Present Evidence Here II

[Cavebear]

Your arguments are typically ex-cathedra ... yet you are not the Pope.  Even if you were, you could ... kiss my yarmulka.

Almost all arguments, made by people, including people here, are fallacy based.  Particularly ad hominem and begging the question.  This isn't a parliamentary debate class in HS ... we have no proctors.

Any real assertion I make (not rhetorical) is based on personal experience.  You can deny my lying eyes, but I respectfully decline.

Well, we both know that it is not necessary to disprove something to refute an argument.  The claim must be positively proven. 

[Baruch]

No.  See that's where you go wrong about reality.  There IS reality.  On the atomic level anyway.  Wikipedia exists; I can find it indepentently of you.  I perceive I exist independently of you.  Cogito Ergo Somewhat...  What I can't prove is that YOU exist independently of ME.  After all, your only existence to me is when *I* log on. 

You could be a part of a Truman's World of which I am the ignorant star (do as you wish with that).  Well, OK, It would be "cavebear's World, but you get my drift.

Yes, the Platonists can see this reality, in their imagination, because as ubermenschen outside the Cave ... they can see pure Euclidean geometry and Pythagorean arithmetic.  Sorry, it is an assumption, that there is hard objective reality (qualia).  I think that soft objective reality can be demonstrated, and that will have to do.  I can be holding a sandwich for lunch, and two independent observers selected at random and with no connection with me, can confirm that.

Since that kind of objectivity can be demonstrated, therefore your cultural, linguistic, political etc positions are ... reality?  Sorry, I see no way to derive all that from confirmed observation of my sandwich.  Also the fact that I made that sandwich, it didn't spontaneously assemble without human intervention, isn't proof or disproof of the strawman god used by theists and atheists to make empty arguments.

[Baruch]

Well, we both know that it is not necessary to disprove something to refute an argument.  The claim must be positively proven.

That is also an assumption, but not a bad one.  In mathematics, Constructivism would agree with you, that reductio ad absurdum or even existence proofs, are invalid, you have to "show" the content of a mathematical concept in some sense (say as a triangle is in geometry).  But if mathematics is unsure, I am sure that philosophical argument is weak sauce indeed, being based on natural language.  I cannot prove that you are alive, that you aren't a successful Turing Test.  So on that basis, should I minimalistically assume that you don't exist?

In a law court, there is the requirement for "corpus delicti" usually.  This is because a person't life or property is at stake, not a mere "win".

[Cavebear]

Yes, the Platonists can see this reality, in their imagination, because as ubermenschen outside the Cave ... they can see pure Euclidean geometry and Pythagorean arithmetic.  Sorry, it is an assumption, that there is hard objective reality (qualia).  I think that soft objective reality can be demonstrated, and that will have to do.  I can be holding a sandwich for lunch, and two independent observers selected at random and with no connection with me, can confirm that.

Since that kind of objectivity can be demonstrated, therefore your cultural, linguistic, political etc positions are ... reality?  Sorry, I see no way to derive all that from confirmed observation of my sandwich.  Also the fact that I made that sandwich, it didn't spontaneously assemble without human intervention, isn't proof or disproof of the strawman god used by theists and atheists to make empty arguments.

Reality is sufficiently proven to me when a fall on the floor and cut my hand open (tripped over a cat the other night).  Blood is quite real.

[Baruch]

More like a phallacy...

Competing with Munch ;-)

[Baruch]

Reality is sufficiently proven to me when a fall on the floor and cut my hand open (tripped over a cat the other night).  Blood is quite real.

Congratulations you are Samuel Johnson, 18th century English lexicographer.  He said to Boswell ... "I refute him thus!" kicking a stone with his foot.  He was refuting philosopher George Berkeley.  But David Hume took it further than George Berkeley ... that almost nothing is real or true ... except by hidden assumption (unconscious or duplicitous).

[Cavebear]

Competing with Munch ;-)

There is NO competing with Munch.  Especially if you are a Munchkin.  And I will certainly not go any further than that...

[Baruch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wjgNhgaNU

Good addition.  But Logical Positivism and Nietzsche, beat that by 90 - 130 years.  Then it was sealed by Wittgenstein (second version) that all philosophical problems are just language problems ... that language is real, but what language refers to isn't real.

See Wittgenstein's Poker ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein's_Poker

I will support Karl Popper any day.  The German idealists were psychopaths.

[Baruch]

There is NO competing with Munch.  Especially if you are a Munchkin.  And I will certainly not go any further than that...

Unbeliever needs to be careful, given that I mostly sit in front of my computer in a semi-nude condition, for reasons best left unmentionable.

[Unbeliever]

Good addition.  But Logical Positivism and Nietzsche, beat that by 90 - 130 years.  Then it was sealed by Wittgenstein (second version) that all philosophical problems are just language problems ... that language is real, but what language refers to isn't real.

See Wittgenstein's Poker ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein's_Poker

I will support Karl Popper any day.  The German idealists were psychopaths.

I read that book a couple of years ago, if you recall our brief discussion of it.

[Cavebear]

Good addition.  But Logical Positivism and Nietzsche, beat that by 90 - 130 years.  Then it was sealed by Wittgenstein (second version) that all philosophical problems are just language problems ... that language is real, but what language refers to isn't real.

See Wittgenstein's Poker ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein's_Poker

I will support Karl Popper any day.  The German idealists were psychopaths.

One can easily construct a situation where the poker would be justified.

[Baruch]

I read that book a couple of years ago, if you recall our brief discussion of it.

No, but glad you read it.  It was a good book (on modern philosophy) if by modern you mean circa 1950.  The standard today is ... whatever a college student imagines with passion, is real.

[Baruch]

One can easily construct a situation where the poker would be justified.

You didn't read the book.  Also I don't think that Wittgenstein would have hit Popper with the fireplace poker (in the colloquia room at Cambridge).  But it made the book more dramatic.  If you want to support Wittgenstein or diss Popper, then you will have to work harder than this ;-)

[Cavebear]

You didn't read the book.  Also I don't think that Wittgenstein would have hit Popper with the fireplace poker (in the colloquia room at Cambridge).  But it made the book more dramatic.  If you want to support Wittgenstein or diss Popper, then you will have to work harder than this ;-)

I'm not on either side.  Merely saying that the poker was not any sort of conclusive argument-winner.

[Baruch]

I'm not on either side.  Merely saying that the poker was not any sort of conclusive argument-winner.

Ah ... well then be more clear next time.  Or I will have to hit you with my poker ;-)