Search results for "Reductio ad absurdum"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
The Syllogistic with Unity
2011
We extend the language of the classical syllogisms with the sentence-forms “At most 1 p is a q” and “More than 1 p is a q”. We show that the resulting logic does not admit a finite set of syllogism-like rules whose associated derivation relation is sound and complete, even when reductio ad absurdum is allowed.
Truth, Negation and Meaning
2013
‘True’ and ‘False’ are defined through a linguistic rule requiring the negation operator. This is the elaboration of an idea proffered for the first time by the Stoics on the basis of some remarks by Aristotle and then in modern times by Frege and Wittgenstein. Another thesis of this essay is the following: the true/false rule is a sort of UR-Regel underlying all linguistic practices (including prayers and commands) and all human cultures. Reinterpreting the notion of Spielraum put forward by Wittgenstein in 4.463 of the Tractatus, I will present an implicational pragmatic theory of a true proposition. Jokes and reductio ad absurdum are explained as examples of Spielraum.
Boghossian's Reductio of Compatibilism
1998
Según Boghossian, la compatibilidad entre el externismo respecto del contenido y el autoconocimiento implica el absurdo según el cual es posible conocer a priori verdades substantivas sobre el mundo, como que existe agua. El argumento de Boghossian descansa crucialmente en dos supuestos: en primer lugar, que el carácter composicional o atómico son propiedades internas de los conceptos; en segundo lugar, que el externalismo no puede dar cuenta de conceptos atómicos con extensión vacía. Ambos supuestos se ponen en cuestión en este artículo. Por una parte, el externismo puede concebir plausiblemente el carácter composicional o atómico de los conceptos como dependiente de la naturaleza real de …
Anti-Speciesist Rhetoric
2017
The various laws protecting animals that were established in Nazi Germany (but for the most part were never put into effect) had, among others, the aim of marking the taxonomic and ontological distance between pure animals and impure sub-humans (Jews, homosexuals, the Roma). The attention to and respect for the alpha predator and noble animals was a vertiginous ignoratio elenchi of the concentration camps. With analogous fallacy, today’s anti-human and anti-speciesist eco-fascism, which regularly makes use of the reductio ad Hitlerum (“meat-eaters = Nazis”), avails itself in an irrational and populist way of the rudimentary argumentum ad personam typical of xenophobic and racist propaganda.…