phands
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How often do we have to go over this before realizing that the OP is shite, and the OPoster is intransigent?
But Premise 2 (which is true) logically implies that the consequent of Premise 1 is false (see the post of mine you replied to). If we further stipulate that Premise 1 is true, then Premise 1 is a true conditional with a false consequent. Thus, its antecedent is false. Thus, there is a god.So, I reckon I have no good reason to suspect that Premise 1 is true. On the basis of that, I rationally reject Premise 1.
My approach is different. I'd be happy to stipulate P1 for the sake of argument.
What I hope to get across is this: The conclusion does not follow from the premises. Even if we stipulate to the premises, the conclusion does not follow.
So, I reckon I have no good reason to suspect that Premise 1 is true. On the basis of that, I rationally reject Premise 1.
My approach is different. I'd be happy to stipulate P1 for the sake of argument.
What I hope to get across is this: The conclusion does not follow from the premises. Even if we stipulate to the premises, the conclusion does not follow.
But Premise 2 (which is true) logically implies that the consequent of Premise 1 is false
(see the post of mine you replied to).
If we further stipulate that Premise 1 is true, then Premise 1 is a true conditional with a false consequent. Thus, its antecedent is false. Thus, there is a god.
As I construed the argument in the post you just replied to, it is valid. Now, I think the way I construed the argument is the best as long as one assumes that Speakpigeon did not equivocate and used different types of conditionals. If Speakpigeon thinks my interpretation is incorrect, I hope she posts a correct one.
I don't think there is anything to this. There is absolutely no good reason for me to accept the first premise, even assuming that it is meaningful.Wiploc said:Does anyone here besides Angra and Speak think there's something to this?
Premise 1: If there is no god, then it is not true that if Speakpigeon prays, then Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.
Premise 2: Speakpigeon does not pray.
Conclusion: There is a god.
How about Premise 1?
Premise 1 is a conditional. The antecedent is 'There is no god'. and the consequent is 'It is not true that if Speakpigeon prays, Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.'
It is apparent to me that the consequent of Premise 2 is false. [emphasis added]
In fact, the statement 'If Speakpigeon prays, then Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.' is clearly true.
Why? It is true because the statement in question is a conditional (again, by 'conditional' I mean material conditional here), and the antecedent 'Speakpigeon prays' is false. Any conditional with a false antecedent is true. [Emphasis added because I have to keep referring back to this, and the boldface makes it easy to find.]
Therefore, 'If Speakpigeon prays, then Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.' is true.
Please, take into consideration that this does not tell us anything about entities that answer prayers. For that matter, the statement 'If Speakpigeon prays, then aliens from another planet invaded the Earth and exterminated humans in the year 1944' is true, in virtue of the fact that Speakpigeon does not pray.
So, in short, I reckon the statement 'If Speakpigeon prays, then Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.' is clearly true.
Therefore, the statement 'It is not true that if Speakpigeon prays, Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.' is false. In other words, Premise 1 has a false consequent.
Should I believe that Premise 1 is true?
Well, at this point, I know that Premise 1 is a conditional with a false consequent. Any conditional with a false consequent is true if and only if the antecedent is false. So, is the antecedent false?
I have no good reason to even suspect so. Now, granted, I don't know what 'god' means, so I don't know what the antecedent means (I'm just assuming for the sake of the argument that it means something at all), so I am in no position to reckon that the antecedent is true. However, I have no good reason to think that it is false, either. Moreover, if I consider hypothetical entities usually called 'god' in the context of discussing religion or philosophy, I still have no good reason to suspect that the antecedent of Premise 1 (namely, 'There is no god') is false.
So, I reckon I have no good reason to suspect that Premise 1 is true. On the basis of that, I rationally reject Premise 1.
It is valid, though I think maybe you already got that?Wiploc said:Patently invalid.Angra Mainyu said:Premise 1: If there is no god, then it is not true that if Speakpigeon prays, then Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.
Premise 2: Speakpigeon does not pray.
Conclusion: There is a god.
Yes, sorry.Wiploc said:I assume you mean premise 1.
That is correct.Wiploc said:If so, then these are both true:
- If 3 is larger than 4, there is a god.
- If 3 is larger than 4, there is no god.
I have no good reason to suspect that Premise 1 is true, given that I reckon that Premise 2 is true, and thus (by the argument I gave in the reply to Speakpigeon) I reckon that Premise 1 is true if and only if it has a false antecedent, i.e., if and only if there is a god.Wiploc said:If we're doubting P1, I become curious. In what ways can P1 be false?
But I'm doubting Premise 1 because I reckon that Premise 2 is true. If I'm also doubting Premise 2, then I'm rejecting both premises ( I still would have no good reason to think Premise 1 is true).Wiploc said:First, P2 could be wrong; Speakpigeon could pray, thus the "I pray" in P1 could be true rather than false. I don't know what that would get us.
I do not know what the word "god" means, but I'm trying to leave that aside (I already raised the objection that the word "god" was not clear enough, but Speakpigeon insisted on her argument, and I decided to focus my critique on other matters).Wiploc said:Second, things other than gods could answer prayers.
Speakpigeon,
I will try once more, with further details. Could you please address my reply?
First, I will assume for the sake of the argument that you are not equivocating, and so, all of the conditionals in your argument are material conditionals (if you meant to use a different kind of conditional all throughout your argument, I don't think that's going to make sense, but please let me know).
Second, I will assume for the sake of the argument that the word "god" has a meaning, even though I do not know what that meaning is (your answer that a god is "whatever answers prayers and that we call "god"." does not succeed, but I'll leave the reasons for that aside, since I'm trying to focus on a different reason for rejecting the argument).
That said, I will proceed to consider the argument.
The "I" in the argument complicates matters (who's "I"? You, or I, or another reader or poster?), so I will use "Speakpigeon" instead. If you have any objection to that, please explain.Speakpigeon said:If there is no god, then it is not true that if I pray, my prayers will be answered. I don’t pray; therefore, there is a god.
So, the argument is:
Premise 1: If there is no god, then it is not true that if Speakpigeon prays, then Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.
Premise 2: Speakpigeon does not pray.
Conclusion: There is a god.
Should I accept Premise 2?
Given the information available to me, I reckon it is true. So, I accept premise 2. Speakpigeon does not pray.
How about Premise 1?
Premise 1 is a conditional. The antecedent is 'There is no god'. and the consequent is 'It is not true that if Speakpigeon prays, Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.'
It is apparent to me that the consequent of Premise 2 is false. In fact, the statement 'If Speakpigeon prays, then Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.' is clearly true. Why? It is true because the statement in question is a conditional (again, by 'conditional' I mean material conditional here), and the antecedent 'Speakpigeon prays' is false. Any conditional with a false antecedent is true. Therefore, 'If Speakpigeon prays, then Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.' is true. Please, take into consideration that this does not tell us anything about entities that answer prayers. For that matter, the statement 'If Speakpigeon prays, then aliens from another planet invaded the Earth and exterminated humans in the year 1944' is true, in virtue of the fact that Speakpigeon does not pray.
So, in short, I reckon the statement 'If Speakpigeon prays, then Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.' is clearly true. Therefore, the statement 'It is not true that if Speakpigeon prays, Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.' is false. In other words, Premise 1 has a false consequent.
Should I believe that Premise 1 is true?
Well, at this point, I know that Premise 1 is a conditional with a false consequent. Any conditional with a false consequent is true if and only if the antecedent is false. So, is the antecedent false?
I have no good reason to even suspect so. Now, granted, I don't know what 'god' means, so I don't know what the antecedent means (I'm just assuming for the sake of the argument that it means something at all), so I am in no position to reckon that the antecedent is true. However, I have no good reason to think that it is false, either. Moreover, if I consider hypothetical entities usually called 'god' in the context of discussing religion or philosophy, I still have no good reason to suspect that the antecedent of Premise 1 (namely, 'There is no god') is false.
So, I reckon I have no good reason to suspect that Premise 1 is true. On the basis of that, I rationally reject Premise 1.
If there is no god, then it is not true that if I pray, my prayers will be answered. I don’t pray; therefore, there is a god
Syllogism 1
P1: If there is no god, then it is not true that if I pray, my prayers will be answered.
P2: I don't pray.
C: Therefore, there is a god.
Your first thread didn't get traction because you came across as a troll or a joker, someone who saw how stupid the argument was but shared it anyway for the humor, the same as you would share a video of a cat leaping away from a cucumber. You didn't come across as someone who believed your patently false argument, so nobody saw need to show you the flaw.
The argument is obviously invalid to most of us here, maybe to everyone but you.
But P1 is convoluted and full of negatives, which makes it hard for those of us who read just a little bit of formal logic some decades ago to render P1 into formal logic.
The fact that you insult everyone who tries to help makes us disinclined to help.
You don't seem to understand the rules of forum talk. I started a thread and on my own terms.
The terms being that if people disagree with your nonsense, you will insult them and make unfounded claims about their states of mind.
But you've calmed down some, so I'm going to attempt this.
Patently invalid.So, the argument is:
Premise 1: If there is no god, then it is not true that if Speakpigeon prays, then Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered.
Premise 2: Speakpigeon does not pray.
Conclusion: There is a god.
It is valid, though I think maybe you already got that?
Here's a formalization:
S1: There is a god.
S2: Speakpigeon prays.
S3: Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered (or whatever you like; it does not matter what S3 is).
Premise 1: ¬S1->¬(S2->S3).
Premise 2: ¬S2.
R1: ¬S2->(S2->S3) [this is a tautology, given that any material conditional with a false antecedent (in this case, S2) is true]
R2: S2->S3 [This is deduced from Premise 2 and R1].
R3: (¬S1->¬(S2->S3))->(¬¬(S2->S3)->¬¬S1). [this is a tautology]
R4: ¬¬(S2->S3)->¬¬S1. [this follows from Premise 1 and R3]
R5: (S2->S3)->¬¬(S2->S3). [this is a tautology]
R6: ¬¬(S2->S3). [this follows from R2 and R5]
R7: ¬¬S1. [this follows from R4 and R6]
R8; ¬¬S1->S1. [this is a tautology]
C: S1. [this follows from R7 and R8].
It is valid, though I think maybe you already got that?
Here's a formalization:
S1: There is a god.
S2: Speakpigeon prays.
S3: Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered (or whatever you like; it does not matter what S3 is).
Premise 1: ¬S1->¬(S2->S3).
Premise 2: ¬S2.
R1: ¬S2->(S2->S3) [this is a tautology, given that any material conditional with a false antecedent (in this case, S2) is true]
R2: S2->S3 [This is deduced from Premise 2 and R1].
R3: (¬S1->¬(S2->S3))->(¬¬(S2->S3)->¬¬S1). [this is a tautology]
R4: ¬¬(S2->S3)->¬¬S1. [this follows from Premise 1 and R3]
R5: (S2->S3)->¬¬(S2->S3). [this is a tautology]
R6: ¬¬(S2->S3). [this follows from R2 and R5]
R7: ¬¬S1. [this follows from R4 and R6]
R8; ¬¬S1->S1. [this is a tautology]
C: S1. [this follows from R7 and R8].
The guy just told you it's "patently" invalid. Who are you to pretend otherwise?
Good luck with that, though.
EB
No, it's much more simple than that. There's an argument proposed in the OP. Can you prove it's wrong?
Well, it's clear you at least can't.
It's also not my "intuition" that the OP is wrong, it's my analysis. The value of logical systems is that they help us gain information about the real world. Therefore, if the results of your logic are false conclusions which conflict with the real world, you have bad logic - full stop. If it concludes that unused cans are always full of gasoline, that bags nobody eats from are always full of tomatoes and other conclusions which can be compared against the real world, then your system has bad logic.
In other words, since you're incapable of proving the logic wrong, you go for second best and go into blah-blah-blah. Well, your blah-blah-blah isn't going to convinced me. I'm not sensitive to blah-blah-blah.
On the substance of what you say here, your claim that the conclusion of the argument conflicts with the real world is really just pathetic. It sure conflicts with your opinion about the existence or otherwise of any god. Your opinion about the real world. Sure, you think there isn't any god and from there you go on claiming that it's a fact of the real world that there is no god. Pretty bad rhetoric , I would say.
If it was true, I would agree, but it's not true. You don't know the fact of the matter, i.e. whether there is a god. From there, you should try to prove the argument not valid, somehow, but that's what you're incapable of doing. Hence our resort to a false claim about the real world. Not good.
It doesn't matter if that logic is internally consistent and the conclusions you get follow directly from the premises because you are not using it internally. You are taking that conclusion and applying it externally to the real world to say "I just proved there is a god in the real world" and your logic doesn't support doing that.
I said multiple times it's not my argument. I don't mean to prove there is a god. I don't have any issue here. I proposed an argument I lifted from the Internet and it's a logical truth, i.e. it's true in all logical cases. In effect, it's a shocking logical truth, hence it's value. I'm interested in your intuition as to the argument and your proof that your intuition is correct. All you can offer, clearly, is your intuition. Thanks anyway.
EB
You're correct that I'm not proving the logic wrong. That's what it means when one says that the logic is internally consistent. What I'm saying is that the logic is worthless because it gives you no information outside of its own internal paradigm since the conclusions it reaches are false when one tries to apply them.
That's not because of any kind of "intuition" or whatever you're going on about with that. It's because this logical argument which you're presenting provides us with a testable prediction and those tests consistently come back as false. If you have a number of cans which you never use to fill a car's gas tank with, you can look in those cans and see that some of them are not filled with gasoline, despite this logical argument proving that they all are. If you have a bunch of bags which you never eat from, you can look in those bags and see that not all of them are filled with tomatoes, despite this logical argument proving that they all are.
You seem to be aware of this, because that's the only reason to plug a non-testable variable like "god" into the argument as opposed to the functionally infinite set of testable variables which would work just as well and show how pointless it is.
So yes, the logic is correct. It's just totally worthless because it can't be used for any type of logical analysis.
You seem to be aware of this, because that's the only reason to plug a non-testable variable like "god" into the argument as opposed to the functionally infinite set of testable variables which would work just as well and show how pointless it is.
Well, except, me, I don't don't how the argument about the jerrycans would go. Jerrycans don't usually answer prayers even when they exist.
It is valid, though I think maybe you already got that?
Here's a formalization:
S1: There is a god.
S2: Speakpigeon prays.
S3: Speakpigeon's prayers will be answered (or whatever you like; it does not matter what S3 is).
Premise 1: ¬S1->¬(S2->S3).
Premise 2: ¬S2.
R1: ¬S2->(S2->S3) [this is a tautology, given that any material conditional with a false antecedent (in this case, S2) is true]
R2: S2->S3 [This is deduced from Premise 2 and R1].
R3: (¬S1->¬(S2->S3))->(¬¬(S2->S3)->¬¬S1). [this is a tautology]
R4: ¬¬(S2->S3)->¬¬S1. [this follows from Premise 1 and R3]
R5: (S2->S3)->¬¬(S2->S3). [this is a tautology]
R6: ¬¬(S2->S3). [this follows from R2 and R5]
R7: ¬¬S1. [this follows from R4 and R6]
R8; ¬¬S1->S1. [this is a tautology]
C: S1. [this follows from R7 and R8].
The guy just told you it's "patently" invalid. Who are you to pretend otherwise?
Good luck with that, though.
EB
That is not what I am doing. What I did was to carefully show that I have no good reason to accept that Premise 1 is true (by the way, when I said "It is apparent to me that the consequent of Premise 2 is false.", I meant It is apparent to me that the consequent of Premise 1 is false."; my bad, but it should be clear).Speakpigeon said:So, it seems to me that what you are doing here is pick and choose the parts of the truth table that suits your preconceptions or your intuition.
But that is not what I'm doing. I don't know how to be more clear.Speakpigeon said:You are carving your argument through the truth table. It's definitely clever and maybe it's the proper way to do it. My problem with this, though, is that I never ever saw anything anywhere that would suggest it's the way truth tables should be used, that you use the truth table by carving through it the bits you like.
I have no good reason to believe that you are correct.Speakpigeon said:As I see it, the two premises are true.
No, they certainly do not look intuitively true to me, especially not the first one (the second one is not intuitive, but I reckon it's true because of the information I have about you).Speakpigeon said:They certainly look intuitively true to me and I suspect they do to us all.
Your expression of disbelief and your rather dismissive reply is strong evidence that by "if there is no god, it is not true that if you pray then your prayers will be answered", you meant "If there is no god, it is not true that if you prayed, your prayers would be answered." That one would be true if "god" has a meaning and only a god possibly answers prayers (as you seem to believe). But of course, the modified argumentSpeakpigeon said:???
You see no reason to think that if there is no god, it is not true that if you pray then your prayers will be answered?!
Please take some more time to think about it...
I disagree. I would not have to justify my claim. I can simply say I obviously have no good reason to suspect Premise 1 is true (which is true), and there is nothing improper about that. However, I have justified my claim, repeatedly and in increasing detail. You have not been able to realize that, but that's not my fault.Speakpigeon said:And then the truth table says the main implication is true for all possible logical cases. That's it and as far as I know it's all you need for the argument to be valid and sound. Now, if you want to claim you know otherwise, you'll have to justify your claim.
I did not do anything like that. But it's puzzling that you would think so. I don't know what else to try. I will try to think of something different later.Speakpigeon said:Again, I'm sympathetic to your argument and I'd be happy to concede you're right. But it looks to me like you've just made up a new procedure to deal with truth tables to fit your preconceptions.
I have no quotes. I only have logic. But it's basic logic, and it's decisive.Speakpigeon said:I definitely don't remember ever coming across such before. So, if you're sure your procedure comes from textbook logic then please provide the relevant sources or quotes. Short of that, I'll assume the jury is out and won't come in any time soon and I'll leave it at that.
That is not what you said before, but okay, I can go with that. I would like to ask you a question: Why do you not believe that there is a god?. Given that you believe that you have a sound argument whose conclusion is that there is a god, and furthermore, you are aware that you believe it (just in case), it is puzzling to me that you fail to believe that there is a god.Speakpigeon said:As to interpretation, I'm not sure what your worry is. The argument should be understood in a minimalist fashion. A god is an all-powerful being.
By they might still be answered by an entity such as Odin or Zeus, who are not all-powerful but very powerful, and the premise does not stipulate that they can only be answered by a god.Speakpigeon said:People can pray and a god if there is one can choose to answer prayers. So, if there is no god, it is not true that if I pray my prayer will be answered (by a god).
The argument is valid. I have no good reason to suspect it is sound, since I have no good reason to suspect that Premise 1 is true. I have already shown that more than once, but you haven't been able to see that.Speakpigeon said:Again, I'm open to the idea there's a problem but what I don't have now, is textbook evidence that the truth table doesn't show the argument is valid and sound.
See above. In brief, it seems you find the statement "If there is no god, it is not true that if you pray then your prayers will be answered." intuitive because you are reading it as "If there is no god, it is not true that if you prayed then your prayers would be answered.", but that would make the argument invalid.Speakpigeon said:Also, I don't see there's any room for the kind of "counterfactual" interpretation of the truth table I would be guilty of according to you and Bomb#20.
Speakpigeon said:All I do is look at the truth table and the fact that the two premises look true (and I'm sure they look true to most people).