Koyaanisqatsi

Everyone is glad you finally agree, WJ.

Your pointless drivel here has been of some small consternation of late, but it's good to see you've finally been enlightened.

Or was that just another example of you being forced to hide behind simplistic sarcasm to cover up your obvious jealousy?

It's truly unbecoming, but if you have to live with it, we'll try to take pity on you.

Just don't hope for much...

Clutch

Koy, what on earth are you talking about?

First, you must understand that modus ponens is the most basic inference rule taught in intro logic. And that's what aj claimed. Even if this was not what the website said, why wouldn't this be a knock on the website; why all the foaming at the mouth about aj's dishonesty?

Second, I followed the link to the website. I clicked on "Rules of Inference". I found MP given formally, using the horseshoe sign for material implication. Why was this so easy for me and so difficult for you? While we're speaking of prescriptions, I mean...

Koyaanisqatsi

Anonymousj's deliberately deceitful nature. See if you can catch up.

RE-read my post and apply a modicum of critical analysis if you please.

Particularly in regard to the following:

Get it?

No it was not:

You will not find any such symbolic representation found on the site.

Because the premise aj keeps avoiding is not: If P, then Q.

It is: Because P, Q.

Because something exists, God exists.

That is not a "true" premise, as I mentioned and you somehow missed, and therefore his syllogism is not sound as he continues to deny.

But most importantly, because he claims to be a teacher of logic, which ipso facto means, IMO, that he has a higher standard of responsibility in regards to both intellectual and scholarly honesty to adhere to.

Instead, he has employed demonstrably fallacious reasoning and deliberate semantics hair-splitting in an attempt to subvert the whole purpose of deductive logic to begin with, as so eloquently stated by his own f*cking source:

He also employed blatant evasion tactics, such as telling wordsmyth:

When what wordsmyth said it says is in the third paragraph prominently displayed.

I find that personally reprehensible and decided to call him on it, using his own source against him to demonstrate his deceitful nature.

Is that all right with you?

RE-READ MY POST AND APPLY A MODICUM OF CRITICAL ANALYSIS IF YOU PLEASE.

Thank you.

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Kenny

The Lord's return is surely nigh

Not Prince Hamlet

Guys,

Both "if p, then q" (1) and "because p, then q" (2) are two valid statements in Symbolic Logic. However, their uses are different.

(2) is used when you have already established p, and therefore want to show q. (1) is used to say "if you can show p, then you have shown q", but p does not have to be shown to be true at the time you make that statement.

(1) is useful for inductive proofs, such as:

1. p(0) is true

2. Vn in N, P(n) =&gt; P(n+1) is true

The problem is, as people have pointed out, that a logical statement can be valid without being correct.

"true = false" is a valid logical statement, that is, syntactically it's correct. Semantically, though, it is incorrect. It is an incorrect statement.

Therefore, saying something of the form, "If something exists, then there is a God" is a syntactically correct statement, and therefore considered valid.

However, its correctness has not yet been demonstrated. As you see, you can come up with any number of silly if statements:

"If Fred is human then Fred is not human."

"If you loved me, you'd let me shoot myself."

"If a man fails a lie detector test, it means you can believe him."

In other words, simply throwing out unproven if statements does not make an argument.

BTW, for ease of manipulation, "If X, then B" is often rewritten as: "B or not X".

Jeff

Clutch

Gosh, Koy, I read your posts a few times -- going back a post further each time, just to see if maybe the thing that helped it all make sense had come in an earlier note. I read with more than a modicum of critical analysis, and with something else, too: considerable charity. But I can't make sense of what you're saying, and, for the reasons already outlined, haven't the foggiest idea why you're finding aj's point so enraging. (As opposed, say, to finding it a bit tedious.)

anonymousj said the website in question gives MP as a formal inference rule. It does. What, exactly, am I supposed to read of yours that would explain why his cunning strategy of correctly listing the contents of a webpage should evoke the wildest epithets? I assure you that I'm not being deliberately obtuse; and if I'm being obtuse inadvertantly, surely it would be more becoming for you to actually give an intelligible reply, which might enlighten me. Thanks.

Adrian Selby

"All that this shows is that this notion of omnipotence can't be satisfied, but acknowledging this is not much of a concession. It is not as though there is some task to which God is unequal-- a three-cornered sphere is not a logical possibility, which is to say there is nothing to make. So it isn't a limitation on power, in the sense that the inability to dunk a basketball would be a limitation.
All that those who maintain that God is omnipotent mean is that He can do everything that it is logically possible for a single being to do.

In general, trying to show that there isn't a God by showing that some aspect of the 'definition'is flawed, is a doomed enterprise; after all, all that the believer has to do is, thank you for the illumination, if you have pointed out a difficulty, and revise the conception that was flawed.

Human contact with God is fundamentally contact by acquaintance. God is the entity who gave moses the commandments, who spoke to Lot from the whirl wind, etc. People may be driven to revise their characterizations of God, but one cannot get rid of Him by pointing out contradictions in the things that are said about God. "--Anonymousj

OK, so it seems I have a defence of your concept of God, i.e. a defence of the possibility of your first premise having meaning.

"All that those who maintain that God is omnipotent mean is that He can do everything that it is logically possible for a single being to do. "

I take it therefore God is bound by the laws of logic. He cannot do other than obey the law of non contradiction? Fine. Would you therefore care to clarify exactly what you understand 'God' to be, only until I have a clear definition that will help me to at least stop asking such questions I don't know why I should accept the term as meaningful, such that it can be said that 'God exists'. Until you provide this, you have not shown your first premise itself to be soundly supporting other premises, because to me its based on an absurdity. Telling me it isn't an absurdity isn't an option, at least not without explanation, because for all I know you could be making it up. My concern is that you'll either be unable to provide a definition of what God is that isn't seriously flawed, and in being seriously flawed, doesn't sustain your first premise, or you'll provide one that is at odds with other accepted definitions, flawed or not, that will lead to problems of defining just what is God. Which might mean that your argument is only sound dependent on whether your definition is accepted, if it can be proved to be meaningful.

You say that a doomed enterprise with regard to a definition of God debate is doomed because the Christian simply revises their conception. Are you suggesting that each Christian's conception of God can be qualitatively different and still be acceptable, even, that they may logically contradict each other and still apply to the same being? Your point about contact by acquaintance is interesting, only Moses was tripping, and he didn't perform miracles. The acquaintance was fictional, unless you can prove otherwise. I'm not actually looking for you to prove otherwise, its just that I find it possible to call into question every example of such acquaintance, especially as written in the Bible. This does not support your position, because while acquaintances lead to entirely different definitions of what God is when the people acquainted interpret the Word, there may be issues with the substance of these definitions along the lines outlined above. I could define God as an alien being of extraordinary power, comparative to what humans can achieve technologically. This is a conception that I can define as lacking all 'omni' attributes, which avoids the problems with those attributes this board has covered many times. However, it also contradicts conceptions of God with those attributes. Simple redefinition does not solve the problem here, because it only then shows that nobody knows what on earth they're talking about, and a concept of God hasn't been clearly defined such that it can be considered meaningful. Unless, of course, I'm just to take my pick of concepts and allow that to stand. This does not of course address the problem of establishing whether or not my conception is at all legitimate, and whether or not it refers to a real being and not a delusion.

With regard to your other point.

"quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I must conclude that you know premise 1 of your God argument to be true. And I do not know.
So, I can say "It is not sound" whether or not in fact it is or isn't sound.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is there a misstatement in the last sentence?"

I don't think so. I was responding to this.

You appeared not to be claiming at any point that the argument for God's existence is sound per se, but that it was sound as far as you were concerned. I refer you to the post where you have an argument A and B, and I took argument A to be a disingenuous substitute for your God argument. So in my saying the argument is not sound I am doing no more than you are, I am claiming I know the premise 1 at least is not sound, you are claiming you know it to be sound. Neither of us are doing any more than that, yet clearly one of us must be wrong. I'm saying you are, because your concept of God was meaningless. I also asked you to offer an example of why, given things exist, God must exist. I proffered the existence of computers as an example of something that exists, and asked how you arrived at the conclusion God must exist, such that you feel able to assert it as the first premise.

Koyaanisqatsi

I'm sorry for my tone, Clutch, but maybe this will clarify...

If you haven't already, then (ooh, an "if/then") you should go to page one and read every single post (of everyone's, not just mine) to get a better understanding.

Well, I don't see how you could have missed it since it was spelled out in no uncertain terms, but here it is again:

Clearer now? This has little to nothing to do with MP.

That's not the point. As I mentioned previously, I was splitting my own semantics hairs to demonstrate how ultimately disingenuous aj's semantic hair splitting has been.

As I had stated previously to aj:

Again, you would have to read every single post of the whole thread up until this point to understand.

As to why it enrages me so, aj has been claiming that he is an actual teacher of logic. Again, as I mentioned previously, he therefore has a responsibility to teach his students the correct rules, procedures, meanings of terminology, etc., but most importantly, the underlying purpose of logic (a method to evaluate and infer the "truth state" of any claim as honestly and objectively as possible).

For the past 8 pages he has been demonstrating the exact opposite. It pissed me off. Sue me.

Again, as stated previously:

As was pointed out ad nauseum, aj's first premise is hopelessly ambiguous, not just in the fact that the christian God is, by definition, ineffable (so that when P1 states "then God exists" we have absolutely no means to understand what it is that is asserted to exist), but it is also trinitarian, so that "God" means "Father," (i.e., Yahweh), "Son," (i.e., Jesus) and "The Holy Ghost" (i.e., the incomprehensible/ineffable).

There is no way in which P1 can be used to make the inference "God exists," since there is no way for anyone to comprehend what it would entail to claim such a logically impossible being could exist.

It is not logically possible to be the Father and the Son of the Father at the exact same time, yet this is a defining quality of the "christian God."

Further:

What aj claims is a conditional phrase is actually dependent upon this implicit supposition whose truth is uncertain and implausible (the existenc of such a creature).

Quite right and I apologize for my harsh tone.

Again, it personally repulses me to see someone who claims to hold such responsibility demonstrating either a fundamental inability to comprehend what it is he's doing, or, worse (as I think everyone here suspects), he has such a keen grasp of the topic that he thinks he's found a semantics loophole that only serves to subvert the entire purpose of the method.

This is why I posted so much from his own source regarding both fallacious reasoning as well as the purpose of the process.

For example, as previously, this is how aj's source defines MP:

The examples aj's source gives will provide any student seriously intent on applying the underlying purpose of logic (to arrive at the "truth" as honestly and objectively as possible) to instantly see the flaw in aj's first premise:

Aj's first premise fits neither of these examples.

As wordsmyth correctly pointed out, the consequent (then God exists) is false and cannot be inferred from the antecedent for precisely the reasons outlined by the source wordsmyth provided and aj evaded:

While it is true that there are legitimate Modus Ponens arguments--and here's the point--aj's is not one of them.

Aj's antecedent as initially presented does not allow us to ask this question.

How can we ask whether or not we should accept this as true (keeping in mind the purpose of logic and the fallacy of ambiguous language) when there is no clearly defined "something" to inquire about?

Something exists. Is this true?

The only legitimate answer to that question is, "You have not given me enough information to provide a worthwhile answer."

As a teacher of logic, aj should know this better than anybody else here.

How can we ask this in aj's conditional, if we have no clearly defined "something" that is supposed to exist that would provide us with the connection--the conditional element of the conditional--not to mention a clearly defined consequent (since the christian god is both ineffable and logically impossible; a Father cannot be his own Son and vice versa)?

Once again, simply by throwing in the words "if/then" does not necessarily make the premise a legitimate conditional!

This is why aj's first premise properly formatted must be:

Although we're still left with the ambiguity, at least now the premise is properly formatted.

Wordsmyth's source is not arguing that Modus Ponens is not a legitimate structure, IMO, he's arguing that these examples of conditional phrases are not legitimate arguments, because of the improper terminology as it relates to the desired inferred outcome.

Likewise, in aj's first premise, he is not asking us to make any inference from any premise, because he is not claiming that "something" in fact exists, since that's not possible (except through pointless semantics hair splitting).

How can aj's first premise be said to be legitimately conditional when no unambiguous condition is being asserted? What is the "something" that exists that would establish the legitimate consequent: the christian god then exists?

Again (and finally) a logic teacher should be the one pointing these things out.

(edited for formatting - Koy)

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

anonymousj

All,

I will be happy to address any point any of you can find in Koy's most recent post. It is, as far as I can tell, a mish-mash of efforts to make some points, but I can't make out anything that hasn't already been addressed. And, a good deal of it is just claptrap based on misunderstandings of what he/she has been reading at the logic sites. However, if someone among the rest of you can see a point that he/she is making that you think worth restating, please restate it for me.

I will not respond to Koy again-- for two reasons The first reason is that his/her abusiveness has become more than I am willing to put up with. My way of dealing with that in this context is to simply ignore his/her posts.

The second reason is that I have no confidence that Koy will understand my responses. It seems clear that Koy has missed significant parts of the posts to this topic. Moreover, judging from his most recent posts, he/she has little, if any, comprehension of the material on basic logic that he/she is reading on the web and quoting here.

There are others here with significant points that I will spend my time on. Let me say once again, however, that if any of you can see somthing in Koy's posts and can phrase it in a way that makes it understandable, by all means do so.

cheers,

anonymousj

anonymousj

Adrian Selby,

Concerning the issue of my definition of 'God', or a clarification of my concept of God, will it do to say that when talking about God I am talking about the entity that spoke to Lot from the whirlwind, the entity that helped Moses, the entity whose son is Jesus Christ, etc.(as these events/phenomena are documented in scripture). I think that should make it clear who/what I am talking about when I use the word 'God'.

cheers,

anonymousj

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: anonymousj ]</p>