tautology

[PedroNunes]

I posted a FDR video on my Facebook wall (feminist straw woman attacks). Here are the comments:Cambridge student I met on the internet:I'm sorry but what a pompous, abstruse, obnoxious bastard. I can't comment much on the topic and really, I have to admit, I haven't watched much further than the first fifteen minutes of the video as I find his attitude unbearable.However, it does *seem to me* (and I use those words intentionally because people should recognise that all arguments are subjective, otherwise they would not be arguments at all but rather universally-recognised facts) that this man is not dealing with quite a few of the points this woman raised, which could well be fairly valid, and brushing them off as not fully-formed arguments. He mentions that "this is a philosophy show, which means you need to bring one fact to the table". Last I was reading and studying philosophy (which really I should be doing now considering my Metaphysics exam in three days time - damn procrastination), I had the impression that philosophy dealt with ideas. Something which, I think even he cannot doubt, that this woman did present.Me:Did you really just write a lot without making an argument? Also, not all arguments are subjective; if I were to tell you that mice are mammals because they meet certain criteria which qualifies then to be so and you were to say that they don't "seem to be" mammals to you, then because you hadn't brought up any relevant facts I could dismiss your argument.She replied:Did you just mimic Stefan by doing exactly the thing I said infuriated me - attempting to undermine someone under the facade that they are not presenting an argument? In any case, Facebook comments, as you well know, aren't limited to making arguments so there should be no problem if I did write a lot of text without including an argument. Facebook comments can simply be just complaints about the unpleasant attitude of someone featured on a video.As to the subjectivity/objectivity thing. Yes, you can dismiss someone's subjective argument based on a lack of evidence to back it up, but this is not a case for there being objective arguments. If you said that you think mice are mammals, that's subjective. If you said that mice are mammals because they meet the criteria that fall under the definition of mammals, that's a tautology. It is contentious whether you would call a tautology an argument, and even if you did, they are not very useful arguments since you are just reinstating a universal fact. To quote Ayer, "tautologies, though they may serve to guide us in our empirical search for knowledge, do not in themselves contain any information about any matter of fact." That is my point, Stefan cannot claim to provide objective arguments any more than the woman that he was slating.Furthermore, the modest approach ("it seems to me", "I would contend", "it is my view that", etc.) is the approach most commonly adopted by even the most reputable modern philosophers, if you read their works. Stating your own beliefs as facts, which is what Stefan was trying to get the poor woman to do, is simply arrogant; especially in the world of philosophy where fundamental problems have been furiously debated for millennia without having reached a general consensus.

 

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I don't know where to go from here and I would like for someone to explain to me how I have gone wrong.

[Wuzzums]

Furthermore, the modest approach ("it seems to me", "I would contend", "it is my view that", etc.) is the approach most commonly adopted by even the most reputable modern philosophers, if you read their works.

If it were a debate, this is the part where you know you won. I usually ask for 3 examples, but all I get in return is an argument avoiding the challenge. Then I ask for 2 examples, and then just one example. If you've got an audience, you'll get some giggles. You know she doesn't have any examples to back her claim because she didn't give any examples in the first place. Yet somehow she can quote some guy called Ayer out of thin air.

 

In between argument from authority of course. 

[PedroNunes]

I'll let you know how it goes - Thanks!

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 "Furthermore, the modest approach ("it seems to me", "I would contend", "it is my view that", etc.) is the approach most commonly adopted by even the most reputable modern philosophers, if you read their works." Could I have a few examples - Say 3 examples of "the modest approach"?
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Pedro Nunes ''you can say 2+2=4 all you like mate, it just SEEMS TO ME that it should be 5''
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Pedro Nunes Also, you can quote some bloke named Ayer out of thin air (Ayer/air there's gotta be a joke in there somewhere) all you like but using a tautology (a proposition which is always true) is valid in propositional logic.
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Her: Okay, I shall pick out a few quotes as I revise :

"It is my view that one essential difference between persons and 
other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will." - Harry Frankfurt, Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person, Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971).

"Soft determinism seems to have an incredible consequence. It seems to imply, given certain acceptable further premises, that sometimes we are able to act in such a way that the laws of nature are broken." - David Lewis, Are we free to break the laws?, Theoria 47 (1981)

"I do not think Kant, Nagel and Strawson are right in thinking that incompatibilist theories cannot be made intelligible to theoretical reason... I doubt if I can say enough in one short paper to convince anyone of these claims who is not already persuade." - Robert Kane, 'Two Kinds of Incompatibilism', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (1989)
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 It is valid, of course, but tautologies don't *say* anything beyond what we already know.

[labmath2]

The argument she putting forward, which i tried putting forward at some point in this forum is that objective truths are known only by two methods, by observation or by definition. The case mice are mammals is true by definition, hence why some may consider it a non argument. Or take another example, 2+2=4, is also true by definition. However, that rock falls when its dropped is true by observation.

This is the main difference between science and philosophy. When something is put forward in science, they tell you what is observation and what is definition.

The reason why she sees all arguments as subjective is because we only argue about things that are not true by definition or by observation.

 

Edit:

There is one more way something can be true, by collective interaction, and that is where we get morality, economics politics...

[PedroNunes]

We only argue about things that are not true by definition?

[edit]

that makes sense