(June 18, 2014 at 5:13 pm)fr0d0 Wrote:(June 18, 2014 at 12:58 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: I missed this point in my previous post. We're not thinking along the same lines here - you missed what I was alluding to.
Consider the classic deductive syllogism:
P1. All men are mortal.
P2. Socrates is a man.
C. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Assessing the validity of this syllogism is an exercise in pure deductive reasoning. Validity tells you nothing about the truth of your conclusion.
Assessing it's soundness (and thereby it's truth value) requires induction and experience - perhaps not yours, yes you could read about the experience of death and accept that all men die, but *someone* had to experience the mortality of humanity and inductively reason that all men are in fact mortal.
See where I'm going with this?
You're skewing the need for there to be empirical evidence at some point? We need to explore the opposite, or agree that a purely theoretical conclusion can be valid.
Apologies if you said that already
I completely agree that a purely theoretical conclusion can be valid, I'd go so far that it might even be sound - that would depend entirely upon the specific argument. When the premises make claims about things which are observable, we have a nexus with empiricism.
My point here is not that rationalism has a necessary dependency on empiricism, but that particular arguments do and as you've presented no arguments, I can't assess whether your claim that no empirical evidence is needed to prove them holds water or not. Perhaps you've seen arguments that are persuasive and are purely rational. As you've not deemed fit to share them with us, how might we know this?
(June 18, 2014 at 5:13 pm)fr0d0 Wrote:(June 18, 2014 at 12:59 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: Link? I must have missed it.
Here :
Yes, I saw those. What I was looking for was something with more substance, more specifics, a bit more meat on the bone, something for me to consider. Your explanation paraphrased is essentially, "I investigated it, reasoned it, and found it to be true." The devil's in the details, and the details were what I was after. You know, the rational arguments the you've found persuasive.
If you're unable or unwilling to share them, that's fine - say so. But please, don't continue in the fiction that you already have.