[Date Prev][Date Next]
[Chronological]
[Thread]
[Home]
Re: Philosophy general debate
To reply to this message or start a new topic please email: BUPS-DIS@bups.org
Yes, I was wondering the same thing when Daniel initially claimed Andrew G had
begged the question. I thought about it for a little bit and then gave up.
Matthew (H) makes a strong argument that it's not question begging but I'm still
not quite convinced.
There is a trivial sense in which all valid arguments are question begging, a
valid argument must always 'contain' the conclusion in the premises somehow. I
always say that logic never tells us anything new, so if a conclusion follows
from its premises it is through the content of the premises alone. So certainly
in this sense these types of arguments are question begging.
However there is very little to recommend this approach. I personally feel that
if arguments such as Andrew's (G) are question begging this licenses the denial
of all kinds of sensible arguments such as Matthew's.
The dodge Daniel used, that arguments of this form are only question begging if
the counterexamples are uncontroversial, surely does not meet the requirements.
I would have thought that the property a question begging argument would have
would be a feature of the logical structure of the argument, not the specifics
of the individual premises. Surely replacing the word 'philosophy' with 'trees'
no more affects the question beggingness (sic) of the argument than its validity.
Andrew B
> Sorry to butt in, but regards your (tangential) point, but to rush to AG's
> defence I don't think he was begging the question. What you (Daniel) said
> (or said on D's behalf) is akin to saying "no tree is a plant," an objector
> finding an oak, and saying that "well, here is a tree, and it is a plant,"
> only to be rebuffed with "well, since it's a plant it can't have been a
> tree, can it?" This would then make all claims non-disprovable. So, if it is
> begging the question, it is not vicious. If it is antecedently and (fairly)
> uncontroversially philosophy (say, Descartes) and it is not saddening, that
> is sufficient to disprove D's proposition, I would have thought. M.
>
> On 22 Aug 2006 20:49:59 +0100, djf500@york.ac.uk <djf500@york.ac.uk> wrote:
> >
> > To reply to this message or start a new topic please email:
> > BUPS-DIS@bups.org
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I need to restate what I meant following AG's reply to my earlier
> > heckling!
> > AG's final point first...
> >
> > I didn't suggest that if you were I case that fitted D's principle (i.e.
> > read D's books and got a tad morose) then that would prove his principle.
> > I
> > simply said that to remove the principle you can't simply beg the question
> > (implicitly or explicitly, see Wright, 2000 in Sosa and Villanuenva
> > [sorry,
> > not spanish or working from the book!]). You do have to go behind his
> > principle, as it were.
> >
> > Now the next bit...
> >
> > I'm aware that if something is the same proposition, then clothing it in
> > different language (i.e. types or tokens, as it were) fails to alter it's
> > truth conditions (it does alter its doxastic conditions - I don't know
> > what
> > the hell M-Ponty is on about most of the time, even if it's all true).
> > That
> > does not come to bear on my point. My point was (and perhaps I didn't
> > explain it well) that charity is required to discover the actual
> > proposition at the middle of all of the purple prose. What M-P and that
> > lot
> > (including D) say is very difficult, and does not make use of familiar
> > notions, and so we have to refuse to take what they say on face value in
> > order to under *what they really mean* and then judge *that* proposition.
> >
> > I hope that makes sense.
> > Cheers,
> > Daniel.
> >
> >
> > Browse or search the BUPS-DIS archives, or unsubscribe from the mailing
> > list at: http://www.bups.org/mailinglist.shtml
> >
--
Andrew Bacon
Lady Margaret Hall
07830048336
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady1900
Browse or search the BUPS-DIS archives, or unsubscribe from the mailing list at: http://www.bups.org/mailinglist.shtml