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carnap
Anti-Vegan Troll
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Re: What’s the most effective way to debunk moral relativism / subjectivism?

Post by carnap »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 1:56 pm Unsubstantiated claim. Of course they can not be converted into syllogisms if they are bad arguments, or too vague to parse.
But any sound complex argument can probably be broken down into a number of syllogisms which work together to form a whole argument.
You aren't helping your case here because this makes it apparent that you don't have a good understanding of logic. What I said can be confirmed by just looking up the definitions or opening an introductory textbook on logic. A syllogism is a very specific form of argument that has two premises where those premises share a term with the conclusion. For example, "All dogs have hair, "Ralph is a dog", "Therefore Ralph has hair".

There are vast sums of first order arguments that aren't syllogism and any propositional argument isn't a syllogism.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 1:56 pm Then stop being so "subtle and expressive". This is a place for logical discourse, not for you to weasel out of defending your claims because everything is just so subjective.
Interesting....why aren't you taking your own advise? You have some of the longest most verbose posts here....why aren't you formalizing your arguments or at least condensing them into gross form?

brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 1:56 pm A bad logically invalid argument doesn't qualify.
Personal assertions of incredulity and misrepresenting studies doesn't qualify as evidence either.
Right...as I said you're not only asking people to provide arguments but to provide arguments you believe are good. That requirement will obviously lead to an echo-chamber since you're using your own judgement to measure arguments. You seem to believe this makes sense because you believe yourself to some sort of god of logic which is amusing.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 1:56 pm I'm perfectly capable of evaluating whether a syllogism is valid or not without bias.
If you are worried about people judging your arguments, make them more clear as syllogisms.
Again just demonstrating that you haven't even studied elementary logic. Syllogisms are easy to evaluate because there are only 24 valid syllogistic forms but the vast majority of complex arguments cannot be given in syllogistic form.

In any case, as I said formalizing arguments can be valuable but its typically a difficult process and there are many points of failure. But even once you've formalized an argument evaluating it is not straight-forward. You seem to be unaware of the fact that first-order logic is undecidable, that is, there is no procedure you can use to determine whether a first-order argument (or statement) is valid or invalid.

You're going to learn much more if you stop fooling yourself into thinking you have mastery of subjects you clearly don't understand well.
I'm here to exploit you schmucks into demonstrating the blatant anti-intellectualism in the vegan community and the reality of veganism. But I can do that with any user name.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: What’s the most effective way to debunk moral relativism / subjectivism?

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Syllogisms are an example, but there are also other simple valid forms of argument you could break a larger argument up into as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_v ... ment_forms

I'm not convinced that there is any valid argument that can't be pretty easily proved that way (particularly the simplistic arguments that tend to be made here). Those that can not be I suspect are simply incoherent.

Choose from that list, and clearly label each component of your argument. My point is exactly what it says on that page.
Logical form replaces any sentences or ideas with letters to remove any bias from content and allow one to evaluate the argument without any bias due to its subject matter.[1]

Being a valid argument does not necessarily mean the conclusion will be true. It is valid because if the premises are true, then the conclusion has to be true. This can be proven for any valid argument form using a truth table which shows that there is no situation in which there are all true premises and a false conclusion.[2]
If you want to make "subtle and expressive" arguments, you need to do so elsewhere. You're not going to keep posting here to complain about bias against you when you're unwilling or unable to make clear arguments. Obviously you are in a hostile environment, and you're being hostile which just makes things worse, which is all the more reason you need to be precise.
carnap wrote: Sun Oct 07, 2018 2:50 pm Interesting....why aren't you taking your own advise? You have some of the longest most verbose posts here....why aren't you formalizing your arguments or at least condensing them into gross form?
Formal arguments are not necessarily the most convincing for most people (they are to people who understand logic well, but most people coming here to argue do not), but more importantly the majority of my posts are criticizing or deconstructing others' attempted arguments, and if those arguments are not formal arguments then explaining the problems with them probably isn't going to come in the form of a formal argument. Informal arguments are pretty much unfalsifiable formally since they don't take a clear form that can be criticized. Sometimes we try to break them down and convert them into formal arguments to criticize them, but that's often just met with more complaint for doing it wrong (see the whole thing with NameTheTrait over the last year or so, where we tried to formalize it and Isaac didn't agree with our formalization and we were in a deadlock for a long time [he has now updated it himself and the new version seems to be valid, so that's good]).

The alternative to explaining issues with informal arguments in common language is to just forbid informal arguments period.
carnap wrote: Sun Oct 07, 2018 2:50 pmRight...as I said you're not only asking people to provide arguments but to provide arguments you believe are good. That requirement will obviously lead to an echo-chamber since you're using your own judgement to measure arguments.
Only if those arguments are "subtle and expressive". The validity of a formal argument is not subjective.
If you think your "subtle and expressive" arguments are being misunderstood as invalid or fallacious when you believe there's a valid argument there, then formalize them. To be beyond question you need to use recognized valid forms of argument to break them down so there can be no doubt.
carnap wrote: Sun Oct 07, 2018 2:50 pmAgain just demonstrating that you haven't even studied elementary logic. Syllogisms are easy to evaluate because there are only 24 valid syllogistic forms but the vast majority of complex arguments cannot be given in syllogistic form.
That's not really true; most arguments can be broken down into a series of syllogisms. I'm not asking for a single syllogism and nothing else, that would be absurd. You'd be surprised what you can build from a series of syllogisms and other simple arguments. Kind of how binary can represent any real number. You have to build it up, and it can be tedious, but when you're done it should be beyond question.
carnap wrote: Sun Oct 07, 2018 2:50 pmYou seem to be unaware of the fact that first-order logic is undecidable, that is, there is no procedure you can use to determine whether a first-order argument (or statement) is valid or invalid.
Select from this list of valid argument forms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_v ... ment_forms

If you can't make an argument using one or an assortment of those recognized forms, then you're probably just not very good at arguing.
You're also welcome to make valid mathematical arguments where you show your work.
Beyond that, you need to stop.
carnap wrote: Sun Oct 07, 2018 2:50 pmYou're going to learn much more if you stop fooling yourself into thinking you have mastery of subjects you clearly don't understand well.
From the sounds of it, you just don't agree with or want to bother to use logic.
This is an ongoing theme with you and it's a testament to the tolerance of this forum that you have not been banned yet.
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