mitchellmckain wrote:Dr Mundo wrote:When I wrote that I meant to use the word "good" to represent arguments that where both valid and sound.
That an argument is valid does not mean that its conclusion is correct.
I never said it did.
A valid argument is not a proof.
Never said it was.
As I repeat so many times, logic can ONLY take us from premises to conclusions and therefore no matter how valid the logic may be, if the premises are not true then the conclusion need not follow.
Then its not BOTH valid and sound. I said,
both valid and sound in my post.
Now it is said that an argument is only sound if its premises are correct but that is only meaningful if there is a means of establishing whether the premises are correct or not.
Right, so I have no interest in an argument whose premises can not be established.
Thus in practice, a valid argument will generally be considered sound by those who think the premises are true and will be considered unsound by those who think the premises are not true. In other words, most of the time, there is no objective means of judging whether an argument is sound or not.
I am interested in hearing out arguments that we can verify, if we can not, then I couldn't care less what sorts of arguments people could make up and try to pass for as truth.
Furthermore, anyone can say that nearly any argument is not sound because the premises are not true,
Sure and anyone could say that red tastes like sunshine, if you want to claim that there is an error in a premise than you must demonstrate it to be so. You can't just walking around making assertions without backing them up.
...I usually introduce two more distinctions: whether a premise is reasonable and whether it can be established objectively. I say that a premise is reasonable if is consistent with what science has concluded, and I say that a premise is objectively established if as a result of following proper scientific proceedure, the scientific community agrees that it is correct.
I have no issues with this as it seems you would be after the same sort of thing I would be in demonstrable claims.
What I said was that there have been many arguments that a great many people have thought are very good and produced all kinds of evidence that many people think "suggest" that their views are correct. All these people thought that the arguments were sound because they thought the premises were correct.
It doesn't matter what they thought, (with regards to the validity and soundness of an argument) what matters is what they can demonstrate to be so.
But they fail to convince many skeptics because the skeptics do not think that the premises are correct. So to use my further distinctions, I would say that there have been many valid arguments for the existence of God from premises that are quite reasonable but that there never could be any valid arguments for the existence of God from premises that that are objectively established.
I am incline to believe you, although for different reasons. I suspect that there is no such God in existence and so any argument to support that claim would not be both. It might just be valid, but not sound.
You will always find me arguing against the objective validity of any argument for the existence of God because that just isn't consitent with the kind of God that I believe in.
Mitch no disrespect but it doesn't matter what kind of God you believe in, what matters to me is what kind of things you can demonstrate.
For me this is completely about whether what can be objectively established could ever define the limits of reality.
I wouldn't even want to begin to assert that.
I believe in God and a spiritual aspect to reality BECAUSE I believe that the answer is no, that what can be objectively established does not define the limits of reality. That assertion is itself one of the things that cannot be objectively established. But I think that one of the things that CAN be objectively established is that it is impossible to consistently define human knowledge according to what can be objectively established and that such a limitation on what can be called human knowledge is no more valid or justifiable than simply defining human knowledge as whatever the Bible says.
We go over this back and forth. You say you understand my point yet you always bring this back up. Do you understand that I am not saying that what we humans can objectively establish is the limit to what could possibly exist. Could you tell me you understand that please, you say these things to me way to often even after I have tried to clarify that this isn't my position.
