Well… Uccisore, if it’s any consolation, James says I’m digging a deeper hole for myself here… I’m trying to get to the bottom of this, it seems to have to do with something about using if, then, because words…
I’ll post the last reply James gave me:
James S Saint wrote: You are still conflating a potential for an entity with the entity itself. An option is merely the potential for an argument. It is not an argument in itself. Having a mouth with which one could argue does NOT mean that the person has argued.
I was trying to argue that decision against the negative or positive space is an argument, my point is that an argument occurs when there is more than one choice and then something is chosen. Then the argument may or may not be settled for the choice made. For example one may make the argument in their head not to get into a particular type of argument, but they still made an argument. This is my point about words, the words chosen and not chosen are all arguments at their most fundamental level, at the META-LEVEL, so Uccisore can make a claim at a MICRO-LEVEL that he is not arguing, but at the META-LEVEL, he is necessarily arguing.
Again, you are trying to contend on too many small issues at once. Each post will get exponentially longer if we keep that up.
Again, you propose a deductive argument against the existence of my proposed sound argument (“If what I claim about your argument is true, then your argument is false. What I claim of your argument is true. Therefore your argument is false”), therein refuting your own theorem that states such deductive arguments as the ones you are making cannot be sound.
But beyond that, you claim that certain premises in my arguments were false. How do you know if they are true or false? If you try to deduce whether they are true, you refute your own theorem.
Isn’t that true?
Why not?
No. It isn’t. You scrambled my argument, in effect creating a strawman. I began with a DECLARED DEFINITION (for clarity):
Bullshit. You can freely declare the intent of your own words. You can’t declare what other people will argue about.
He DID think of it. He declared the definition of the God to which he was referring.
Again, bullshit.
Which is what I said: “you DO see and feel…”
The premise was not that they imagine it or even that it exists. The premise was that they DO see and feel (perhaps settled in a prior discussion on that subject). It is a stipulation of the situation, not a refutable statement.
False. But now I see that circle you were talking about. It is in your mind.
The declaration is that the larger of whatever is in my hand, is CALLED “Brick A” - a DEFINITION of A WORD to reference a potential object. Only words are defined, not objects.
You have not substantiated that assertion. And it appears to be false.
…“therefore you have not proven anything” ?
Did you read too fast?
My statement was that you are trying to present the type of argument that your theorem proclaims can’t be sound.
Perhaps, but that is not the subject of this debate. Your theorem states that no sound argument can be made concerning ANY concrete object. It does not restrict itself to the subject of God.
Again…
You are attempting to use deduction to prove that my “SOUND arguments” don’t exist.
Ucci, you are starting to make unreasonable, “bullshit” refutations (leaving out or substituting the significant details) and thus becoming a bit guilty of your own prior accusations.
See below: redacted my big technical argument that doesn’t get to te real point here. I can put it back up if ou think it’s important, I have it saved.
Here James, let me make this simple, since your argument is failing to address my argument. A non-circular deductive argument for the existence of God that isn’t assuming existence is a predicate:
P1.) God is the conjunction of crows and cows.
P2.) Crows exist.
P3.) Cows exist.
4 (On 2 and 3) Crows and cows exist.
God exists.
That’s the argument you’re looking for, or at least one that will do the job. IF you think the above refutes my position, you simply don’t know what my position is, and we need to re-examine it.
I am posting not on an specific viewpoint, UCCI versus Ecm and James, no, my
interest is far more general. We have had 745 post to date and still, as far as I can tell reading
all 745 post, is we have not only no conclusion but we don’t have an census on what the argument is.
Not to long ago, I posited that Philosophy has dead ended and I believe this entire thread, however
interesting it is, is proof that philosophy has dead ended. I am a philosophy kind of guy, so I
appreciate this kind of arguments, but it does nothing to actually advance or promote the cause
of philosophy in any way, shape or form. Each side will blame the other side for failures to advance
or understand any argument, but the fact is, 745 posts to get nowhere is indictment of present day
philosophy and the failure of philosophy to be of concern to the persons we are actually
“working” which is the man/women on the street. Philosophy has become irrelevant to the
common person and this thread is evidence A. We have become so entrenched in our viewpoints
that we forget what the point of philosophy is, which love of or finding wisdom. Is 745 posts
in this thread really looking for or of loving wisdom? I for one, don’t think so. It has become a
case of as Ecu so often reminds us, of winning an argument as opposed to actually learning something
or becoming wiser. Winning trumps wisdom. And that is too bad. In this morass of 745 posts
we have forgotten something important, the reason we all do philosophy and that is to gain wisdom.
But the bigger question than becomes, what do we do with that wisdom once gained (after being here
for many years, I can state without contradiction, that not one person on this site, save one, is actually
wise and that wise one is certainly not me) I for one, want philosophy to be more than mental masturbation
as we practice it here on ILP. We “wise” ones need to understand why we are engaged in the love of wisdom,
is it to win arguments or is it to improve ourselves OR is it a means to a larger point of philosophy which
is education, not just of us, but of any who will listen. We don’t exist independently or outside of
our society but we live within and part of society and we should engage in philosophy as
representatives of society, part of society and engage in philosophy in their name, the tom, dick and harry
of the world.
Kropotkin
Ehh, you may be on to something PK, but bare in mind that this thread is in Off Topic for a reason. Ecmandu got into pissing contest with me to prove that he wasn't a useless, ignorant clod, and I accepted because, well. I'm a dick. I would not take this thread as a "Look what philosophy has become" example simply because I never intended it to be philosophy from the start, and Ec doesn't know what philosophy even is. With me and James it's a little bit different- I hope.
Now, if you wanted to conclude something like 'Look at what ILP has become" or “Look at what the internet has done to civil discourse”, I think those trees bear fruit.
What if he’d spent years finding himself, and then found out that that’s who he was? Not every person is wired for monogamy. I spent 10 years in monogamous relationships where a woman was sleeping in my bed every night. Full blown domestic situation. 3 total, with a few months in between em. a 2.5 year, another, and then a 5+ year one.
Since then, I’ve been, “single and not looking”. My new philosophy is that you shouldn’t just have a relationship for the sake of having one. You also shouldn’t be with someone who’s “cool”, or “you get along with”, or that, “you could deal with on a day to day basis”, or one where, “it’ll work”, on that basis alone. You should be in a relationship if the person coming into your life is one who can lift you up in some way. It can’t just be that you have an amazing puss, or that you’re intellectually stimulating, or that you really get me, or that you are beautiful, or that you have all kinds of money, or that you’re always in a perfect mood and have an outstanding demeanor. You’ve got to do something to make my life better, for me, than it is now. And the problem is that I’m a very good friend. I’ve kept close friendships with a lot of girls over the years and I’m tellin ya they fly in on planes and stay with me for a week and then fly home, or they live in the area and see me regularly and want to be as intimate as they can because they love me for what a good person I am in so many ways, or they have relationships but are bored, or frustrated, or can’t figure out a way to be satisfied in them and so them make stops over here to give me their femininity and attention and affection and it’s basically an amazingly satisfying thing for me overall.
If I were going to have a “girlfriend” in the way that I tried to for so long, it would have to be someone who could talk me out of all of the above and then some. I mean…every day almost I take some woman or another to lunch at a great restaurant and then spend the afternoon just lounging around, or shopping or whatever. On the days that I don’t, I take naps in the afternoon and post more frequently on ILP. Once or twice a week, I’ll have a total of about 3 hours worth of important shit to get done, and the rest of the time I’m free. It’s like…when I call the shots in my own life I excel in ways I never imagined. But when I let someone else in close to change my decisions, I end up eventually getting bitched at, unappreciated, yelled at, and I come up short on all the sweet, feminine affection that I enjoy so much from the women I have on the roll now. So I dunno. I really don’t know. I have the kind of resources at this point to buy a home, to be well ahead of schedule for a comfortable retirement savings, and I own almost all my time, which I use to wallow in a pool of happy, giggly women who are laughing at my jokes and giving themselves to me.
I don’t know how any 1 woman could begin to talk me out of it. I mean what could she possibly have to offer?
Like imagine a dude who does porn for a living and is already getting the best of these women each time he meets one to bang. What waitress, or bartender, or teacher, or nurse, or even doctor is going to get him to stop banging a bunch of fine women and start dealing with her while she’s on her period 25% of the time?
Nit-pick… I think a theist would say “God includes the conjunction of crows and cows”
The supposed definitional argument being that God is the conjunction of everything.
Otherwise you’re just defining God as “and” without substance.
I could likewise say:
Wheatgrass is the noun in the next sentence
Uccisore is the noun referred to in the last sentence
Uccisore is Wheatgrass
I mean come on folks… aren’t we trying to get at truth here?
Sometimes the truth is that you can’t know something. That’s when you get people who say it’s proven, and they dilute and bastardize the notion of proof.
Well… we can know there are no invisible unicorns, because it would be out of phase with everything including itself. That’s a proof. This perhaps gets to what I was discussing before… we know all statements are arguments through meta logic, but not necessarily through micro logic. So when Uccisore comes and makes a claim that his assertion isn’t an argument, I’d say he lost that debate. You guys called the debate 6 pages ago, but this is all new territory for me, so I have to invent arguments as more data comes to me. I never imagined someone would actually say to me, “I didn’t make an argument so you can’t prove or disprove it, I made an assertion.” That took me off guard. So I just reformulated so that all assertions are arguments shrugged my shoulders and you folks are to some extent ignoring me or still berating me… considering the task, I thought it was an ingenious solution. I told James in PM that if you gave a billion people this problem, they’d probably be trying to solve it the way James is, or accept Uccisore’s premise, but only a rare person would actually turn all assertions into deductions, with deduction. I know my formulation is still tentative, but the principle is sound. And if that principle is sound, then Uccisore needs to reformulate. He can’t claim anymore that he’s not making a deductive argument in his assertion.
That’s precisely what I’m trying to get away from with my discussion with James. Ec continues to have no idea what’s going on, I see.
Do you understand that claiming all words are deductive arguments when your definition of ‘deductive argument’ is just something you fucking made up has no effect on me or anyone else? When you say an argument is ‘to me opposing views’ you sound like a five year old. When you apply ‘deduce’ to any time you decide anything is true for any reason, you’re demonstrating you aren’t aware the word actually means something. You may as well claim all words are horses, and I need to reformulate because my argument galloped away.
You claim your principle is sound. You don’t know what soundness is. You’re just using a smart-people word for ‘good’.
Seriously, study logic 101 so you understand what some of these words you are using actually mean, and fuck off until you do. I mean, what do you have to lose? You already lost this debate- all you can do is be better prepared for the next one (with somebody else, mind).
It isn’t your “argument” we are addressing/debating. We are debating your theorem;
Ucci Theorem: “existential arguments about concrete objects can’t be deductively sound.”
But at this point, you seem to be wanting to move the goalpost. You based your argument supporting agnosticism on your theorem. But it seems that your theorem has been debunked.
I aberrantly proposed two deductive arguments concerning the existence of concrete objects; “Brick A” and “the gun”. The question was whether they were “sound”. You stipulated that soundness requires only that the premises be true and that the logic be valid. You attempted to argue that my premises were not all true and one led to circular logic, but it was you perverting them to say something different than what they said. Thus they in fact were sound and they did debunk your theorem.
Statements 1-3 are all necessarily true (for the reasons pointed out in green). The conclusion is a valid consequence of the true premises. Thus the argument meets your standard for “soundness”.
And another:
Statements 1, 2, and 4 are all necessarily true and statements 3 and 5 are valid conclusions from those true premises. Thus the argument meets your standard for “soundness”.
Both arguments are very sound. Granted, each could be made even more sound. The above argument that you proposed is NOT sound at all (no doubt intentionally), unless you make your P1 a declared definition. It does not reflect the sound arguments that have been presented without that declaration.
Now you are claiming that such deduction methods cannot be applied to God. That might or might not be true.
That is a new debate.
And in that debate, realize that you cannot use your proposed theorem. Perhaps come up with a new one?
Argument: In logic and philosophy, an argument is a series of statements typically used to persuade someone of something or to present reasons for accepting a conclusion.[1][2] The general form of an argument in a natural language is that of premises (typically in the form of propositions, statements or sentences) in support of a claim: the conclusion.[3][4][5] The structure of some arguments can also be set out in a formal language, and formally defined “arguments” can be made independently of natural language arguments, as in math, logic and computer science.
Deductive argument: A deductive argument is an argument that is intended by the arguer to be (deductively) valid, that is, to provide a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion provided that the argument’s premises (assumptions) are true. This point can be expressed also by saying that, in a deductive argument, the premises are intended to provide such strong support for the conclusion that, if the premises are true, then it would be impossible for the conclusion to be false. An argument in which the premises do succeed in guaranteeing the conclusion is called a (deductively) valid argument. If a valid argument has true premises, then the argument is said to be sound.
MY ARGUMENT… is that I made a deductive argument that deductive arguments are IMPLIED with the usage of words. For example, in wikipedias definition of argument, it is implied that there is ANOTHER VEIW, even though it’s not in the definition, but all of the dictionary definitions talk about ANOTHER view. The OTHER VEIW in my argument is OTHER POSSIBLE WORDS THAT CAN BE USED BUT AREN’T. THUS an argument is being made, THROUGH IMPLICATION!!
The deduction is in the form of:
Words have outcomes, If not this word, than this outcome.
Yeah… sure, I’m the 5 year old here.
EDIT: What’s going on here Uccisore is that James is giving you a counter-factual to your claim, and I’m giving a counter-factual to your meta-claim.
Not at all, I was trying to actually get the conversation on track. But if you want to go back to the part where you try to defend your circular arguments with trivially false premises, I’ll bring back my response to it.
Where? What’s my premise? What’s my conclusion? I pointed out that one of your premises was false and one of your arguments was circular. Even then, I’m not making a claim about the existence of your arguments. I think you may be misunderstanding my thesis because Ecmandu briefed you on it.
“Such deductive arguments?” You mean deductive arguments about the existence of concrete objects? I’m simply not making one of those, even if you want to claim that pointing out flaws in a deductive argument must always take the form of a deductive argument itself.
Well, because as I’ve said perhaps a dozen times now, I’m not arguing that the truth of certain things can’t be deduced. I’m making a claim about the soundness of a particular kind of argument with a particular type of conclusion. How do I know that ‘when you see and feel something it must exist’ is false? Because I’m an adult human being living on Earth, that’s how.
Fine:
- A God is defined as ‘an omnibenevolent, all powerful being’.
2.) An omnibenevolent, all powerful being created the universe.
3.) A being who created the universe must exist.
God exists.
Is that more true to your original? Is it any less useless? Could it any more clearly make my point? It’s still stipulating the truth of a premise that nobody who disagreed with your conclusion would let go unchallenged, which makes it utterly incapable of proving anything, which is my point.
Like I said, why didn’t Aquinas think of that?
Shit, Dawkins needs to get on board with this:
- God is defined as this taco.
- I ate the taco.
God doesn’t exist.
Philosophy is apparently a lot easier than we’ve made it out to be over the years!
“…The object in my hand.”
If the premise was merely that the person sees and feels SOMETHING, then your argument fails.
Don’t cut out the part of your premise that makes the argument circular. And again, despite the circularity, despite the obviously false premise, your argument is still an example of what I’m talking about- you’re stipulating as true things nobody would accept who didn’t already accept your conclusion. It’s a useless argument that functions only so you can try and defeat a mischaracterization of my position- which is probably because you got that characterization from Ecmandu.
It is a stipulation of the situation, not a refutable statement.
Then all you’re demonstrating is VALIDITY, which is not the criteria for soundness I’m examining here. There are all sorts of valid arguments for the existence of God, despite you not providing one. I have absolutely no interest in you stipulating preposterous premises just to show how deductive syntax works.
Which is why I turned it into a supposition. That’s how you get around the circularity is by not asserting that there’s an object in your hand. Just because you took two premises and hid them as one doesn’t mean I can’t examine both premises.
1.) There is an object in my hand that is larger than any other there
2.) Let us call tis object “Brick A”
are clearly two separate statements. With 1, your argument is circular. Without 1, your argument relies on the false premise 3 to make your case.
A deductive argument establishing the existence or non-existence of a concrete object? Is pointing out that a premise is incorrect through inference a deductive argument? Is demonstrating that an argument isn’t sound a demonstration that the argument doesn’t exist?
Concerning the existence of any concrete object. Repeatedly declaring that I was saying there were no sound deductive arguments was Ecmandu’s confusion that I did everything in my power to alleviate. If he passed that confusion on to you in PM’s, I am sorry.
Hahaha. Yes. You have to have felt bad writing that one. So what’s your point there? Denying that any proposed trait of an object is true is tantamount to denying that the object exists at all? You know, there are such things as unsound arguments, and invalid arguments. Declaring that showing an argument to be unsound amounts to showing it doesn’t exist is a clear word game you invented to score points in this debate, and I’m not having it. Even still, my refutation of your first argument is an inference (i.e., it should be obvious to anybody living life as a human being that “if you see it and feel it, it must exist” is false), and my refutation of your second argument is noting that it’s circular and that one of the premises is controversial.
No James, I’m not arguing that your arguments don’t exist- they are right here on the forums for anybody to see. I completely agree with you that they exist. I’m denying that they are sound. If you want to twist that into an existential claim, then go for it, it’s silliness but whatever- you’ve already made it clear that words mean whatever you want them to, and all premises are true merely by you stipulating that they are, so what can I say? Does your ability to make any premise true and any definition accurate by fiat extend to what I say as well as what you say? Because I say I think your arguments exist and I’m not arguing otherwise. Or do I not get the same leeway you give yourself?
But don’t then go on to chastise me for ‘bullshit refutations’ after pulling a stunt like that.
I don’t fucking support agnosticism. I reject that the (non)existence of God can be established deductively.
And they clearly aren’t. One of them relies on an obviously false premise, the other one is circular and relies on a premise that wouldn’t be accepted by anybody who rejects the conclusion. Validity isn’t soundness. You don’t get to make the jump from the latter to the former just by declaring by fiat that your premises are true for the sake of argument. Now, if I was arguing that deductive arguments for the existential claims of concrete beings were INVALID, you would have won the debate, sort of, merely by establishing that existence as a predicate isn’t impossible- if it’s worth even considering as maybe true, then your first argument is valid. But I’m not talking about validity. My specific criticism of deductive certainty with regards to these matters, since I began in the thread has been that the premises and definitions in the conclusion can’t be established with any rigor or concensus. So you merely saying “Let’s suppose that when people see and ffeel things they always exist for the sake of argument,” isn’t merely a bad argument, it’s one that completely misses what I’ve been trying to say. WHich is why I gave that shorter reply, to try and get you back on the track of disagreeing with me as much as you seem to think you are.
This is super important: Yes, you can construct all sorts of valid arguments for the existence of God. I gave you one myself in an attempt to show you how irrelevant that is to my point. But arguments with obviously false premises or premises that won’t go unchallenged by anybody who rejects the conclusion aren’t sound. Arguments that have true, non-controversial premises are bound to demonstrate only the necessity of one vague trait that some people allege God to possess, and are thus insufficient to establish the existence of anything in particular.
Let me try another way to get this back on track;
[b]
God is the conjunction of crows and cows.
There are crows.
There are cows.
There are crows and cows.
God exists.
Do you understand why this doesn’t refute my argument, or do you think I’ve refuted myself by admitting the above is valid?
[/b]
“If you see and feel something it must exist” isn’t true. In fact, it is obviously not true. Beginning an argument for the existence of X by stipulating that there is an X that acts in the world is obviously circular.
Statement three is simply false. Everybody knows that things are seen and felt that aren’t real. There are dreams, there are hallucinations, there are any matter of mistakes of the brain and eye and so on. For you to even put something such preposterous as being not just true but true axiomatically doesn’t undermine my argument, it makes it beautifully by showing the kind of riduclous nonsense people have to get up to when making these types of arguments I am saying aren’t sound.
There is no such thing as degrees of soundness.
Yes child. You declared that you could defeat anybody’s deductive arguments concerning a particular matter, and 30 pages and a week later, you get around to looking up what ‘argument’ and ‘deductive’ means on teh interwebs. That is the behavior of a crazy person or a child.
I did and am still here, I noticed you used ad homs instead of even approaching what I wrote. In spite what you may think of my education, I did something called using sources, which you have yet to use very well. You laugh at me for not having a term defined as you like it, and then when I give you the sources for those terms and still make my argument, you still laugh at me for having to cite something, while all the time, you don’t cite shit. So yeah, I’m calling you the child here. You made a meta-argument above your claims, that your claims weren’t deductive, and I’m making a meta claim beyond your meta claim that they necessarily are. James and I are using two different approaches here.
Stop right there. I am not even going to bother with the rest of that kind of drivel. You’re starting to act like PK.
- Do you accept that words are given definitions some of which are to represent concrete objects?
- Such words and their definitions are merely language tools for communication?
- Anyone can irrefutably define any word to mean anything within their own local arguments?
- What something is called by definition is irrelevant to the structure and soundness of an argument?
In the first argument that I presented, I gave a scenario;
1.) “The larger object in my right hand at this moment is ‘Brick A’.” - Declaration of definition; “Brick A”
For that scenario;
Is That a true statement?
2.) “You see and feel the larger object in my hand.” - Stipulation of current situation; “you saw and felt…”
For that scenario;
Is That a true statement?
3.) “You could not see and feel the object if it did not exist.” - Axiom; property of existence.
For that scenario;
Is That a true statement?