(January 11, 2012 at 6:08 am)Norfolk And Chance Wrote:(January 11, 2012 at 5:51 am)leo-rcc Wrote: Nobody is arguing in favour of a Santa Clause existing, but you keep using the conclusion that he doesn't exist as the support that your initial premise must therefore be correct. You got the logic completely backwards.
It's not about logic at this point. It is about the notion that people who consider themselves philosophers will not completely rule out that santa does might exist, which is barmy. There is zero chance of the santa as he is defined in popular culture existing. Why can't we just come out and say it?
I don't think you get it... The thought process is the important part, not the conclusion, and like it or not this process forces us to realise uncomfortable and unintuitive truths about our capacity to know things, namely the fact that even deciding what we mean by 'knowledge' and defining it in a consistent way is in the first place extremely difficult.
Yeah, I'm as certain that Santa doesn't exist as I am about pretty much anything, but I still can't demonstrate it without some non-zero probability that I'm wrong - this is necessarily true given that some of the premises used to conclude that Santa doesn't exist are themselves uncertain.
If you equate knowledge with proof or certainty I can't say that I know Santa exists, if you're using the word in the loose colloquial sense then sure, he doesn't exist.
But it's not straight forward - If you like logic and reason you'll have to get used to that fact.
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