{"id":9697,"date":"2012-05-19T18:05:46","date_gmt":"2012-05-19T18:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/05\/19\/asserting-and-arguing-an-example\/"},"modified":"2012-05-19T18:05:46","modified_gmt":"2012-05-19T18:05:46","slug":"asserting-and-arguing-an-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/05\/19\/asserting-and-arguing-an-example\/","title":{"rendered":"Asserting and Arguing: Analysis of an Example and Response to Novak"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my earlier posts on this topic here<\/a> and here<\/a> I did not analyze an example.  I make good that deficit now. <\/span><\/p>\n

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 maxim long enshrined in the Latin tag Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur<\/em>.  So one reasonably demands arguments from those who make assertions.  Here is one:<\/span><\/p>\n

Infanticide is morally wrong<\/span>
There is no morally relevant difference between abortion and infanticide<\/span>
Ergo<\/span>
Abortion is morally wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Someone who forwards this argument in a concrete dialectical  situation in which he is attempting to persuade himself or another asserts the premises and in so doing provides reasons for accepting the conclusion. This goes some distance toward removing the gratuitousness of the conclusion.  But what about the premises?  If they are mere assertions, then the conclusion, though proximately<\/em> non-gratuitous (because supported by reasons), is not ultimately<\/em> non-gratuitous (because no support has been provided for the premises).<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, it is better to give the above argument than merely to assert its conclusion.  The point of the original post, however, is that one has not escaped from the realm of assertion by giving an argument.  And this for the simple reason that (a) arguments have premises, and (b) arguments that do dialectical work must have one or more asserted premises, the assertions being made by the person forwarding the argument with the intention of rationally persuading himself or another of something.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our old friend Lukas Novak proposes a counterexample to (b): the reductio ad absurdum<\/em> (RAA)argument.  If I understand him, what Novak is proposing is that some such arguments can be used to rationally justify the assertion of the conclusion without any of the premises being asserted by the producer of the argument.  Suppose argument A with conclusion C has premises P1, P2, P3.  Suppose further that the premise set entails a contradiction. We may then validly conclude and indeed assert that either P1 is not true or P2 is not true or P3 is not true.  We may in other words make a disjunctive assertion, an assertion the content of which is a disjunctive proposition. And this without having asserted P1 or P2 or P3. What we have, then, is an argument with an asserted conclusion but no asserted promises.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think Professor Novak is technically correct except that the sort of RAA argument he describes is not very interesting. Suppose the asserted conclusion is this: Either the null set is not empty, or the null set is not a set, or the Axiom of Extensionality does not hold, or the null set is not unique.  Who would want to assert that disjunctive monstrosity?  An interesting RAA argument with this subject matter would establish the uniqueness of the null set on the basis of several asserted premises and one unasserted premise, namely, The null set is not unique<\/em>, the premise assumed for reductio<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I stick to my guns: 'real life' arguments that do dialectical work must have one or more asserted premises. Novak's comment did, however, give me the insight that not every premise of a 'real life' dialectically efficacious argument must be asserted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now back to the abortion argument.  My point, again, is that providing even a sound argument for a conclusion — and I would say that the above argument is sound, i.e., valid in point of logical form and having true premises — does not free one from the need to  make assertions.  For example, one has to assert<\/em> that infanticide is morally wrong.  But if no ground or grounds can be given for this assertion, then the assertion is gratuitous.  To remove the gratuitousness one can give a further argument:  The killing of innocent human beings is morally wrong; (human) infants are innocent human beings; ergo, etc.  The first premise in this second argument is again an assertion,  and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually we come to assertions that cannot be argued. That is not to say that these assertions lack support.  They are perhaps grounded in objective self-evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Note that I am not endorsing what is sometimes called the M\u00fcnchhausen trilemma<\/a>, also and perhaps better known as  Agrippa's Trilemma, according to which a putative justification either<\/span><\/p>\n

   a. Begets an infinite regress, or<\/span>
   b. Moves in a circle, or<\/span>
   c. Ends in dogmatism, e.g., in an appeal to self-evidence that can only be subjective, or in an appeal to authority.<\/span><\/p>\n

All I am maintaining — and to some this may sound trivial — is that every real-life argument that does dialectical work must have one or more asserted premises.   And so while argument is in general superior to bare assertion, argument does not free us of the need to make assertions.  I insist on this so that we do not make the mistake of overvaluing argumentation.<\/span><\/p>\n

To put it aphoristically, the mind's discursivity needs for its nourishment intuitive inputs that must be affirmed but cannot be discursively justified.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my earlier posts on this topic here and here I did not analyze an example.  I make good that deficit now.  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 … Continue reading “Asserting and Arguing: Analysis of an Example and Response to Novak”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[313,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-logica-docens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}