33
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Accepted
Are there any fallacies in Stephen C. Meyer's argument for classical theism from the Big Bang singularity?
There are several.
First, both Meyer and Morgan are attacking a strawman argument: no atheist or physicist worth their salt will affirm they know that there was nothing before the Big Bang. We don't ...
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13
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Are there any fallacies in Stephen C. Meyer's argument for classical theism from the Big Bang singularity?
Let me summarize what Meyer said more succinctly: there was nothing material before the Big Bang, therefore nothing material could have caused the universe, therefore it must have been God.
In fact it ...
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10
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Fallacy of the Devil You Know
There is no way a comedian known for playing the piano with his male organ became president of Ukraine without some hidden influence; therefore, the CIA installed him in the presidency.
I believe ...
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6
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Does psychophysical harmony strongly point toward theism?
The paper correctly points out that physicalist naturalism requires a large number of mind-body relationships. However, it falsely claims that these are difficult to explain in principle within ...
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6
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Does psychophysical harmony strongly point toward theism?
The paper seems to be largely framed as an argument against some sort of dualist naturalist.
But I would argue that reductive materialism has no problem explaining what they're trying to explain.
The &...
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6
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Are there any fallacies in Stephen C. Meyer's argument for classical theism from the Big Bang singularity?
Like another answer says, he's basically presenting he Kalam (the universe began to exist, therefore it requires a creator), and it has all the typical Kalam problems:
We don't know the universe had a ...
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6
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Are there any fallacies in Stephen C. Meyer's argument for classical theism from the Big Bang singularity?
I'd like to emphasize the last point of armand's very good answer.
Even if we humor Meyer with his assertions that there was no "matter" before the Big Bang but some other reason for it ...
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5
votes
Accepted
Fallacy of the Devil You Know
This is an interesting question. Conspiratorial thinking whether it is government organizations or pervasive forms of evil is something I've bumped into repeatedly. Clearly, one gets a sense some form ...
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5
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What is the relation between abductive reasoning and fallacy?
I'll weigh in validating Cort Ammon's answer (it depends on the context of the abduction) and provide some examples.
P1. Whenever it rains, the streets get wet.
P2. The streets are wet now.
C. ...
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5
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What is the relation between abductive reasoning and fallacy?
Is abductive reasoning a logical fallacy?
Abduction is certainly not a logical fallacy.
Abduction is the reasoning that if ϕ ⇒ ψ is true, then ϕ is ipso facto a possible explanation for the fact that ...
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4
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What is the relation between abductive reasoning and fallacy?
It depends on how you're selling it.
A formal logical fallacy requires that you make an assertion that does not follow from the rules of inference you are using. If you make an abductive inference ...
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4
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Defeasible reasoning
Maybe I'm not getting it, but I would use a Karnaugh Map. This is a technique used in Digital Design for Combinatorial logic, which means that all the inputs must be known and then the result ...
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4
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Please clarify this answer about the argument
The argument can be loosely summarised in the following way. On Earth there are billions of humans. The humans act individually. They talk and appear capable of understanding ideas, formulating ideas, ...
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4
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Accepted
Can an extraordinary hypothesis ever be the best explanation for a set of historical facts?
Sure, and have been so. 'Extra-ordinary' is contingent upon historical accident and context.
Let's take germ theory of disease. When miasma theory was dominant, the notion of tiny living beings ...
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3
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Epistemic value of multiple eyewitness accounts: single event vs. multiple events given a fixed number of eyewitnesses?
Epistemic value of multiple eyewitness accounts
I don’t know if this is an answer, but here is an example from real life: Babe Ruth’s called shot from the 1932 World Series. Look it up at Wikipedia &...
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Justification for the paradigm of abductive reasoning
First, Pierce's rule, case, and result are equivalent to syllogistic logic's major premise, minor premise, and conclusion. If we look at the classic syllogism example:
All men are mortal
Socrates is ...
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3
votes
Accepted
Are extraordinary first-hand subjective accounts more likely to be true the more people report the same experience?
This is an excellent question, which brings into focus many challenging questions of modern philosophy. As a spiritual dualist myself, I have trod this path, and can offer pointers.
First, and an ...
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3
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Does psychophysical harmony strongly point toward theism?
It's basically an argument from incredulity, one of the poorest form of theist apologetics, to the point of being a cliché.
The author just lists a bunch of ocurences they hold to be improbable, ...
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3
votes
Are all arguments for the existence of other minds circular?
We do not know whether the mental processes of other persons cause their behaviour similarly to my mental processes causing my behaviour.
But other people belong to the same species. In general, they ...
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3
votes
Explain the answer from Reddit and give an explanation about Occam's Razor
You might find it helpful to think in terms of probabilities. Suppose you have a theory that makes several independent assumptions. The probability of all your assumptions being correct is then the ...
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2
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What did evolutionary epistemology discover about our tendency to guess right abductively?
Alas, this is something that modern cognitive scientists concluded Peirce was overly optimistic about, there is no unified faculty of "guessing right" that he supposed. Heuristic guessing in ...
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2
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What is the relation between abductive reasoning and fallacy?
Abudctive reasoning is not a logical fallacy. Abductive reasoning is drawing probable inference from context and experience. Note the word probable. Abductive reasoning does not produce logical ...
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2
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Epistemic value of multiple eyewitness accounts: single event vs. multiple events given a fixed number of eyewitnesses?
The experience of science is that eyewitness accounts are very low value items in general. That is to say, there is no such optimal distribution as you suggest. Events reported purely through ...
- 1,535
2
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Is the simpler explanation is the most likely, the most convincing and the most plausible?
In the minimum-description-length formulation of Occam's razor, we are trying to find the shortest computer program (smallest model) that completely and perfectly predicts all the data we're trying to ...
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2
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Epistemic value of multiple eyewitness accounts: single event vs. multiple events given a fixed number of eyewitnesses?
Epistemology doesn't use concrete mathematics, so you're unlikely to find a distribution that maximizes the probability of X being true (and if you do, I wouldn't be quick to trust it).
Generally ...
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2
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Is predictive power a criterion for pragmatism?
Yes and no. It also depends on the pragmatist. I'll restrict my response to the classic pragmatists, C.S. Peirce and William James. Afterwards, I think you'll see it's not quite the same as how ...
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Fallacy of the Devil You Know
This type of reasoning looks to me like it is primarily based on statistically inadequate application of post hoc testing. In this case the speaker cherry-picks a rare/unusual set of circumstances ...
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