You, on the other hand, fling around insults without actually trying to prove me wrong. How can I have a rational debate with someone who’ll just claim his terms have a special, personalized meaning that just happen to invalidate whatever arguement I’m making.
You said :
That is a bizarre definition of truth. It appears designed to capitalize on the fondness people have for the word “love”, while meaning something completely different. Why didn’t you pick a different word for your . . . special . . . definition, like “truck” ? The statement “I defined trucks as the facilitation of goodness” would make just as much sense. Of course, then people wouldn’t think you were argueing something profound.
I never indicated that a definition and a premise are the same thing, but your argument has your definition of love as a premise.
Never said it did.
I have studied Christian theology (as an elective, not as a major), as an undergrad, at a world-class institution, and this definition is not familiar to me. Since I am a member of the set “anyone,” your premise is thus disproven.
Suppose you have a daughter and suppose you know where she is. Now, a man comes to your door, introduces himself as a serial rapist, and asks, “Sir, where is your daughter now?” Is your love for your daughter diminished in any way by lying to him?
If a definition and a premise are not the same thing, then how is it possible that a definition is a premise?
There are two arguments made in the OP. The premise of the first is “there exists truth without love” The premise of the second is “there exists love without truth”. A simple modus tollens is then applied to examine the veracity of each. Neither premise is a definition.
“Love seeks opportunity to do good to all men.” — *Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words *
One can also have a truth that is not loving, so what? What good has a man done when he walks up to a woman on the subway and says, “Madam, yours is truly the ugliest face I’ve ever seen.”?
The rest of your argument follows explicitly from that definition. I don’t need to tell you that; you wrote it.
That doesn’t make “something that seeks an opportunity to do good to all men” a workable definition of love, any more that we can define love as “something that lies bleeding,” because of the Elton John song.
Tell me if merely avoiding the confusing definition of love does serious injury to this conclusion?
I think it stands up pretty well, and avoids unneccessary bickering.
The bickering is unecessary altogether, as the contributions of Tevildo, Sentient, Cosmosdan, and Monavis have demonstrated. The OP is not an argument; it’s an OP. I’ve identified for you the two logical arguments it contains — which, inexplicably, you denied and then confirmed. All arguments should have their terms defined, but the definitions are not themselves a part of any argument. That’s why Euclid offered his definitions before his premises.
Honestly, if you are hell bent on having a debate about what constitutes an argument, how definitions can be premises, and the like, please have at it, but elsewhere if you don’t mind.
I think some of us are just striving for clarity and purpose in this discussion, and it would be better to respond with clarity and purposes instead of splitting hairs and being condescending.
You mention in the OP that the potential for “gamemanship” in the discussion is extremely high. I took this as a cautionary note, but perhaps it was a challenge.
The “challenge” is to debate whether love (in the Christian sense) can exist independently of truth. I invite you to take on the challenge whenever it is convenient for you.
Okay, look, this is how formal philosophical debate works, at least in the myriad classes I’ve taken involving philosophy and symbolic/formal logic:
Liberal has set up an argument here. It consists of a definition and some conclusions reached by reasoning from that definition. You have two avenues for arguing it–you can argue that his definition is not valid, or that his logic is not valid.
Clearly you intend to do the former–is it too much to ask that you do so politely? Words are just markers for ideas, they are not ideas themselves. When someone says “I defined love as the facilitation of goodness”, getting bent out of shape about the word “love” is as nonsensical as getting annoyed with someone for writing x^2 = y^2 + z^2 instead of a^2 + b^2 = c^2 --the variables are just symbols for a value, even if the variables are words and the value is a definition.
I see your point. I take that statement only as a matter of form because of the being in GD rather than a dismissal of any other opinion. It means “if you don’t agree then let’s have a go at it” rather than “i don’t care about your opinion at all” Maybe I’m wrong. I do agree that if the posts continued in the feeling you sugest I would quickly lose interest in particpating.
Thanks for contributing that. I did invite people objecting to the terms to discard both “love” and “truth” and discuss “X” and “Y” instead. That entire hijack, which you have adroitly analyzed, is like jumping into a discussion about baseball and protesting that a pitcher can be a vessel for holding liquid and that therefore the discussion about baseball makes no sense.
Instead of truth, I think ‘knowledge’ should be the word used; i.e., you have knowledge that this guy is a serial rapist, you probably don’t know the truth.
On the contrary, you have made my argument and destroyed the one you intended to make. The OP states unequivocally that claims about truth are epistemic in nature, and that a truth is something known or not known. That definition was taken from the post in the other thread that the OP quoted. (For purposes of this discussion, we’re setting aside the fact that there are many truth theories and are accepting the one offered by Monavis.)
Precisely because truth is epistemic, you cannot know whether what you did for your buddy was a good thing or a bad thing, even though he died of insulin shock. You do not know, for example, that had you failed to give him your candy bar, he might have been kidnapped by terrorists that evening and tortured non-stop for thirty days and nights until he died — a fate far worse.
Moreover, withholding the truth from the serial rapist does nothing more than cloud the epistemological waters. You could just as easily protect your daughter by answering him with a shotgun, and in the process possibly save the lives of other girls.
As defined, truth is nothing more than the fabric of reality. It is, as Monavis said, what is. Love, on the other hand, is the conduit by which reality is created, if we define goodness as that aesthetic which edifies. Thus, in a very real way, love creates truth.
Dang. If I’d seen that on preview, I could have saved some typing. Again we agree. The man might have lied to you, and not be a serial rapist at all. The question really isn’t at all about what you know, but about what you value. It is a question of aesthetics rather than epistemology.
Huh? Why not just go for the Jews in the attic and Nazi’s example? You know better than that. My love for my daughter of course makes me want to protect her whenever I can. Even if that means lying when I see no other possible means or under the pressure of having to make a quick choice. My love for myself makes me strive to be truthful. My wanting to understand and live “love thine enemy” makes me want that too.
In the scenario you’ve suggested I assume that I know or at least suspect that this person presents some danger to my daughter. The truthful answer would be. " I’m not going to tell you that" maybe with a polite “I don’t trust you” and a heavily implied threat. This seems more a test of love than truth to me.
My dear young man, here’s your little shovel. Go back out an play.
The OP states unequivocally that claims about truth are epistemic in nature, and that a truth is something known or not known. That definition was taken from the post in the other thread that the OP quoted. (For purposes of this discussion, we’re setting aside the fact that there are many truth theories and are accepting the one offered by Monavis.)