Category: Contrast Arguments
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The Cartesian Dream Argument and an Austinian Contrast Argument
In this Substack entry I defend the Frenchman against the Englishman. Continentals 1 – Insular Islanders 0. A number of contrast arguments are examined.
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More Grist for the Moral Mill
If you tell one lie, are you a liar? I should think not. A liar is one who habitually lies. Otherwise, we would all be liars and the term 'liar' would perish from lack of contrast. If you have been seriously drunk a time or two, are you a drunkard? I should think not. A…
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Existence: A Contrast Argument Defeated
This is a post from the old blog. It originally appeared on 27 May 2008 and appears now slightly redacted. *********** In this blogging game you throw out your line and damned if you don't snag a good catch now and again. I dredged up Peter Lupu from the Internet's vasty deeps long about January…
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John Deck’s Contrast Argument Against the Philosophy of Being
John N. Deck is a highly interesting, if obscure, figure in the neo-Scholasticism of the 20th century. I first took note of him in 1989, ten years after his death, when his article "Metaphysics or Logic?" appeared in New Scholasticism (vol. LXIII, no. 2, Spring 1989, pp. 229-240.) Thanks to the labors of Tony Flood…
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Wittgenstein on Time and Flux
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, ed. Rush Rhees, trs. Hargreaves and White, Chicago 1975, p. 83: 52. It's strange that in ordinary life we are not troubled by the feeling that the phenomenon is slipping away from us, the constant flux of appearance, but only when we philosophize. This indicates that what is in question here…
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The Cartesian Dream Argument and an Austinian Contrast Argument
J. L. Austin, in a footnote to p. 49 of Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford, 1962), writes of ". . . the absurdity of Descartes' toying with the notion that the whole of our experience might be a dream." In the main text, there is a sort of argument for this alleged absurdity. The argument may…
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Contrast Arguments
One of the weapons in the arsenal of Ordinary Language and other philosophers is the contrast argument. Such arguments are used to show the meaninglessness of certain terms, typically, the terms we metaphysicians like to bandy about. One type of contrast argument has the form: 1. If a term T is meaningful, then there are…