Logic and Dan Peterson arguments.

[hauslern]

Dan applies some principles of logic:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... proof.html

If the shower towel is dry, nobody has taken a shower.
The shower towel is dry.
Therefore, nobody has taken a shower.

And, clearly, the term nobody includes (or excludes) even Max.

I long ago did some logic and remember modus ponus and modus tollens.

Could Max have been in the pool where he used the beach towel, comes in, throws the towel over the rack next to the shower towel, and dries himself with that beach towel as it is larger and more fluffy and leaves for the bedroom with the beach towel? Where are the philosophers of logic here?

Another: If it rains the grass will be wet.
The grass is wet.
Therefore, it has rained.

Perhaps the wife woke up and decided to water the plants, an exercise which I have seen done by neighbours: The grass getting wet as the neighbour moves to various flower beds.

[drumdude]

I’d like to see Daniel acknowledge just once that none of his pet conspiracy theories are supported by objective unbiased scholars.

No non-Mormon scholar believes Hebrews sailed to the pre-Columbian Americas.

No geological science scholar believes DCP can divine for water.

No one floating above the room during their supposed near death experience has ever correctly returned with the hidden information on the top of the cabinets in the room.

The correct response from DCP to all of this legitimate criticism is not a lecture in rudimentary logic. It’s an acknowledgment that his crackpot theories are no different than anti-vaccine, 2020 election stealing, flat earth nonsense. There’s no good reason for Daniel to be taken in by the former and reject the latter. The evidence for all of them is the same - bunk.

[Philo Sofee]

I’d like to see Daniel acknowledge just once that none of his pet conspiracy theories are supported by objective unbiased scholars.

No non-Mormon scholar believes Hebrews sailed to the pre-Columbian Americas.

No geological science scholar believes DCP can divine for water.

No one floating above the room during their supposed near death experience has ever correctly returned with the hidden information on the top of the cabinets in the room.

The correct response from DCP to all of this legitimate criticism is not a lecture in rudimentary logic. It’s an acknowledgment that his crackpot theories are no different than anti-vaccine, 2020 election stealing, flat earth nonsense. There’s no good reason for Daniel to be taken in by the former and reject the latter. The evidence for all of them is the same - bunk.

Very well said.

[I Have Questions]

I love logic.

To put some simple and obvious flesh on those bones, here’s a venerable example:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
In such reasoning, if the premises are true, the conclusion is absolutely, certainly, inarguably true as well.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... proof.html

Let me try an example using that principle.

Witness statements are the best evidence for the Mormon religion being true.
All religions have witness statements.
Therefore all religions are equally likely to be true.

Presumably Peterson would accept that as objective public proof?

I found his post script interesting…

What I’ve written above represents merely a few rambling and fairly hasty notes in answer to the question mentioned above. I would welcome (constructive) comments on them, or questions about them, or objections to them, or requests for their clarification.

[Physics Guy]

Peterson's examples of logic and evidence are all syllogisms. They're great as far as they go, but the whole deal with a syllogism is that it follows one story line. It's about Socrates, and mortality. Is he or not, yes or no? The question is fixed, the possible answers are predefined. There is no multiple choice, no list of candidates from multiple parties. Socrates is a mortal: take it or leave it.

Logic becomes a lot trickier when multiple choices are offered. A may be better than B, and B better than C, and yet C is better than A. That can really happen, because "better" doesn't necessarily mean just one thing.

A piece of evidence E may support theory X, in the sense that X has to be considered more likely, given E, than X would have been if E weren't there. Yet it could be that theory X has an exclusive rival theory Y, and that the same piece of evidence E also makes Y seem more likely. If E actually boosts the likelihood of Y by much more than it boosts the likelihood of X, then the sense in which E is evidence for theory X is less important than the sense in which E is actually evidence against theory X, because it makes Y more likely than X to be true.

If you only ever look at theory X by itself, take it or leave it, then you never see things like that.

For me this is a big part of what Mormon apologetics in particular does. If all you ever seriously ask is whether or not Joseph Smith was a true prophet, then sure, there are all kinds of things that happened that could be considered evidence for his prophethood, because they fit the story of him being a prophet more closely than they fit, on average, the entire set of all other possibilities—most of which are of Smith having been a completely ordinary shmoe. As soon as you also consider seriously whether Smith might have been a reasonably clever fraud, though, then an awful lot of details fit that theory really well, while being only comparatively tenuously consistent with the prophet theory.

[Physics Guy]

I can't resist adding a favourite example of how inference gets tricky with multiple options. As far as I know, I thought of it myself, but it may very well be well known, and I might even have read it somewhere and just forgotten the source.

There is an animal in a tree, but no-one can see it quite clearly. Two biologists both advise that in their expert judgements it is probably not a crow. So is that good evidence that the thing is not a crow? It sounds that way, but hang on. Ask the biologists to explain why they judge that way.

One says that the creature is quite definitely black, but she didn't see wings, and did see something that kind of looked like a bushy tail, so it's not a clear call, but the thing is probably a squirrel.

Another says that the creature is quite definitely a bird—he saw it flap its wings and land—but in the early morning light it looked kind of more dark brown than black, so it's probably a fat sparrow.

Aren't you now going to bet that it is a crow after all?

Sometimes a mass of multiple lines of evidence and argument can be incoherent that way; it all purports to support the same conclusion, but by supporting it in inconsistent ways, it ends up undermining the conclusion instead, as soon as you look under the hood, dig beneath the surface, read the fine print.

That's often the problem with Mormon apologetics, in my view. After enough times of digging and finding that evidence actually undermines instead of supporting, you kind of form a new simple and superficial theory: that it's all garbage. Yeah, that's a simple and superficial statement, but you didn't get to it by not understanding syllogistic logic.

[Imwashingmypirate]

I can't resist adding a favourite example of how inference gets tricky with multiple options. As far as I know, I thought of it myself, but it may very well be well known, and I might even have read it somewhere and just forgotten the source.

There is an animal in a tree, but no-one can see it quite clearly. Two biologists both advise that in their expert judgements it is probably not a crow. So is that good evidence that the thing is not a crow? It sounds that way, but hang on. Ask the biologists to explain why they judge that way.

One says that the creature is quite definitely black, but she didn't see wings, and did see something that kind of looked like a bushy tail, so it's not a clear call, but the thing is probably a squirrel.

Another says that the creature is quite definitely a bird—he saw it flap its wings and land—but in the early morning light it looked kind of more dark brown than black, so it's probably a fat sparrow.

Aren't you now going to bet that it is a crow after all?

Sometimes a mass of multiple lines of evidence and argument can be incoherent that way; it all purports to support the same conclusion, but by supporting it in inconsistent ways, it ends up undermining the conclusion instead, as soon as you look under the hood, dig beneath the surface, read the fine print.

That's often the problem with Mormon apologetics, in my view. After enough times of digging and finding that evidence actually undermines instead of supporting, you kind of form a new simple and superficial theory: that it's all garbage. Yeah, that's a simple and superficial statement, but you didn't get to it by not understanding syllogistic logic.

I'd assume they must have been looking at a different animal and that neither saw a crow.

[Res Ipsa]

Excellent posts, PG. It is important to make sure the form of the argument is valid, but in type of arguments that Peterson makes about Mormonism, all the heavy lifting is done in evaluating the truth of the premises.

[Rivendale]

Extraordinary claims require Extraordinary evidence. Someone seeing someone at a party or a person having a pulse is not extraordinary. This is simply Sagan's dragon in a garage from Demon Haunted World. Subjective internal proof can be used to justify Roland the closet goblin, alien abductions and Elvis at the gas station. PG made an astute observation. The Gold (changed to golden) plates as described by the witnesses were drab, superficial and empty of details. Hefted, rustle with a metallic sound, heavier than stone, heavier than wood were all used as their objective descriptions. What are we to do with these kinds of details? I would suggest measuring out ones conclusions proportional to the evidence.

[drumdude]

. What are we to do with these kinds of details? I would suggest measuring out ones conclusions proportional to the evidence.

Daniel is making an argument to justify pre-existing belief. Not to inspire new belief based on these evidences.

In other words, he’s working backwards. You start with the conclusion and fit the evidence to it.

Is it impossible that Mormonism is true? Of course not. But is it likely? That’s where non-Mormons and Mormons really disagree.