(March 21, 2018 at 9:59 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:

(March 21, 2018 at 5:11 pm)Jenny A Wrote:

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Syllogisms cannot be used to prove the existence of things.  There's nothing wrong with the Socrates is mortal syllogism because it does not attempt to prove the existence of immortals.  

All men born of women are mortal
Socrates was not born of a women
HTherefore Socrates is immortal

Anytime a syllogism provides new facts about the world instead of sorting out the facts we have, it involves a fallacy of some kind.

Are you getting this principle from somewhere else or is this something you came up with yourself.  I haven't seen this as a standard philosophical principle, I'm trying to understand it.  Do you know why this is.

The phrase, "it involves a fallacy of some kind" doesn't inspire confidence as a solid principle.

Fair enough. Look at how a syllogism works.  It takes two propositions that relate to each other in some way to make a conclusion about one of the subjects of the propositions based upon information stated in each  proposition.  What it does not do is produce new information not stated in the original propositions.

All  A are B
C is an A
Therefore C is an A

No new facts or entities are created.

No A are B
C is an A
Therefore C is not a B

No new facts or entities are created.

Illogical syllogisms often result in new facts or entities only implied by the propositions.

When one or both propositions are negative  but the result is positive (A common fallacy) a new fact or entity is often created.

All A's can't swim
B is not an A
Therefore B can swim

The conclusion is not proven.  But more than that the conclution asserts a catagory of this not actually stated in the premises, i.e, that somethings can swim.  Do you recognize it? It's how I smuggled the existence of immortals into my Socrates syllogism. 


Or a catagorical syllogism in which both propositions are negative.

No A is B
Some B are not C
Therefore, some C are not A

Whoops.  This is subtler but neither  proposition says anything about A's relationship to C.  It's a new and undemonstrated relationship.


Things that E  must have a C
B does E
Therefore B must have a C

No problem there.  You do recognize it? As long as both premises are true it works.  And if the words begin to exist and  cause have the same meaning in both propositions and both propositions are true and no new information is added.  

My contention is that the propositions do not carry the same meaning in both both propositions.  What is really being said is:

Things created out of preexisting matter must have a material cause
A is created without the use of preexisting matter
Therefore A must have an uncreated cause

Symobically stated:

All things that E must have a C
B does E1
Therefore B must have a E-less C

Whoops, where did that uncreated cause  E-less category slip in?  It's not in the propositions.

You can fix it by making all the causes and all the methods of coming into existence the same, and it will work logically.  Either

(A)
1 All things created out of matter have a material cause
2 B was created out of matter
3. Therefore B had a material cause

Or

(B) 
1 All things created out of nothing have an uncreated cause
2 B was created out of nothing
3  Therefore B had an uncreated cause.

Neither commit logical fallacy.  But demonstrating the propositions would be an uphill battle.

(March 21, 2018 at 5:11 pm)Jenny A Wrote:

(March 21, 2018 at 3:44 pm)SteveII Wrote: A couple of things. One, an inductive argument is going to have, within its premises, mention of the subject (or in this case, it's negation) it is arguing for. There is no inherent logical problem nor is there a fallacy in this fact alone. I am not sure if you have a logical reason for thinking this important in this case or that you just think it should not happen in general. I would point you back to the All Men are Mortal...Socrates is Mortal argument. 

Two, not that it matters for the argument but a Platonist would say that a number of abstract objects would be included in the set of things that do not being to exists. Many mathematicians are Platonists. Another is people like Polymath and Grandizer think the universe exists infinitely in the past so did not begin to exist. It could also be another argument that there is nothing in that set. It's really not the question the argument was designed to analyze.

Syllogisms cannot be used to prove the existence of things.  There's nothing wrong with the Socrates is mortal syllogism because it does not attempt to prove the existence of immortals.  

All men born of women are mortal
Socrates was not born of a women
Therefore Socrates is immortal

Anytime a syllogism provides new facts about the world instead of sorting out the facts we have, it involves a fallacy of some kind.

I'm not sure whether you are limiting yourself to the old Aristotelian syllogisms, but the more modern versions absolutely can prove the existence of things.

So, The statement 'there is an x such that P(x)' is equivalent to 'it is false that for all x, P(x) is false'. So, to prove an existence, we simply need to negate a universal claim. So,

All A are B.
C is not B
-----------
There exists something that is not A.

is a correct deductive form.

Your claim that syllogisms do not provide 'new' facts about the world is, while technically true, very misleading. As an example, take any non-trivial result in mathematics. That result is proven via syllogisms from previous results. Hence, in a sense, it is not 'new knowledge'. But that is clearly not a useful way to talk about things. The new, non-trivial, result is definitely new knowledge that was not clear from the previously known material and in which the syllogism produced a new perspective.

More specifically, suppose we start out in geometry class with the basic axioms for lines and angles. Later, the Pythagoren theorem is proven from those assumptions. To say that is not 'new knowledge' even though it is 'contained' in the axioms seems to be a very strange way to use the language.

Did someone say “more likely than not”?

Firstly, there’s no possible way to evaluate the probabilities for the KCA premises (if they even make sense). But let’s say each one was 3/5 likely to be true, and they are independent.

That gives a probability that both are true of 9/25, meaning there’s a 16/25 chance the conclusion is wrong even though the premises are most likely true.

I am not able to figure this 'more likely than not' either.
Its one of the reasons that even when I was a Christian the KCA. made little sense to me.

To me it always relied deeply on a pre existing belief in a god who caused things. Personally I never understood the leap to a god, or intelligence of any type, even though at the time I believed in a god.

The "more likely than not" business came when someone started babbling about inductive arguments as though the kca weren't a deductive argument.

Because the kca..the deductive argument..isn;t actually their argument for god in the first place. It's just the argument they'd rather bounce back and forth while they silently assent to some other "argument"..that actually does contain a god.

ala

If caused things have causes (the sum total of the kca, lol)
maybe god is one of those causes. (a profession of their faith that god exists in the first place to -be- a cause)

(March 22, 2018 at 8:59 am)polymath257 Wrote:

(March 21, 2018 at 5:11 pm)Jenny A Wrote: Syllogisms cannot be used to prove the existence of things.  There's nothing wrong with the Socrates is mortal syllogism because it does not attempt to prove the existence of immortals.  

All men born of women are mortal
Socrates was not born of a women
Therefore Socrates is immortal

Anytime a syllogism provides new facts about the world instead of sorting out the facts we have, it involves a fallacy of some kind.

I'm not sure whether you are limiting yourself to the old Aristotelian syllogisms, but the more modern versions absolutely can prove the existence of things.

So, The statement 'there is an x such that P(x)' is equivalent to 'it is false that for all x, P(x) is false'. So, to prove an existence, we simply need to negate a universal claim. So,

All A are B.
C is not B
-----------
There exists something that is not A.

is a correct deductive form.

Your claim that syllogisms do not provide 'new' facts about the world is, while technically true, very misleading. As an example, take any non-trivial result in mathematics. That result is proven via syllogisms from previous results. Hence, in a sense, it is not 'new knowledge'. But that is clearly not a useful way to talk about things. The new, non-trivial, result is definitely new knowledge that was not clear from the previously known material and in which the syllogism produced a new perspective.

More specifically, suppose we start out in geometry class with the basic axioms for lines and angles. Later, the Pythagoren theorem is proven from those assumptions. To say that is not 'new knowledge' even though it is 'contained' in the axioms seems to be a very strange way to use the language.

I'll try to be more precise.  Syllogism can not be used to show the existence of things not contained in the premises:

All A is B.
C is not B
-----------
There exists something that is not A.

The conclusion is true, but it does not conclude that there are things other than As, B's, and Cs. All of the not-As proven in the conclusion are Cs.  Whether there are not-As which are also not-Cs is not shown because nothing in the premises contains information about things which are not A, B, or C.  

 What it does do is tell us something new about the relationship between As, B's, and Cs.  I'm not suggesting that new propositions about A, B, and C aren't useful.  They certainly can be.

(March 21, 2018 at 4:38 pm)Jenny A Wrote:

(March 21, 2018 at 11:18 am)SteveII Wrote: Remember, the premise does not have to be 100% proven. It just has to be more likely than not. On this point, I would say it exceeds that threshold and is near the "almost definitely true" end of the spectrum. 

I remember no such thing.  And I'm going to start here, because I find this statement flabergasting.   

We are rehashing things already discussed. I cannot possibly know what posts you have read. Here is the very first paragraph under the article of Inductive Reasoning:

Quote:Inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning or abductive reasoning) is a method of reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying strong evidence for the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument may be probable, based upon the evidence given.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning

Quote:More likely than not is not the standard for premises in syllogisms.   (I'll get to whether your premises exceed that standard in minute). If your standard is, "more likely than not," then you are obliged to add more likely than not to each conclusion following from that premise.  If more than one of your premises is merely "more likely than not" the chances of  the conclusion following from those premises will fall below 50%.  For example, if the chance premise A is correct is 51% and the chance premise B is correct is also 51%, then the chances that they are both correct is just 26%. Even if the chances that each premise is correct are 70% the chances of both premises being correct drops to 49% and thus becomes less likely than not.

Just about everything in that paragraph is wrong--starting with your requirements about premises in a syllogism. Read the link above to learn more about an inductive argument. 

As to the percentage question, you do NOT multiply probabilities together to come up with a net probability in a syllogism. The conclusion's probability is equal to the lowest of the premise probabilities. Think about it--the more premises you have that are likely true would reduce the net probability if you multiplied them together. 

Quote:

(March 21, 2018 at 11:18 am)SteveII Wrote: This is the point at which you are not understanding me. I am not extrapolating rules.  That would actually be a composition fallacy and not a category error--but that is beside the point. Premise 1 does not say: Everything that begins to exist in the universe has a cause. It it making a general statement that is meant to apply to all possible worlds, all possible universes, all possible states of reality that may have come prior to a particular universe. It is a metaphysical statement that applies to any existence -- not a scientific one which would only apply within our universe. 

WLC, the foremost authority on this argument, said it this way in an article:

That is where we disagree.  The concept that something cannot come from nothing is an empirically based idea.  Craig asserts it as an empirically based idea in his third reason,  "Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise."  It comes from observation of things within the universe.  (Interestingly, it may not be true even within the universe at the quantum level.  https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...icles-rea/)  For this inductive reasoning to follow, one must take it as proof that the universe was made of something that predated the universe.

While the "concept that something cannot come from nothing" has empirical support, it also has metaphysical support (WLC reasons 1 and 2). His exact quote in his third reason is "Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise (1). Premise (1) is constantly verified and never falsified." In other words, even science agrees to this principle. You cannot fashion from this some argument from composition. 

Quote:Let's take a look at Craig's other arguments for the premise that something cannot come from nothing

Quote:f something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn't come into being from nothing . . .  Why is it only universes that can pop into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can't be anything about nothingness that favors universes, for nothingness doesn't have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness, since there isn't anything to be constrained!

Interestingly, it still  seems Craig is asserting that the universe was created from something. The actual argument doesn't work though.  The discriminating factor could simply be that something only comes into being in actual  nothingness.  The universe is something, so things cannot spontaniouly begin to exist within it.

No, he is not asserting anything of the kind. He is outlining the problems you have if you are going to go the route that things can begin to exist without a cause. Regarding the last sentence, are you saying that the universe somehow has the property of shielding us from things popping into existence and without it, that shield is gone? 

Quote:But let's assume for a moment that Craig is right that something can never come out of nothing. Lets take that a little further, as I did before:

Quote:You could of course argue that the universe is made up of pre-existing matter.  But if you go that way, then you will have to add all existing matter to the set of things that did not begin to exist in which case under your formulation, matter being eternal  would not need a cause.)

To which you responded

Quote:I wouldn't go that way.

I don't think Craig would go that way either.  But all of his arguments in favor of the premise that all things that begin to exist have a cause are nothing more than arguments that something cannot come out of nothing. Coming into existence in his arguments is merely assuming a new form.  It's a rearangement of the existing molecular furniture.  Matter can only come from matter is the jist of his argument not that all matter has a cause.  If matter cannot come from nothing, than the obvious conclusion is that the matter that makes up the world in this universe has always existed whether it was a universe or not.  Other than it doesn't require God, what troubles you about this conclusion?

You missed something along the way. There is no 'jist' that "matter can only come from matter'. You read in your own meaning to something somewhere. Look back over the reasons and realize that each word was chosen on purpose. You are probably getting your 'jist' from the answer you would give to his questions. Go ahead, paste the precise quote that suggests what you are talking about and I will show you where you are wrong. 

Quote:The idea that matter is it's own first cause of its current form is no less logical than that was also a preexisting thing that created the existing universe out of prexisting matter.  In fact it's more likely as it only requires stuff that we know exists to have existed eternally and not that a thing we don't know exists to have existed externally.

If you reject the notion that the universe is made of preexisting stuff, than you are back to comparing  what we know about the transformation of stuff from one form or another to the actual creation of stuff.  Adding a magician (or god) to create stuff out of nothing is not helpful. It's merely a place holder for we don't know how stuff is created.

I won't think what we know about the transformation of stuff has any application to the actual creation of new material or whether the material out of which the universe is eternal.

There are several possibilities:

(1) The material out of which the universe is made is eternal and it's  interactions with itself are it's  own cause; or

(2) Something, i.e. the material out of which the universe is made, can begin to exist spontaneously,  but actual nothing is required for spontaneous existence which is why stuff doesn't spontaniouly exist within the universe;

(3) Only the smallest most basic particles can spontaneously  begin to exist.  The universe began from the spontaneous generation of micro particles.  That has the advantage of considering the spontaneous creation of virtual particles observed by physicists.

(4) A prexisting agency (you can call it god if you like, but I wouldn't as it's only attribute appears to be the abilty to create matter) of some kind created matter out of nothing.

(5) A preexisting agency of some kind created the universe out of prexeisting matter.

Of the five, I find 4 or 5 the least likely because they require the existense of something beyond what we know to exist.

1. Except the concept that matter existing for an infinite amount of time has logical problems all through it. There is no concept that would allow for matter that could have traversed an actual infinite number of causes/effects to get to the beginning of our universe. 

2-3. Are basically the same thing. Believing that seems to be the result of not wanting the argument to succeed. I am not even sure anyone seriously believes this let along get it to the threshold of "likely". This violates every thread of reasoning ever--because, again, causality seems to be an objective feature of reality and you want to deny that to salvage an argument. 

4. No that would not be it's only attributes. This has been discussed already too (twice): 

A cause of the universe must be:

Changeless/timeless: these go together. To be in a timeless state, there can be no change. Since time itself came into existence at the first moments of the universe, prior to that must be a timeless state. 

Immaterial: Since space came into existence at the first moments of the universe, the cause must not be made of at least the material in our universe. Material/physical object need space in which to exists and then you have the question that if space exists, then time exists. 

Personal: Rather than me reword WLC explanation of Ghazali's explanation, here it is:

Quote:Finally, Ghazali argued that this Uncaused First Cause must also be a personal being. It’s the only way to explain how an eternal cause can produce an effect with a beginning like the universe.

Here’s the problem: If a cause is sufficient to produce its effect, then if the cause is there, the effect must be there, too. For example, the cause of water’s freezing is the temperature’s being below 0 degrees Celsius. If the temperature has been below 0 degrees from eternity, then any water around would be frozen from eternity. It would be impossible for the water to begin to freeze just a finite time ago. Now the cause of the universe is permanently there, since it is timeless. So why isn’t the universe permanently there as well? Why did the universe come into being only 14 billion years ago? Why isn’t it as permanent as its cause?

Ghazali maintained that the answer to this problem is that the First Cause must be a personal being endowed with freedom of the will. His creating the universe is a free act which is independent of any prior determining conditions. So his act of creating can be something spontaneous and new. Freedom of the will enables one to get an effect with a beginning from a permanent, timeless cause. Thus, we are brought not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe but to its Personal Creator.

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings...-argument/

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(March 21, 2018 at 5:34 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: @steve

I’m very interested in your explanation for how events can happen absent time.

They can't

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(March 22, 2018 at 9:26 am)robvalue Wrote: Did someone say “more likely than not”?

Firstly, there’s no possible way to evaluate the probabilities for the KCA premises (if they even make sense). But let’s say each one was 3/5 likely to be true, and they are independent.

That gives a probability that both are true of 9/25, meaning there’s a 16/25 chance the conclusion is wrong even though the premises are most likely true.

Except that is NOT the way a deductive argument works. The probability of the conclusion is equal to the lowest probability of the premises. By your method, you could have 20 reasons to believe something is true and the probability would be way way way smaller than if you gave 2. So, obviously that is not the way it works.

Bad at apologism, and bad at math.  It is indeed possible that two probabilities calculated yield a higher probability than 20.  The whole business distinctly favors smaller numbers of calculated probabilities by default. That is how that works.

An entire mountain of shit...Steve..is still shit, regardless of how much you might enjoy mouthing the words "cumulative case" in the absence of..you know..having a case.

(March 22, 2018 at 3:56 pm)SteveII Wrote: Personal: Rather than me reword WLC explanation of Ghazali's explanation, here it is:

Quote:Finally, Ghazali argued that this Uncaused First Cause must also be a personal being. It’s the only way to explain how an eternal cause can produce an effect with a beginning like the universe.

Here’s the problem: If a cause is sufficient to produce its effect, then if the cause is there, the effect must be there, too. For example, the cause of water’s freezing is the temperature’s being below 0 degrees Celsius. If the temperature has been below 0 degrees from eternity, then any water around would be frozen from eternity. It would be impossible for the water to begin to freeze just a finite time ago. Now the cause of the universe is permanently there, since it is timeless. So why isn’t the universe permanently there as well? Why did the universe come into being only 14 billion years ago? Why isn’t it as permanent as its cause?

Ghazali maintained that the answer to this problem is that the First Cause must be a personal being endowed with freedom of the will. His creating the universe is a free act which is independent of any prior determining conditions. So his act of creating can be something spontaneous and new. Freedom of the will enables one to get an effect with a beginning from a permanent, timeless cause. Thus, we are brought not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe but to its Personal Creator.

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings...-argument/

Do you or Craig have any evidence that the creation event did not occur immediately upon the necessary prior conditions being fulfilled? Some theologians posit that there is no separation between God being and God creating.

(March 22, 2018 at 3:56 pm)SteveII Wrote:

(March 21, 2018 at 4:38 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I remember no such thing.  And I'm going to start here, because I find this statement flabergasting.   

We are rehashing things already discussed. I cannot possibly know what posts you have read. Here is the very first paragraph under the article of Inductive Reasoning:

Quote:Inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning or abductive reasoning) is a method of reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying strong evidence for the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument may be probable, based upon the evidence given.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning

Quote:More likely than not is not the standard for premises in syllogisms.   (I'll get to whether your premises exceed that standard in minute). If your standard is, "more likely than not," then you are obliged to add more likely than not to each conclusion following from that premise.  If more than one of your premises is merely "more likely than not" the chances of  the conclusion following from those premises will fall below 50%.  For example, if the chance premise A is correct is 51% and the chance premise B is correct is also 51%, then the chances that they are both correct is just 26%. Even if the chances that each premise is correct are 70% the chances of both premises being correct drops to 49% and thus becomes less likely than not.

Just about everything in that paragraph is wrong--starting with your requirements about premises in a syllogism. Read the link above to learn more about an inductive argument. 

As to the percentage question, you do NOT multiply probabilities together to come up with a net probability in a syllogism. The conclusion's probability is equal to the lowest of the premise probabilities. Think about it--the more premises you have that are likely true would reduce the net probability if you multiplied them together. 

Actually, Jenny is more correct that you are here. If a premise is 100% certain, the multiplication (by 1.0) doesn't change the overall probability. If it is less than 100%, it does and should reduce the overall probability from that.
That said,the simple multiplication is only correct when the premises are probabilistically independent of each other. Otherwise, you multiply the *conditional* probabilities of each based on the previous ones to get the overall probability. The conditional probabilities can be very different than the non-conditional probability of each event.