Stages of philosophical abilities

Thanks. Yes, explaining something and using “something else” to explain it. This is what I should remember. And you just describe what I sometimes see about circular reasoning, using the premise as the conclusion to prove the premise itself.

Hehe… Just noticed that I didn’t read that word right… I saw ‘atomic’??? go figure??? But to answer this I would say there is no such thing, everything must be proven, nothing is self evident. I would say axiomatic statements are like Logical Positivism statements circler in there nature. Or a guise in an argument to try and prove something that the person making the statement can’t prove by other means.

Please note the offtopic posts have been moved to this link:

Philosophy is BS Poll Retort

Try to keep this Topic on the current subject.

Read the whole thing first and try to understand it before you draw any conclusion that I’m not making any sense (it’s only an infinite regress argument), don’t think that I’m bashing you because I’m not, but it’s my duty to tear apart bad arguments so here you go:

In response to Pax Vitae:

That you need to prove everything should need to be proven then shouldn’t it? How can you just assume that you need to prove everything. On what grounds do you need to prove everything? Do you need to prove that you need to use reason in order to get a correct conclusion? What about equality? How can you know what equality (which is obvious that the concept of equality exists without anyone proving it to us, we know what equality is and we put our trust in it as chuildren otherwise we wouldn’t be able to learn anything). Some things are self-evident (besides the statement “I exist”) How about how Descartes got to that conclusion? He thinks…that’s another self-evidence.
Anyways, that’s actually a little off-topic but in anycase, the real question I would like an answer to is:

“how do you know that nothing is self-evident?” What premise would you start from to refute my position? Do you not need to assume something first?

I could be wrong, but I think one of the first things I learned in Philosophy is that some things must be self-evident or else there can be no conclusion. You MUST start from a conclusion (a self-evident conclusion) in order to end up with a conclusion.

Your conclusion, “there is nothing that is self-evident” is not only self-refuting but it is infinitely regressing in theme:

  1. Conclusions exist, we know this from your conclusion that “Everything needs to be proven” or if you are wrong then they exist because of my conclusion “Some things are self-evident” for there is no in between. Either all things need to be proven or not all things need to be proven.

  2. All conclusions must come from an argument, for if they did not come from an argument, then they would be self-evident (for that is the definition of self-evident - it doesn’t need to be proven).

  3. If nothing is self-evident then there is no beginning argument, for each argument would need to be proven (and then that argument would need to be proven and then that argument for that argument would need to be proven and so on…)

  4. If there is no beginning argument, then a conclusion would not exist.

  5. This is absurd though for we have already established that a conclusion exists.

Therefore 6) Some things are self-evident.

premise…argument…conclusion…argument…conclusion…

non-effect (cause)…cause(effect)…effect…cause…effect…

Just as there must be a cause for an effect, so there must be an argument for a conclusion, but there must at some point be an unargued conclusion or else the conclusion “There is nothing that is self-evident” cannot be drawn because aruments would constantly go back and backand back and one would never be able to argue forward, which we know you can do for you argued forward just before you said “Nothing is self-evident”.

If there is no starting point to your argument then you cannot begin to argue against the conclusion “There are some things that are self-evident”. If you do begin to argue that “there is nothing that is self-evident” then you will be arguing without any conlusions because there would be an infinite number of arguments before you could reach your conclusion that “everything must be proven”. It’s obvious that some things must be self-evident or there could be no conclusions (whichc we know exist or else you could not say “Everything needs to be proven”, for this is a conclusion).

-the Brain.

PS - technically if everything needs to be proven then you cannot make any statement for all statements cannot be proven if nothing is self-evident.