Well yeah, that brings up another argument that grates on me:
“Using hyphenated American descriptors (which serve as a handy way to distinguish groups of Americans from the vast pool of other Americans, for the purpose of making some kind of point) only fosters divisiness and disharmony!”
So the next time I want to describe a neighborhood predominately composed of, say, Chinese-Americans, why should I use up perfectly good air to replace the rather pithy “Chinese-Americans” with the more long-winded “Americans who have recently immigrated from China or are closely related to someone who has?”
Question: Is it more politically correct to use words like “African-American” or is it more PC to shun such terms because they are supposedly harmful and useless?
My disfavorites are those of gun rights advocates…
Argument 1 The Second Amendment guarantees my right to a gun.
Rebuttal 1 No, the Second Amendment only prevents the federal government from disarming well-regulated militias. This has been consistently held by the courts for many years.
Argument 2 The militia means everybody.
Rebuttal 2 How can a militia be both “well-regulated” and universal?
Argument 3 Many of the founding fathers have all these wonderful quotes that show how much they love guns.
Rebuttal 3 Immaterial. What matters is what they actually put in the Second Amendment. Alexander Hamilton is often quoted as a gun advocate (presumably before he was shot to death).
Argument 4 Draft versions of the Second Amendment showed stronger support for gun rights.
Rebuttal 4 Immaterial. Draft versions of my house plans may show a bathroom where the kitchen is now, but that doesn’t mean I can poop there.
Sure, indivual A did something bad, but a bunch of indivuals at group B (where group B is tasked with oversight of invidual A’s actions) caught him! So, everything is fine!
The problem with this is that it is a win-win situation for those defending A. If indivudal A did something bad and was caught by group B, then no problem, the system works. If indivudal A does something bad and was not caught by group B, then no one would know about it, so again a win for the defenders of A.
I think people make a leap of defending person A to defending “the system”. Usually the system was never really under attack.
Now you’re just showin’ off, Lib. Whenever you start throwing in words like modality, metaphysical or epistemic my eyes glaze over; add in doxastic, and my head is on the desk. I dare you to use all four in a sentence.
Doxastic: pertaining to belief. However, often IMO when someone says they “believe” something it does not mean they are taking something on faith but rather on observations as well. So eventually we will involve epistemology here too
Interesting… although I don’t see the relevance to the current discussion (which, as I recall, involves proving negatives). Angels seem to me to be a fine example of something whose existence could easily be proved (an Angel could just show up and say “hi, look at my pretty wings, watch me provide manna for the hungry”) but is basically impossible to disprove.
"Where A is a wiff and K is a Kripke system?’ Oh, come on, now you’re just making things up to see if anyone is paying attention
(Although I assume that what you’re saying is something along the lines of “in certain constrained systems of logic, if something can be expressed as a theorem, then the possibility of the expression implies the possibility of the truth of that theorem”…)
Well, it began when I said that the assertion “you cannot prove a negative” is logically absurd. Misunderstanding me, you cited mathematics as a field in which negatives could be proven. I cleared up your misunderstanding and went on to say that, in general, such a claim was epistemically impossible. You then opined that ontological claims (claims about existence) were “very hard” to prove. I then explained that there is a difference between very hard and impossible, and pointed out that there can be ontological claims with various modalities, and that metaphysical claims (such as the one I made) were different from epistemic claims. You then cited a belief about angels, which I explained was a doxastic claim. You asked me to explain, and here we are.
A wiff is a well formed formula (WFF, pronounced and usually written as “wiff”). It is any statement that follows the rules of its system. A theorem is a statement that has a truth value. Useful theorems have true truth values. Kripke systems are bivalent systems of logic; that is, their theorems are either true or false. The most primitive K is usually called “first order logic”. Practially all modal logics are derived from K, based on this: any theorem that is true in K is necessarily true in K, or A(K) -> A.
This is one that has always bothered me. What’s wrong with saying Chinese? Or black, or white, or Jewish or Arab or whatever? Why do we have to put the -American at the end at all? It bugs me even more because we get people using the term up here and we aren’t even Americans! And don’t bring up the disingenous “We’re all North Americans” argument because that is NOT where -American originated.
What I really object to is not the PC-ness or the potential offence, but the cumbersome nature of it all. If I need to, for some reason, describe someone and include their race, then why can’t I just say “that black guy”, or “my Arab friend”? The problem with the -American descriptor is that it is a blanket term that may not apply. And yes, if you are going to use the term, then a white Nigerian deserves it as much as a black person who’s ancestors have been here for centuries - more so.
So… you claim that it would be possible to prove that Angels don’t exist? Or are you saying that proofs about angels are irrelevant to your initial claim that “you cannot prove a negative” is logically absurd. How might one go about proving such a thing?
I guess my overall claim is that your statement, " ‘you can not prove a negative’ is logically absurd" is overbroad.
It is not overbroad. Whether you are able or unable to prove that angels exist or don’t exist has nothing to do with whether the assertion is phrased positively or negatively. In fact, it is a common technique to state a premise as the negation of your hypothesis for the sole purpose of proving the premise false — which then proves your hypothesis true, by the law of excluded middle (either A is true or A is not true). Whether you can prove that angels exist depends on how you define angels and whether you are making a metaphysical or epistemic claim. If your claim is metaphysical, then you must show that there is at least one world (one set of one or more true statements) in which angels exist (your hypothesis obtains). If your claim is epistemic, then you must show that you or someone else has knowledge of at least one existing angel.
Aha, I finally believe I understand what you’re talking about. What you’re saying is that whether an assertion is provable or not has nothing to do with the simple and meaningless question of whether it’s phrased in a superficially negative fashion, and in fact most assertions can be phrased so that they sound negative or sound positive.
You are not, as far as I can tell, commenting on the question of whether it’s possible to prove that Angels don’t exist, as “proving that something doesn’t exist” and “proving a negative” are two different kettles of fish.
Are we now on the same page?
Some things are just self-evident. While it is certainly not true of ALL gay males (cuz I don’t think anyone ever asserted this about gay women), it is undeniably a feature of a certain significant segment of the gay male population. The mere existence of bathouses is a cite, for my money.
And I don’t know about the current young male gay population, but in my day, which was pretty damn promiscuous for everyone (70’s-80’s), my bi-chick self included, the gay guys still outdid us all.
I tried to read through this mess of a thread with all the gay marriage sidetracks, but fuck it. If these have been done already, please ignore:
This one’s been coming up a lot recently. The argument basically states that we ought not to be allowed to cure any evil unless we cure all evils.
Example: “Why should we ban X? Y is also bad, but Y is allowed.” The implication being that if any bad thing is allowed, all bad things must be allowed.
I’m right unless you can prove me wrong.
Example: “Since you can’t prove the Loch Ness Monster doesn’t exist, my belief in Nessie is just as valid as your non-belief in Nessie.” This travesty of logic is usually coupled with some sort of out-of-hand dismissal of Occam’s Razor.
The “free market” is intrinsically good, and all regulation is intrinsically bad. Nothing should ever be regulated. The free market will automatically right all wrongs. :rolleyes:
