What’s funny is that you’re still here. Don’t you have some tantrum to throw at your parents?
The principle of identity is assumed and ‘taken on faith’. It is inherently circular; the justification for the law of identity assumes its own validity. Now assuming the laws of logic to be true, we can now deduce truths that have a phenomenal track-record of adhering to our experience, which is why most reasonable people assume them to be true.
Okay, you are hopeless.
Uh oh, too wedded to your worldview to respond to the next part of my paragraph, which provides an argument for my assertion?
edit: in order to respond to a criticism that I know is coming:
Yes, I am aware that my claim as to the circularity of the law of identity assumes the validity of the laws of logic. All this means is that if the laws of logic are assumed to be true, then the laws of logic are not justified and inherently circular - the perfect example of an axiom.
However, if the laws of logic are not assumed to be true, then my critique is not valid, as it is reliant on logic.
Therefore, if you accept that the laws of logic are valid, then you must likewise accept that these laws are not justified.
No, it is not taken on faith.
From the article:
"This argument runs as follows: All of the only three (“tri”-lemma) possible attempts to get a certain justification must fail:
- All justifications in pursuit of certain knowledge have also to justify the means of their justification and doing so they have to justify anew the means of their justification. Therefore there can be no end. We are faced with the hopeless situation of ‘infinite regression’.
- One can justify with a circular argument, but this sacrifices its validity.
- One can stop at self-evidence or common sense or fundamental principles or speaking ‘ex cathedra’ or at any other evidence, but in doing so the intention to install certain justification is abandoned.
An English translation of a quote from the original German text by Albert is as follows:
Here, one has a mere choice between:
- an infinite regression, which appears because of the necessity to go ever further back, but isn’t practically feasible and doesn’t, therefore, provide a certain foundation;
- a logical circle in the deduction, which is caused by the fact that one, in the need to found, falls back on statements which had already appeared before as requiring a foundation, and which circle does not lead to any certain foundation either; and finally:
- a break of searching at a certain point, which indeed appears principally feasible, but would mean a random suspension of the principle of sufficient reason.
–Albert, H., Traktat über kritische Vernunft, p. 15 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1991).)
Albert stressed repeatedly that there is no limitation of the Münchhausen-Trilemma to deductive conclusions. The verdict concerns also inductive, causal, transcendental, and all otherwise structured justifications. They all will be in vain.
Therefore certain justification is impossible to attain. Once having given up the classical idea of certain knowledge one can stop the process of justification where one wants to stop, presupposed one is ready to start critical thinking at this point always anew if necessary.
This trilemma rounds off the classical problem of justification in the theory of knowledge.
The failure of proving exactly any truth as expressed by the Münchhausen-Trilemma does not have to lead to dismissal of objectivity, as with relativism. One example of an alternative is the fallibilism of Karl Popper and Hans Albert, accepting that certainty is impossible, but that it’s best to get as close as we can to truth, while remembering our uncertainty.
In Albert’s view the impossibility to prove any certain truth is not in itself a certain truth. After all, you need to assume some basic rules of logical inference in order to derive his result, and in doing so must either abandon the pursuit of “certain” justification, as above, or attempt to justify these rules, etc. He suggests that it has to be taken as true as long as nobody has come forward with a truth which is scrupulously justified as a certain truth."
That’s interesting. Now relate it to the topic in your own words.
No zefreak. So far, all you managed is showing that you are confused. It’s not really worth taking you even half seriously.
So, you can pretend that everything ultimately depends on ‘faith’, which hints that you (not me) are no different than the theists.
You can pretend that all premises are ultimately ‘unjustified’, though some premises are more unjustified than others…Nice doublethink…
You can pretend you don’t know what an axiom is…
You can pretend anything you want…
Is your padded cell comfy ?
Juan was stating that the law of identity is not ‘taken of faith’, which I took to mean “believing without justification”. You made a similar assertion. Hence why it is relevant to our discussion.
It’s self-justifying. That’s not faith. Something is itself. If it is not itself, then what is it? Discourse even requires that something be what it is for intelligibility.
You seriously aren’t aware of this?
That’s what I wonder, too.
I’m aware of this, I am not disputing the value of logic as an explanatory tool, solely arguing that, using the tools that logic gives us, one can determine the limits of knowledge. This includes the impossibility of ‘complete certainty’.
Rejecting logic is hardly a tenable position, but if you accept and value logic as I do you must face the fact that these tools are axiomatic (in the sense logicians use the term).
From Wiki - Infallibility
Epistemology, a branch of philosophy, is concerned with the question of what, if anything, humans can know.
Some philosophical schools deny that people can know anything; others deny that people can know anything with certainty. For details, see existentialism and skepticism.
The German critical rationalist philosopher Hans Albert presented a logical argument that fallibilism is ubiquitous and inevitable, even in the fields of mathematics and logic. For details, see Münchhausen Trilemma.
Other philosophical schools agree that people can know things with certainty. See metaphysics, epistemology, reason and logic.
Are you asserting with complete certainty that complete certainty is not possible ?
Sorry, but we can be completely certain that there are no square circles and other logical impossibilities.
And axiomatic != faith-based.
“Axioms and postulates are the basic assumptions underlying a given body of deductive knowledge. They are accepted without demonstration. All other assertions (theorems, if we are talking about mathematics) must be proven with the aid of these basic assumptions.”
From Wikipedia. Of course, this is just semantics. Why not just call your concept self-evident axioms?
Can you read?
“In Albert’s view the impossibility to prove any certain truth is not in itself a certain truth. After all, you need to assume some basic rules of logical inference in order to derive his result, and in doing so must either abandon the pursuit of “certain” justification, as above, or attempt to justify these rules, etc. He suggests that it has to be taken as true as long as nobody has come forward with a truth which is scrupulously justified as a certain truth.”"
That would be redundant. And it’s not semantics.
Just for your references:
Body and Soul: Human Nature and a the Crisis in Ethics by JP Moreland
It makes for case for substance dualism from a Thomistic rather than a Cartesian perspective.
The first one is wrong as we know. You don’t have to further justify if denial of your justification actually justifies it 