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Pastimes : The Philosophical Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rarebird who wrote (152)	8/5/2005 5:54:55 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26251

Are you arguing that the cosmological argument for the existence of God does not attempt to argue from effect (Design) to cause (Designer)? No. I am asserting it doesn't affirm the consequent. It doesn't follow the pattern of q p implies q Conclusion p Try filling in p and q with the actual statements of the argument and you should see that I am right. q would have to be "the idea of perfection exists" if the 2nd premise really was p implies q, than the 2nd premise would be that something (called p) implies the idea of perfection exists. But that isn't the 2nd premise in the actual argument. The 2nd premise says that the fact that the idea of perfection exists, implies something (p). So the 2nd premise is q implies p. (p would apparently be something like "there is a perfect being", and if you want to make it an argument for the existence of God you would also have to define "God" and "a perfect being" as identical) So the argument is q The exists the idea of perfection. q implies p The existence of the idea of perfection implies that a perfect being exists (or at least did exist at one time) therefore p A perfect being exists (or at least used to exist and some people would say that if it could cease to exist than it isn't/wasn't perfect) The structure of the argument q q implies p Conclusion p is valid. Note the 2nd premise is "q implies p", not "p implies q". You seem to either be misunderstanding the argument or deliberately twisting it and attacking the twisted straw man. I see plenty of reason to be unconvinced by it, but affirming the consequent is not one of them, because that isn't what the argument does. Some people disagree with q. Others would disagree with q implies p (and I for one consider that premise to be rather questionable), but if we assume that logic as we know it is actually valid and true, and if both q and "q implies p" are indeed correct, than p has to be correct. The argument commits no logical fallacy. Are you arguing that the cosmological argument for the existence of God does not attempt to argue from effect (Design) to cause (Designer)? No but if you are asserting that no effect can ever imply a cause then you are stating that "q implies p" is false, not that the argument is invalid. The premise "q implies p" is itself directly stating that a certain specific effect requires a certain specific cause. You would seem to take it beyond just this case and assert that no effect can ever imply a certain specific cause. I'm not sure I would agree with that, but even if I could be convinced it isn't a formal rule of logic. There is nothing inherently illogical about saying that effect A implies cause B. Formal deductive logic deals with the relationships between the premises. It only deals with the premises themselves to extent that there is a separate attempt to prove the premises through a separate argument, or if the premise is contradictory. (You could not for example in classical logic use the premise "a and not a" as part of an argument). The relationships between the premises in this argument are logical and properly constructed. Even if the premises are false; false premises do not make the argument a logical fallacy. If you can prove the premises to be false, than you have made the argument utterly unconvincing but that isn't the same thing. Tim