Matt, List: Which of the Five Ways of Aquinas includes only premises that "can possibly have a shred of inductive support"? They are not intended to persuade non-theists to become theists, but rather to demonstrate how certain combinations of other beliefs *warrant *or even *require *theism. As I stated previously, that is also my objective here.
On the other hand, my first premise is *falsifiable*, at least in principle. All we need is one counterexample--a single Sign that is *not *determined by an Object other than itself. Can you suggest one? Your proposed revision--"every Sign save the universe-as-a-whole is determined by an Object other than itself"--not only begs the question, but also amounts to special pleading. The support that I offered for my two premises consisted entirely of quotes from Peirce's writings. Someone who rejects his definitions of Sign and Object--which require the latter to be *external *to, *independent *of, and *unaffected *by the former--will obviously reject my argumentation out of hand. Likewise, someone who denies that the entire Universe is a Sign will just as readily dismiss it. However, in either case, it should be acknowledged that one is deviating from Peirce's own explicitly stated views; i.e., that he was *incorrect *to affirm one or both of those propositions. Then the question becomes what ramifications this has for his (and our) understanding of Signs and the Universe. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Sun, Feb 3, 2019 at 3:34 PM Matt Faunce <matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Feb 3, 2019, at 3:55 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > My argument is deductively valid, so in order to disagree with its > conclusion, one must also disagree with at least one of its premises. With > which of those premises do you specifically disagree, and why? > > Jon, here's my 2 cents. > > > I don't think your inclusion of "every" in your major premise, "every Sign > is determined by an Object other than itself," can possibly have a shred of > inductive support. That is, I think your major premise is a mere hypothesis. > > > I wonder if your major premise is analogous to this: "Every point making a > black dot is black." Here I'm referring to a black area on an otherwise > white plane. According to bivalent logic it is either true or false that a > given point making up the black dot is black—and we'd have to say "true." > But, Peirce discovered tri-valent logic by wondering about the color of the > outer borderline of the dot separating the black dot from the white > surroundings, and determined that, since no point in the line can be half > black and half white, and since you can't butt two points up together (one > point in the white line surrounding the dot and the other point at the > outer black line of the dot abutting the white line) with no room in > between, the borderline's color must be indeterminate. So, the logic by > which everyone thought the major premise, "every point making a black dot > is black", was secure, was in fact not applicable to that outer edge, and > therefore the inclusion of "every" is specious. I think that it may be, by > analogy, that the logic by which you think the major premise, "every Sign > is determined by an Object other than itself", is secure, is likewise not > applicable to your task. I can accept this revision: "every Sign save the > universe-as-a-whole is determined by an Object other than itself," but > that's not useful for your task. > > > The mere possibility that your major premise, "Every Sign is determined by > an Object other than itself", is analogous to this major premise, "Every > point making a black dot is black", means that your major premise is a mere > hypothesis. It's not inductively supported because you can't possibly > assign a probability to the status of the analogy, for example, "the > probably that the analogy holds is 25%." It would be like determining the > color content of beans in a bag after randomly sampling a percentage of > beans from all but the bottom layer of the bag. The probability that you > assign to your induction doesn't apply to the contents of the whole bag but > only to the area from which you were capable of sampling. If you pulled all > white beans, the statement, "all the beans in the bag are white", must > still be treated as a hypothesis. (I'm not considering that you have a clue > as to how the beans got into the bag, as that would be useful information; > all that you could include in your induction about how the universe got > here are further hypotheses.) > > > A valid syllogism that has a hypothetical major premise has a hypothetical > conclusion. So your deduction begs the question: Can the reality of God be > logically supported? > > > Matt >
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