Proving Arguments by Facts only

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I was just scrum-aging through wrongplanet looking at old topics for the heck of it and remembered this topic entitled "Is work tyranny?" Fnord said this to me in response that all Marshall and I were doing were what is called a What if Analysis.

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I reread Fnord's response once more and it got me thinking. Why does every argument have to be proven or disproven through concrete facts. Concrete facts are one way to prove or disprove an argument but but so is what is called proof by contradiction.

Example: Can I prove that an invisible (to the naked eye), pink unicorn can't exist nature. And, the answer is yes and I need nothing concrete, physical or tangible. To claim that a unicorn is both pink and invisible is contradictory. These two properties are mutually exclusive.

In other words, if we have A that leads to C and not-C then logically A can't be. If one's argument leads to logical contradictions then proof by contradiction says the argument can't hold up and it must be false. No concrete proof or fact is needed in this case.

Let's look at what Marshall says again.

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He spoke about property rights and giving an example of owning the water for a medium sized city and the owner threatening to cut off the city if the city refuses to worship him and send sex slaves. If this sort of property right would lead to this sort of tyranny then I ask does one have the right to bottle up all of the water of the area or the world? In fact, a better example is buying up and controlling all of the air? If all of the air of the world became my property and it leads to my becoming a tyrant then do I have the right to purchase and bottle up all of the air of the world? I say the answer is no because if property rights is absolute then does it not give me absolute power to be a tyrant?

Deleted duplicate.

Last edited by thoughtbeast on 04 Sep 2018, 8:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

Invisible merely means that you or I or others can't see it. So it has to do with a characteristic of us, not of the thing viewed. If a quark or neutrino is pink, I wouldn't know about it and neither would anyone else. Quarks and neutrinos are invisible to us due to their size. And what if it is the being pink that gives rise to its invisibility in the first place, e.g., a pink unicorn standing next to a pink wall or in a pink fog? Such invisibility is the sort of characteristic that gives protection to many species of creatures. The two properties of being both pink and invisible are neither contradictory nor mutually exclusive.

I think the example you gave is a poor one, but your basic point is valid. The distinction you're trying to make is between a priori and a posteriori judgements; the latter involve the invocation of facts, the former the invocation of the meanings of the constituent parts themselves.

You know thoughtbeast, you made an excellent counter-argument. When I was thinking invisible I was thinking invisible to the visible spectrum or it being on a different frequency like infra-red. I never thought about the whole pink fog or pink wall. Sort of like the chameleon. I commend you.

I can see why my example is poor and and examining what thoughtbeast said you are right it is poor. I will have to look up both concepts you posted to understand them better. I've never heard of priori and posteriori.

Actually, I can't really take too much credit for the thought as it's based on actual experience. Here in the Scarlet Jungle of Krypton, there are pink zones that shield pink unicorns from me. But when they move back into the scarlet, that's when I can find them, show them my intentions on my tv, and eat them with gusto. And those pink unicorns are tasty! Sort of like some Earth food I've heard about, I believe they taste like chicken.

You don't need to be concerned; the mere fact that you've considered these questions at all puts you ahead of the average man.

Basically, an a priori judgement is one which is true without reference to experience (from the Latin meaning 'from before [experience]'); an a posteriori judgement is one requiring the validation of experience, (from the Latin meaning 'from after [experience]'.)

An example of an a priori judgement is 'all black cats are cats' or 'all black cats are black'. Obviously, these examples are vacuous and it's an intensely debated question whether there exist a priori judgements at all that aren't so - ie synthetic, as opposed to analytic a priori judgements. I tend to think not, though I'm probably in a minority there.

An an example of an a posteriori judgement is 'water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius'.