Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Logica Docens

  • Circular Definitions, Arguments, and Explanations

    In the course of our discursive operations we often encounter circularity.  Clarity will be served if we distinguish different types of circularity.  I count three types.  We could label them definitional, argumentative, and explanatory. A.  The life of the mind often includes the framing of definitions.  Now one constraint on a good definition is that…

  • Neither the Existence Nor the Nonexistence of God is Provable

    A post of mine ends like this: To theists, I say: go on being theists.  You are better off being a theist than not being one.  Your position is rationally defensible and the alternatives are rationally rejectable.  But don't fancy that you can prove the existence of God or the opposite.  In the end you…

  • Kripke, Belief, Irrationality, and Contradiction

    London Ed comments: I also note a confusion that has been running through this discussion, about the meaning of ‘contradiction’. I do not mean to appeal to etymology or authority, but it’s important we agree on what we mean by it. On my understanding, a contradiction is not ‘the tallest girl in the class is…

  • In What Sense Does an Indefinite Noun Phrase Refer?

    London Ed propounds a difficulty for our delectation and possible solution: Clearly the difficulty with the intralinguistic theory is its apparent absurdity, but I am trying to turn this around. What can we say about extralinguistic reference?  What actually is the extralinguistic theory? You argue that the pronoun ‘he’ inherits a reference from its antecedent,…

  • Like a Moth to the Flame

    Jean van Heijenoort was drawn to Anne-Marie Zamora like a moth to the flame. He firmly believed she wanted to kill him and yet he travelled thousands of miles to Mexico City to visit her where kill him she did by pumping three rounds from her Colt .38 Special into his head while he slept.…

  • God, Proof, and Desire

    From a reader: . . . I’m confused by some of your epistemic terms. You reject [in the first article referenced below] the view that we can “rigorously prove” the existence of God, and several times say that theistic arguments are not rationally compelling, by which you mean that there are no arguments “that will…

  • Denying the Antecedent?

    While traipsing through the Superstition foothills Sunday morning in search of further footnotes to Plato, I happened to think of James Madison and Federalist #51 wherein we read, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."  My next thought was: "Men are not angels."  But I realized it could be the formal fallacy of…

  • Is it a Contradiction?

    London Ed writes, I am interested in your logical or linguistic intuitions here. Consider (*) There is someone called ‘Peter’, and Peter is a musician. There is another person called ‘Peter’, and Peter is not a musician. Is this a contradiction?  Bear in mind that the whole conjunction contains the sentences “Peter is a musician”…

  • Is Anything Real Self-Identical?

    I am sometimes tempted by the following line of thought.  But I am also deeply suspicious of it. Are the 'laws of thought' 'laws of reality' as well? Since such laws are necessities of thought, the question can also be put by asking whether or not the necessities of thought are also necessities of being.…

  • Are Burden-of-Proof Considerations Relevant in Philosophy?

    1. The question this post raises is whether it is at all useful to speak of burden of proof (BOP) in dialectical situations in which there are no agreed-upon rules of procedure that are constitutive of the 'game' played within the dialectical situation.  By a dialectical situation I mean a context in which orderly discussion…

  • Quod Gratis Asseritur, Gratis Negatur and Petitio Principii

    It occurred to me this morning that there is a connection between the two. Suppose a person asserts that abortion is morally wrong.  Insofar forth, a bare assertion which is likely  to elicit the bare counter-assertion, 'Abortion is not morally wrong.'  What can be gratuitously asserted may be gratuitously denied without breach of logical propriety, a…

  • Morris Raphael Cohen: Logical Thought as the Basis of Civilization

    This just over the transom from David Marans: Recognizing your praise for Critical Rationalism and Morris Raphael Cohen, I believe his page (and also the Karl Popper page) in my PDF Logic Gallery will interest you. Of course, I hope the book's entire theme/content will also interest you. Your comments will surely interest ME. In…

  • A Truthmaker Account of Validity

    If you accept truthmakers, and two further principles, then you can maintain that a deductive argument is valid just in case the truthmakers of its premises suffice to make true its conclusion.  Or as David Armstrong puts it in Sketch of a Systematic Metaphysics (Oxford UP, 2010), p. 66, In a valid argument the truthmaker…

  • More on Values and Variables and Logical Form: An Aporetic Hexad

    David Brightly comments: . . .  my old copy of Alan Hamilton, Logic for Mathematicians, CUP 1978, uses 'statement variables' in his account of the 'statement calculus', as here. The justification for 'variable' is surely that statements have values, namely truth and falsehood. The truth value of a compound statement is calculated from the truth…

  • Placeholders, Variables, and Logical Form

    London Ed refers us to Understanding Arguments: an Introduction to Informal Logic, Robert Fogelin and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and provides this quotation: Perhaps a bit more surprisingly, our definitions allow 'roses are red and roses are red' to be a substitution instance of 'p & q'. This example makes sense if you compare it to variables…