What's the latin phrase for "argument to a higher reason?"

[miragesyzygy]

I read it on a Wikipedia page once but I almost never look back at the title of the entry.

The example it gives is "If a person is dead, it's safe to say he is no longer breathing."

Somehow argumentum ad ratio superior is not only uninflected but sounds wrong.

[Marley23]

Moved to General Questions from Great Debates.

[Sampiro]

A fortiori (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_fortiori_argument)?

[njtt]

Your argument seems to have the form:
If X is dead, X is not breathing.
X is dead.
Therefore, X is not breathing.
The Latin name for that form is modus ponens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens).

[Derleth]

Your argument seems to have the form:
If X is dead, X is not breathing.
X is dead.
Therefore, X is not breathing.
The Latin name for that form is modus ponens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens).I don't think this is what the OP has in mind.

I think the OP wants an argument of this form:

We can conclude from a valid argument X is dead, so, by that argument, X cannot be breathing.

That is a fortiori, as has been mentioned.

[Farmer Jane]

I am so sorry for the 3rd post and I hate my touchy laptop for flipping around pages before I'm ready and I hate the 5 minute window right now. So mods, if you want to delete the previous two, I'd feel better. //pathetic face.


This is a modus ponens argument:

Dead people don't breathe.
James is dead.
Therefore, James is not isn't breathing.

But when you logically conclude "C" [therefore, it is safe to say...] based on A and B, it becomes the a fortiori statement that the other posters are talking about.

EXCEPT...I disagree. Kind of.

I were to just think, "He's dead, so he ain't breathing," I would know that rather subconsciously, and it would bea posteriori proposition, based on the idea that any rational adult over the age of seven would know that that dead people don't breathe. It indicates some degree of previous experience.

A fortiori would be: All living people are not dead.

[njtt]

I think for it to be an a fortiori there would have to be a logically necessary or conceptual connection between premise and conclusion. The connection between being dead and not breathing, however, is not a conceptual or necessary truth, it is merely empirical or nomological. For it to work as an argument you need to know that "Dead people do not breathe" is true. The fact that it is common knowledge, and does not really need to be made explicit does not mean that it is not a necessary premise for formal validity. The argument, as I said, is a modus ponens. (It is not uncommon for modus ponens arguments to rather trivial like this.)

Derleth, there is no sign in the OP that our knowledge that the person's is dead follows from some argument. It is just a given fact (suitable to serve as the second premise of the modus ponens).

[Farmer Jane]

I think for it to be an a fortiori there would have to be a logically necessary or conceptual connection between premise and conclusion. The connection between being dead and not breathing, however, is not a conceptual or necessary truth, it is merely empirical or nomological. For it to work as an argument you need to know that "Dead people do not breathe" is true. The fact that it is common knowledge, and does not really need to be made explicit does not mean that it is not a necessary premise for formal validity. The argument, as I said, is a modus ponens. (It is not uncommon for modus ponens arguments to rather trivial like this.)

Derleth, there is no sign in the OP that our knowledge that the person's is dead follows from some argument. It is just a given fact (suitable to serve as the second premise of the modus ponens).

But it's a presumption based on a predicate, so how is it not that a posteriori proposition applies here?

A fortiori would be something like: All countries have borders
because that is part of the definition of being a country: borders.

I guess you could say All dead people do not breathe because they cannot, since the definition of dead (kind of) is that you're not breathing.

But really, dead just means you're not alive.

Both are the same idea, but one has a greater degree of probability. However, "X is dead, therefore, he's probably not breathing" has to be a a posteriori proposition .

I only say this because on SD, it comes down to this a lot.

What you know that is influenced by your experience/rational argument/likelihood: Therefore, dude is probably dead

versus the stronger argument

x [I]is the definition of A, therefore, _____ MUST/must not be true.

Dude is not alive because he is dead.

[samclem]

Deleted first two posts by CitizenPained as they were posted by mistake.

samclem Moderator.