PeterJ

Hmm. This is tautological, so doesn't count. You have defined x as a thinker used this defintion to show that there is such a x. I could argue that nothing thinks and there is no such x, and you wouldn't be able to show otherwise. (As has already been pointed out). According to Buddhists sentient beings do not really exist, so no, not bulletproof. According to this doctrine there is only one phenomenon of which we can say it 'is'. So lots of people would argue with this one. If you said 'it is in a way' or 'in a sense' that might do it. And that's a big 'If'. I supect the problem is more straightforward than we're making it. Logic cannot prove anything abouty reality, so when we make a statemement about reality it will always be arguable. When we use logic to make a statement about the consequences of logic then it may be inarguable, but then it is analytic or tautological, requiring the agreed axiomata mentioned earlier, and we can always argue with an axiom. It seems to me that the IF in an IF-THEN argument is there precisely because the statement that follows is arguable. I would not say that just refusing to accept a statement is to argue with it, as has been suggested. I presume by 'argument' here we mean what a mathematician would mean by it. Otherwise it's trivially true that all staments are arguable. I would argue that arguing about whether we must always argue is an argument too far.

Hahaha. Very good. I like that. Yes, quite so, there are other sorts of disagreements I shouldn't have ignored. Still, I think the dialectic is the core of the process, i.e. using the laws of thought to eliminate absurd theories. And I'd say (just to argumentative, that sensible analysis of thought processes etc requires Aristotle's logic and dialectic method. But no matter... But that's not what your quote from Descartes said. He assumes there is an 'I' that thinks, but those who investigate their minds report that there is no 'I' that thinks. Big topic though, and probably best left for another discussion. Oh yes, good point.

Mind you, Whisperingplant's point is a good one even if it may be a bit off in a way. Perhaps the point is not so much about using statements that are inarguable, which is probably impossible without an agreed set of axioms to work from, but making sure that they are rigorous and so worth arguing about in the first place. I suspect that lack of rigour causes more arguments on these forums than arguable but rigorous statements. Achieving rigour takes a lot of practice but without it philosophical discussions become chaotic. I aim for rigour and have done a lot of practice but even so make silly mistakes from time to time. Still, if we at least aim for rigour then there may be a lot less unnecessary arguing. Just as much necessary arguing as ever though. The basis of philosophical logic is the dialectic, which is all about refutation by decisive argumentation, so maybe one could say that the whole point of philosophy is to argue, either with oneself or with someone else. Cogito is definitely arguable. It is just plain wrong according to many people. The All-Blacks won the RWC. New Zealand is a place. And solipsism would say we dreamed the whole thing.

I wonder if it is possible to make an unarguable statement that is not tautological. I rather doubt it. Perhaps the OP could give an example to validate his approach.

When religion comes up for debate all too often its defenders are like Aristarchus, dependent on faith and having no sound argument that a scientist need take seriously. There are sound arguments that do not rely on faith, and that appeal only to logic and experience, but they are largely ignored by theists and atheists alike since they threaten both positions. It is vital for such an argument that we recognise that religion includes all monotheistic doctrines, but monotheism is not all of religion. I certainly see no purpose in commonplace Protestantism arguing with science since they are incompatible, as Aristarchus makes clear. All this talk of not being able to understand God unless one has faith is patronising, and I imagine for scientists it is highly annoying and frustrating. First, the orthodox view in relgion would be that no amount of faith would allow one to understand God, and second, not everyone is blessed with the ability to believe unswervingly in what they do not know is true. Arguments from faith have no place here imho. That is not to say that faith is not important, of course it is, but an appeal to faith is not an argument on a science forum. If I were battling for religion I would start by pointing out that all current scientific cosmological theories are either nonreductive or logically absurd for their metaphysical implications. This is not a criticism, it is a conclusion that I would expect most physicists to accept, a dispasionate observation about how difficult it is to explain the universe without something more than physics currently offers us. Thus we see in consciousness studies the call for an extra ingredient in our mind-matter theories. I believe we will only have a fundamental theory when science and religion mend their differences and when monotheism comes to be seen as an approximation to the truth and not the last word on the topic. I'd be happy to defend religion here, (or science, as the circumstances dictate), but it is not easy to do when there is such a widespread assumption that religion requires abandoning logic and reason for faith and dogma. A bit of thinking outside the box would be required, whereby we would give credit to both science and religion, and would not dismiss all the proponents of either as fools. It would be an implausible coincidence if all the proponents of both were fools. Again I would suggest that metaphysics is best venue for such a battle, since this is where religion and science come face to face and a standoff is not an option. Elsewhere there is mostly handwaiving.

Ah. Just found the problem I think. My mistake. Sorry to bother you.

For some reason I'm not receiving email notifications for subscribed threads. My settings seem to okay. Any ideas? Thanks.

A belief in anything at all could be explained as intuitive thinking, so I'm not sure what the point of this is. What is intuitive thinking? And has it been shown that it is always best to ignore it?

Aristarchus - Seems to me you've misread Iggy. He was only clarifying a misunderstanding. He suggested that unless your idea is scientifically testable then it ain't science. This is just a fact. He did not say (I think) that because your idea is untestable it is wrong. Anyway, I liked your idea, although it seems still very undeveloped. Nonlocality could suggest a super-particle, but it could suggest, as a few physcists speculate, that our idea of temporal and spatial extension is flawed, and that there is a sense in which all particles are in the same place and time. Or something like that.

The NT quote does not say that 'because God made everything nature is a proof of God's existence.' It does not even say that God exists. It just says that what we can know of God we can know through the study of natural phenomena. Whether this is true is moot, of course, but it seems a fine endorsement of the natural sciences. Metaphysics is not so hard to define. The problem of materiality and parthood that has been posted by questionposter as a counter-example is normally thought of a meta-physical quandary because it is one. It asks about the fundamental properties of things, first principles, absolute properties etc. Where philosophy deals with fundamentals it is metaphysics. Materiality and parthood are classical metaphysical problems because they ask about the world as a whole. I reckon your grandfather is about right, Questionposter, it does require mixing logical deduction and religion, and mathematics, psychology and few other things.

Thanks. What a good idea.

Dean - I think the issue you raise is important. It has far reaching implications for mathematics, physics, religion, psychology and who knows what else. Most of us have this idea that 'Nothing' is the opposite of 'Something. It is, of course, conceptually or in epistemology. But in ontology we cannot take this for granted. The idea of 'Nothing' would be impossible without the idea of 'Something', so to suppose that one comes before the other does not work. One ends up in a Wittgensteinian muddle. This issue is central to the dispute between 'eastern' and western' cosmology. Here is Lao-tsu proposing what might seem to be the same thing as yourself. "Tao begot one, One begot two, Two begot three, And three begot the ten thousand things." Also relevant would be ... "Being is born of not being". Here Tao', however, would not mean 'Nothing', and Being and non-Being would be reducible to Tao. Tao would give rise to both Being and non-Being, both nothing and something, both zero and one. One could think of these distinctions as broken symmetries. This idea would be the basis for Spencer Brown's 'calculus of indications' as presented in his book 'Laws of Form'. This is a mathematical model of how forms emerge from formlessness. The distinction we make between 'Something' and 'Nothing' is in our minds. When we imagine 'Nothing' what we actually imagine is a void. An imagined void is not nothing. Prior to this void there would be a state free of all distinctions. ('beyond the 'coincidence of contradictories' in the language of mysticism). Your view, therefore, is not fundamental. If you look at it closely you'll see that your universe begins only after a distinction between 'Something' and 'Nothing' has been made. That's not a complete reduction. For a fundamental theory you would need to go one step further back, to what Brown's likens to a blank piece of paper, or to what Lao Tsu calls 'Tao'. Note that physics, strictly defined, cannot yet distinguish 'something' from 'nothing'. It never will, since solipsism is unfalsifiable. Lao Tsu's comment on the origin of numbers may look a bit arbitrary from a mathematical persective, but Brown shows that in set theory it can be used to solve Russell's paradox for a fundamental theory. It also contains a major clue as to why the prime numbers >3 occur only at 6n+/-1. Paul Davies is very good on this topic. In The Mind of God he talks about Rucker's 'Mindscape', the set of all possible ideas. He notes that this is itself an idea, so it cannot be 'Everything'. There has to be something that is not an idea. Heisenberg also pointed this out. If you check your reasoning you'll see that 'Nothing' is an idea, and so is 'Something', and that they are co-dependent. There has to be another term in the system to represent what cannot be imagined, an idea that you cannot have. This allows us to dismiss ex nihilo creation not just for being logically absurd but also for being nonreductive. We would have to dig deeper. Thus Davies ends up speculating about mysticism, for which there is an undefined term in the cosmological system.

I'm unable to find any information on the blogs, how to start one etc.. Is there a note somewhere? If not can some please explain the system?

Hang on, Questionposter, that is not metaphysics. Metaphysics is the study of the world as a whole, generally by using dialectical logic to go where observation cannot. It may be that the intellectual reconciliation of science and religion (ie. a reconciliation within our own intellect) would be impossible without a study of metaphysics, and that the reason they are not already reconciled is that meta[physics is so unpopular in both camps. Dogmatic views are impossible to maintain in metaphysics, and no doubt this puts many people off. Anyway, if anyone wants to set up a polite and rigorous battle between science and religion I'm up for it, and metaphysics would be my chosen field of combat. I would argue that this distinction as it is usually made is an error. One problem that seems to dog these discussions is that there is often an automatic assumption that religion entails the existence of God. It does not. It is perfectly possible to be an atheist and a staunch supporter of a religious doctrine. Only our typically Protestant or Roman Catholic upbringing prevents a better understanding of this in the west. The idea would be more public if making it public hadn't involved being persecuted by the European thought police for so many past centuries. Many Christians and Muslims have suffered horribly for suggesting that God is not a existent phenomenon but a placeholder for a much more subtle idea, and some have even been cruicified and worse. The battle is not between science and religion, surely, but between dogma and knowledge. We just want to get at the truth one way or the other. Neither science nor religion can be blamed for those proponents who go in for poor thinking and dogmaticism.

S. Radhkrishnan - The Philosophy of the Upanishads, (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1924) This gives a clear and authoritative explanation of the philosophical view held by Erwin Schroedinger. Professor Radhakrishnan decribes 'nondualism', the 'perennial philosophy', or 'mysticism', as expounded in the late Hindu Vedas. This is the doctrine that must be refuted for the final defeat of religion, and it is difficult to overstress the importance of such a clear exposition. George Spencer Brown - The Laws of Form, ( George Allen & Unwin, when it's not our of print, 1967) A famously controversial book about the relation between mathematics, metaphysics and mysticism, here in the form of Taoism. Brown presents a simple calculus that models the cosmological/psychological scheme of mysticism that is set-theoretic and fundamental. This is possible because it solves Russell's Paradox. The book comes highly recommended by Russell even though he seems not to have understood it. F. H. Bradley - Appearance and Reality, (OUP, 1893) Bradley shows that all extreme metaphysical positions are logically absurd. The significance of this for religion is that such a proof would leave the view of Schroedinger, Radhakrishnan, Brown and Bradley as the only one we cannot refute in logic or experience. Freke and Gandy - The Jesus Mysteries, (Harper Collins, 1999) Whatever the merits of the author's argument that Jesus is a mythological figure or archetype, not a human being who lived and died, they expertly describe the way in which the esoteric interpretation of his teachings was suppressed and replaced by the literalistic reading that so many people now find implausible. A surprising bestseller.