Questions about truth, free will, logic have been raised in another thread. To help clarify the discussion, let’s separate those from the “necessary premise” discussion.
Here’s an example of the argument being raised:
True statements can only be expected to exist, and we can only expect to be able to deliberately discern them, if we assume the universe is governed by logic (necssarily rationally ordered) and if we assume for ourselves the libertarian free will causative capacity to discern them.
This seems a rather strange claim, given then many people believe that our best and most reliable true statements are those coming from science, and based on describing our world in terms physical causation. Moreover, science is often considered to provide our best examples rationality and logical reasoning.
The argument presented continues with:
The alternative assumptions that logic may not or does not truthfully describe phenomena, and that deliberacy may not be or is not a sufficient cause in and of itself, is simply not enough grounds to warrant the daily, ongoing, universal expectation we operate from,, that true statements exist, and that we can independently, deliberately discern them.
But why is that considered the alternative? Why not say that world is governed by physical causation, and that logic is a human tool that we use to structure and organize our descriptions of the world?
Personally, I happen to believe that we have free will (for some suitable meaning of “free will”). However, it still seems to me that the world is governed by physical causes, not by logic. And it also seems to me that if all agents with free will were to disappear, the physical world would continue without those agents and their logic.
William J Murray,
What makes you think we all have the same purpose?
I don’t engage in sophistry.
Neither do I.
Can we all agree that nobody in this thread (let alone on this blog) thinks that s/he is engaging in sophistry?
It seems plausible that someone could be engaging in sophistry without realizing it.
How to tell?