| Subject: I'm at my computer and in the United States how can I be both places at once? |
Author:
Damoclese
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Date Posted: 12/16/02 11:54am
In reply to:
Wade A. Tisthammer
's message, "It's where you are at right now." on 12/15/02 10:56pm
>>>
>>
>>Well again, the same criticisms I used formerly are
>>still applicable.
>
>I don’t see how. Hairless men by definition
>have no hair. What are hairless men? People who have
>no hair. Thus, the fact that hairless men have no
>hair is true by definition. The conclusion naturally
>flows from the essence of the terms involved. “If a
>man has no hair, then that man has no hair.” This is
>an objective truth. It cannot possibly be false. The
>consequent logically must follow from the antecedent.
This is what is referred to by linguistic philosphers as an analytic statement in that its veracity can be arrived at by examining the terms; of that I'm aware. However, as I had mentioned before, the world of our experience is not equivalent to the world that comprises "true reality". It could be the case that someone else sees someone who is bald with hair; and what's more is that that could be the way it actually is in reality. In our small world of experience, we'd likely discount it due to falsification and the host of other things that come along with reasoning, but this by no means makes it objective. It just makes it unlikely in our world of experience.
>
>Vicious circularity is where we something is supposed
>to be established, and we unjustifiably assume the
>truth of something we are supposed to establish, as in
>the memory example. However, hairless men by
>definition have no hair (that’s just what hairless men
>are, it’s logically impossible for a hairless man to
>have hair), so the consequent of hairless men (that
>they have no hair) is perfectly justified. It is not
>viciously circular and is in no way a logical fallacy.
How do you know they don't have any hair? Let me wager a guess, your senses tell you they don't. Be it your sight when you read, or be it your vision and actually seeing the person, your senses are what say to you "hey, this guy has hair, or this one doesn't". Hairless men just being without hair being merely the way they "are" is patently absurd in my view. It can't be known what they "are" ever. The world of experience can tell us what they "might be" and how they appear to our senses. Yet, our senses don't dictate what true reality is for reasons I've mentioned before. They are calibrated to take in the information they take in; no more no less.
Therefore, the circularity arises in the assertion that bald men just "are" bald as far as "reality" is concerned.
>
>Hairless men having hair is not logically possible.
>It would blatantly defy the law of noncontradiction
>and therefore cannot exist in reality.
The law of contradiction doesn't dictate what reality has to be. It is a rule that our experience has shown to be true; but that doesn't mean it couldn't exist in reality, and to make such an assertion to me seems arrogant and too self-assured that what our senses provide us along with the mechanics we've used to deal with the information they provide is accurate. If you wanted to say that in the world of experience this rule seems to hold, that's one thing. To make claim to a reality you can never get at is quite another.
One other thing I'd like to point out is that the "law of non-contradiction" gets murky even in our world of experience. How is it in quantum physics that one electron can be in two places at once? How can it take in the structure of an experiment and make the results act accordingly? Surely it is either at point A. or point B. Yet, it isn't. It's everywhere at once but more likely to be at one place than another.
This to me is just another example of our senses being inadequate to take into consideration this large entity called "reality".
>
>The mental process is called: reason (confer the
>statement, “there are no hairless men that have hair”).
But is not reason based on experience and the senses?
>I think that could be true.
>
>>(which you'll recall I don't think is
>>attainable).
>
>Objective truth being attainable is a very
>different matter of objective truth being
>existent. Do you concede that objective truth
>exists?
I don't know if it does or not as that would require my being able to look into the mechanics of reality, which I can never do. What I can say is that some things in the world of experience are "more objective" in the sense that our senses are in general agreement on the issue.
>>
>>Again, I should have worded this as the senses of
>>people are unreliable to arrive at anything objective.
>>(e.g. the lack of being able to get at reality through
>>the senses alone).
>
>I don’t know that this is true. If I see a train
>heading towards me, I’m liable to think my senses are
>reasonably reliable so that I’ll move out of the way.
Yes, but can you ever say that in reality a train is moving towards you? I don't think you can. You can in the world of experience, for the information you have is gathered by your senses.
One further note, I don't see any reason to go to your web page when you can simply present the salient points as I have done. This will facilitate keeping the conversation on track, and minimize any sort of interpretational errors.
Damoclese
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