Post by FilmFlaneur on Aug 14, 2018 9:09:28 GMT
Logical fallacies are part of logic, Arlon. Even if, as you have done, one seeks to deny they exist for the sake of rhetorical convenience.
[Re: FF gives a standard definition of 'good' something which Arlon has claimed cannot be done!]
Arlon: Dictionaries provide synonyms; favorable, attractive, suitable, preferred, approved et cetera and antonyms; evil, bad, et cetera, none of which are any use in establishing whether any specific object (insects, goats) or event (rain, winds) is good.
Arlon: Dictionaries provide synonyms; favorable, attractive, suitable, preferred, approved et cetera and antonyms; evil, bad, et cetera, none of which are any use in establishing whether any specific object (insects, goats) or event (rain, winds) is good.
You asked for a definition of good, which I provided; and it is clear that similar definitions are readily found. Agreeing on what matches up to that definition is a separate issue (that morality is subjective is something I would agree with), and so by conflating the two here you are just being disingenuous. But I can see how you might need to be so.
there is no such thing as the "fallacy" you imagine.
You are welcome to your opinion. But I think I have shown that the Naturalistic Fallacy is something widely recognised as a thing, and why. But, show me wrong. Feel free to post your own links offering substantiation to the contrary. But you won't...
The greatest good for the greatest number is likewise no use in establishing whether any specific object or event is good. In its utter simplicity it is argumentum ad populum which is known to be fallacious in most matters of religion and science, if not politics. If you have 400 people in a room you could have 400 different notions of what is the greatest good for the greatest number
Which is ironic, not least since you have only just finished arguing against the use of fallacy as an argument! However you are being disingenuous, since my main definition of good did not rely on the argumentum ad populum. It was only in addition that I said that is something is good, then the most good will necessarily be of the greatest benefit - not, note, that such a proposition must be true because many or most people believe it or see it. That, in and of itself, the most good will usually be the greater good is not an illogical position. I hope that helps.
That is much like your other totally useless definition of "gnostic."
The definition of gnostic can be found, like that of 'good', widely in all dictionaries and reference sources. I know you have issues distinguishing agnosticism and Gnosticism. But that doesn't change facts.
You are not connecting to reality. A definition, to have any value, must connect to reality since that is the only way it is "right." It cannot be "right" while disconnected from reality like "gnostic" or "what most people think." Because of your extreme simplicity you might imagine you have answers in extremely simple formulations. You do not. In a room of 400 people, 395 of them would probably recommend "the greatest good for the greatest number,' and yet have 395 different ideas what that is.
As already intimated, just because many people cannot agree on something does not mean that they do not have an idea of what it ought to be. In addition your recent comments reveal another fallacy: that of the Argument from Ignorance, the idea that a proposition must be false because it has not been proven true. In the case of notions of what constitutes 'good' for instance, there may just have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore insufficient information, to prove the proposition either true or false. But keep going.
FF: the standing observation that nature cannot, logically speaking, be used to provide an example of 'good'
Arlon: You have not been at all logical in providing any other basis than nature for good. You're like a small child who defines "good" as "what people like." That is not a definition connecting to anything in reality. It is merely a different set of words.
Arlon: You have not been at all logical in providing any other basis than nature for good. You're like a small child who defines "good" as "what people like." That is not a definition connecting to anything in reality. It is merely a different set of words.
But I have not defined good as "what people like" so that is a straw man. Indeed something can be good for one, like cough medicine, which one dislikes.
And, as a supposed Christian, you still have to explain just how it is that you do not know what 'good' means, when you have two Testaments one Christ and a supposed god helping provide exactly that guidance, LOL In the light of the implications of your professed faith I think you are arguing dishonestly.
You have no definition.
But I have. And I gave it. Just because you don't agree doesn't make it necessarily invalid.
You have employed "fallacies" (ad populum) yourself in trying to find a definition.
I employed a dictionary. In response you seem to be employing the argumentum ad ignorantiam as already noted, which I make the third or fourth fallacy from you so far in this current exchange. Even if the real definition of 'good' really is unknowable, that does not necessarily mean what I say by way of my own ideas of meaning are necessarily false.
Many years ago many people did not understand "ecology." Older people can remember when there was no such term. Today we have the term and we know how interdependent our lives are on the other living things in our "ecosystem." It is essential that our policies and ethics are sculpted to live in harmony with nature.
Given that you apparently think definitions are impossible, I am not sure how one can recognise 'ecology' in the first place, let alone make recommendations based on the idea. See how this works? But thanks anyway for (another) non-sequitur
If you do not understand that you are severely mentally retarded.
You may not know, although I think I have told you before, that I have an autistic brother - something which I cause to remind Vegas about lately when he grew personally offensive. So I tell you now.
The "greatest good for the greatest number" (as I see that) indeed demands that we consider nature in defining good.
But here you appear to be using exactly the sort of Argument from Popularity that you earlier condemned! Have you thought things through?
Obviously some things in nature can be "bad" in the immediate, like lightning. That can mean that we be careful what lessons we take from nature, that is all.
What ethical lessons can be drawn from lightning, Arlon? Is it like when God sends natural disasters to punish the gays?
The so called "fallacy of nature" simply means that some things in nature are bad in the immediate and no definition exists outside our mutual and arbitrary efforts to form a definition. It does not and cannot forbid learning from nature what is good.
The Naturalistic Fallacy does not at all mean that "some things in nature are bad", although it is true that ethics snatched from nature are necessarily arbitrary since incapable of being defined in those terms . Go back and read my explanation of the fallacy again. It is with throwaway statements like these that one doubts you understand what has been discussed at all.