation in which you live can stop you from practicing your religion (peacefully) — Bob Ross
    That little parenthetical withdrawal made me smile. You rights are ABSOLUTE, except for...
  • Abortion - Why are people pro life?
    ~~
    You just keep asserting it, without giving any ethical reasons for believing it. — Bob Ross
    Pretty much. That's right.

    When your moral theory arrives at an immoral position, then your moral theory is wrong. Giving a zygote standing over Mrs Smith is immoral, and hence so is any moral theory that reaches that conclusion. Your moral theory reaches that conclusion. Hence it is wrong.

    That argument does not require the backing of an ethical theory. It is meta-ethical in that it tells us how to evaluate ethical theories. And yours comes out wanting.

    Why believe that a zygote does not have a right to life? Answer that. — Bob Ross
    I haven't denied that zygotes have rights, but instead have maintained neutrality on that odd issue. My position is that whatever rights the zygot might have are far outweighed by those of Mrs Smith.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Yesterday there was much joy on Fox as Trump flipped burgers and drained the oil from chips at a Maccas. Today I read there is an outbreak of food poisoning. At Maccas.
  • Beginner getting into Philososphy
    Get out while you still can. :wink: — Tom Storm

    :up:
  • I do not pray. Therefore God exists.
    @fdrake shared some material with me on Relevant Logic, which is directly applicable here. There is a gap in relvance between the existence of god and my decision not to pray.

    The variable sharing principle says that no formula of the form A→B can be proven in a relevance logic if A and B do not have at least one propositional variable (sometimes called a proposition letter) in common and that no inference can be shown valid if the premises and conclusion do not share at least one propositional variable.



    Turns out to be not just a rabbit hole but a warren. Does anyone have a handle on this?
  • Abortion - Why are people pro life?
    ↪Tom Storm
    I'm not at all keen on so-called "trolly" arguments. There are intractable moral situations.
  • “Referendum democracy” and the Condorcet theorem
    The ACT - the capital territory of Australia - had it's local election last week.

    We use Hare-Clark voting. This works by assigning a quota, calculated as one more than the the result of dividing the number of electors by the number of available vacancies. A candidate who receives a quota is elected, and votes are redistributed when no candidates receive a quote. The result is that each party can expect to have a number of seats in the legislature that represents the proportion of votes it received.

    It is very unlikely that any one party will receive an absolute majority of votes, so minority government is almost inevitable. This means that the parties must negotiate with each other in order to form government and pass legislation. The buggers actually have to do some work.

    The Condorcet paradox is bypassed, becasue there is neither the expectation nor the need for someone to receive a majority of the vote.
  • Abortion - Why are people pro life?
    This is entirely too vague. Do you think the blastocyst has a right to life or not?!? You are purposefully avoiding the question, because you know if you grant it rights then you cannot make this kind of argument that Mrs. Smith has more of a right to bodily autonomy. — Bob Ross

    Your question is illicit. The standing of Mrs Smith ought far surpass whatever standing you might grant the blastocyst. Your attempts to show otherwise are either misguided or malevolent.

    You've lost this discussion.
  • Logical Nihilism
    @Leontiskos, as this thread draws to a close, has still not addressed, and apparently is yet to read, the article from which this topic derives, nor even viewed the Lecture.

    He entered this thread with an attack not on the topic but on on me:
    ↪Leontiskos
    , and maintained that personal abuse throughout. He sets out to frame the topic in strict Aristotelian terms, not talking of formal logic as it is now understood, indeed showing a neglect of that topic.

    In the discussion of mathematics with @fdrake and others he repeatedly refused to consider the alternative maths on offer, insisting on framing each part of the discussion in Euclidean terms.

    And now he talks of "hostile translation".

    Might leave it at that. What more can one do but laugh.
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪Moliere
    so as I understand it it has much the same power as first order logic. Not a failing, quite curious actually. But difficult to work with.
  • Logical Nihilism
    I've been unable to find a substantive account of the L∞G∞S Hypothesis. It's not apparent how it might deal with paraconsistent or non-binary logics, which have been the main concern here. It must be hidden in “OTL must contain logical constants for all the isomorphism-invariant relations over its models”

    "L∞G∞S" looks more like the brandname for an aftershave than a worthy hypothesis.
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪frank
    I'd thought of Meno's "paradox" as a precursor to bits of Wittgenstein- that there are ways of understanding (knowing) that are not the result of ratiocination. These include such things as "seeing as" instead of "seeing that", "knowing how..." instead of "knowing that..." and my favourite, PI §201, that there must be a way of understanding a rule that is shown in implementing it rather than in stating it.
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪Moliere
    I think Lambda Calculus had this feel to it originally. It's reputedly the simplest language in which anything computable can be... computed.
  • Logical Nihilism
    But I would be very suspicious if someone started from a basis of metaphysics in order to inform the conceptual content of their formalisms, and then started deciding which logics are good or bad on that basis. That seems like losing your keys in a dark street and only looking for them under street lamps. — fdrake
    Yep.

    ↪fdrake
    Excellent post.
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪frank
    :smile:

    Well,
    folks like Banno and probably G. Russell are eternally stuck in a single paradigm, interpreting the other paradigm in their own terms. — Leontiskos
    made me laugh out loud.

    My definition of logic via the Meno is something like, "That which creates discursive knowledge" — Leontiskos
    People create knowledge. I'm not following what his claims are here. Is he suggesting that we remember logic from our previous lives?

    Your chat with him puts me in mind of Kripke's lecture on the surprise test paradox, such that he might reason as follows:

    If I know that Monism is true, I know that any evidence against Monism is evidence against something that is true; I know that such evidence is misleading. But I should disregard evidence that I know is misleading. So, once I know that Monism is true, I am in a position to disregard any future evidence that seems to tell against Monism.

    Or

    If I know that Euclidean space is true, I know that any evidence against Euclidean space is evidence against something that is true; I know that such evidence is misleading. But I should disregard evidence that I know is misleading. So, once I know that Euclidean space is true, I am in a position to disregard any future evidence that seems to tell against Euclidean space.

    Or

    If I know that LNC is true, I know that any evidence against LNC is evidence against something that is true; I know that such evidence is misleading. But I should disregard evidence that I know is misleading. So, once I know that LNC is true, I am in a position to disregard any future evidence that seems to tell against LNC .

    All quite sound reasoning.
  • Abortion - Why are people pro life?
    Missed this:
    Are you arguing that a both have rights, but one trumps the other? Or are you arguing that only one of them has rights? — Bob Ross

    The argument is pretty clear, and has been stated a few times. Whatever standing the cyst has is negligible in comparison to that had by Mrs Smith.
  • Logical Nihilism
    ...which is why their position is generally something like G&P's, which is that correct logics are those which capture the logical consequence relationship at work in natural language and scientific discourse, — Count Timothy von Icarus
    So you call a logic "correct" when I might call it "applicable". And Paraconsistent logic is for you "correct" when used for processing images and signals, while Lambda Calculus is "correct" when used for cryptography or AI.

    A monist will claim there is only one logical consequence relationship — Count Timothy von Icarus
    What one? Set it out.
  • I do not pray. Therefore God exists.
    ↪TonesInDeepFreeze
    I edited my last post to make the meaning clearer. My apologies.
  • I do not pray. Therefore God exists.
    I wouldn't assume that the everyday sense of "if then" in the problem has a truth table interpretation. — TonesInDeepFreeze
    Fine by me. But if your logic teacher set parsing "If there is no god then your prayers will not be answered" into prop form, what would be the better choice? Which is why I thought it worth discussing. The creativity of the responses to this thread has been entertaining. :wink:
  • Abortion - Why are people pro life?
    Yes (under certain circumstances), and this gets into the principle of double effect; and is not pertinent to the abortion discussion. — Bob Ross
    Except that the double effect was part of an extended discussion of abortion involving Philippa Foot and Anscombe, the very one in which what 'mercans call the "trolly" problem was first deployed.

    Well, presumably in virtually all cases of elective abortion the woman having the abortion isn't acting in order to have an abortion. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Yep. Folk don't generally fuck in order to have an abortion.
  • I do not pray. Therefore God exists.
    ↪TonesInDeepFreeze
    I think so. So if there is a god then my prays will be answered. If there is no god, they will not be answered. But how to pars this in propositional logic? It is better parsed as "If there is no god then if you pray then your prayers will not be answered" rather than "If there is no god then it is not the case that if you pray then your prayers will be answered".

    Apparently Dorothy Eddington used this example in her logic classes to demonstrate the importance of taking care when interpreting natural languages.
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    If their position is that the general laws are those which hold in "correct logics" and that "correct logics" are those that use general laws... they have a circularity issue.
  • Logical Nihilism
    If correct logics are just those logics that utilize the general laws then monism is true by definition. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    If there are general laws...

    That's the issue.

    Your understanding of each of the positions seems to make them trivial rather than controversial. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    How so?
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪Cheshire
    Perhaps it was a stylistic decision, in order to keep more options open for the monist. I don't know. I don't see much hanging off it. The monist says there is something common to logic of any sort, by virtue of which it is to count as logic. The Nihilist says (perhaps) there is no logic. The Pluralist says there are logics, but they don't necessarily have a commonality. This does not make presumptions as to the nature of that commonality.
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪Cheshire
    A law of aviation would presumably apply to all flight, and a law of logic to all logics.
  • Logical Nihilism
    My question is rather is Russell making up a necessary rule here. — Cheshire
    Well, even "necessary" has differing interpretations depending on which logical system one chooses - S1 through S5 for a start. And we have logical systems that are incomplete. I'm not sure what to say.
  • Logical Nihilism
    This isn't an answer to the question though. What do you think is being meant by "correct logic" in these articles? — Count Timothy von Icarus

    The idea of a correct logic is endemic to logical monism. I'm not sympathetic to monism, and so I'm not the one to ask this question of.

    But presumably correct logic for a monist would be only those logics that make use of the general laws of logic, whatever they might be.

    Does that help?
  • Logical Nihilism
    ↪Cheshire
    Well, there are consistent and useful systems of logic.
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