Formal structure of a logical argument

[Speakpigeon]

If you are at all interested, thank you to try to express the formal structure of the following argument as you understand it:

Premise 1 - For all we know, somebody's conscious mind may be the state of a group of neurons in this person's brain;
Premise 2 - What somebody does is determined by the state of a group of neurons in this person's brain;
Conclusion - Therefore, for all we know, what somebody does may be determined by the conscious mind of this person.

Everything is admissible as long as it's what you think is the best expression of the structure of the argument and that you are prepared to argue your view.

Still, I will myself keep away from this thread to let you all try to arrive at a consensus independently of my own view, hopefully through a rational debate.

Thanks in advance for your contribution.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

A may be B
C is determined by B
Therefore C may be determined by A

Is there anything to debate? The argument is valid, though not necessarily sound.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Here are posters who visited the thread without being motivated enough to post their view as to the formal structure of the argument:

fast

untermensche

steve_bank

The AntiChris

Tharmas

Iznomneak

poster

AirPoh

loose cannon​

Does that mean they agree with PyramidHead?

Or that they haven't a clue what the formal structure of the argument is?

And we're also still waiting for people who have expressed in the original thread their opinion that the argument was wrong, namely fromderinside, steve_bank, ryan and DBT, to say here what they think is the formal structure of the argument...
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

I hope this quiet calm is evidence that people are furiously trying to work out some kind of formula that could stand the heat.
EB

 

[steve_bank]

A may be B
C is determined by B
Therefore C may be determined by A

Is there anything to debate? The argument is valid, though not necessarily sound.

Maybe yes, maybe no.

 

[Speakpigeon]

A may be B
C is determined by B
Therefore C may be determined by A

Is there anything to debate? The argument is valid, though not necessarily sound.

Yes, I agree with that.

I guess we won't get any other suggestion. Thanks for posting that.

So, I checked with two people with an expertise in modal logic and they broadly confirmed your version, if in a more formal and standardised way.

The formal version requires two interesting qualifiers which are left implicit and therefore not necessarily obvious in the informal version of the argument, and this might be why some people keep denying its validity.

I was almost embarrassed to ask since I also think that its validity is pretty damn obvious.

There is another embarrassment for formal logic itself, which is that, while the argument is obviously valid and recognised as valid in the context of the modal logic axiomatic called S4, which takes into account epistemological certainty (the second premise has to be explicitly said "known to be true"), there is no absolutely certain method to verify it is valid. So, confirmation that the argument is valid seems to have to come from people somehow recognised as experts, which is clearly a weakness. All we can say is that if you accept S4, then you have to accept the argument is valid.

As to soundness, the only two people who have suggested they regarded premise 2 as possibly false declined to justify their point beyond suggesting that nature may not be deterministic, which may or may not be in reference to some Quantum Physics consideration.

Another person observed that both premises were very unlikely to be true, on the ground that there is no real-life setup where the system considered would be absolutely isolated from the rest of the universe. I agree with that, but my argument is meant to be understood not in the context of a metaphysical view of truth, but of accepted science, where there is this notion of "all things being equal". To accept this point is to deny any validity to science itself.

Thank again, though.
EB