Alejandro1 comments on Self-Congratulatory Rationalism - Less Wrong

51 Post author: ChrisHallquist 01 March 2014 08:52AM

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Comment author: Alejandro1 01 March 2014 05:28:02PM 4 points [-]

You are right. Perhaps the argument could be modified by replacing "is a flying pig" by "is a typical pig in all respects, and flies"?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 01 March 2014 09:24:25PM 1 point [-]

Perhaps. It's not clear to me that this is irrelevant to the formal validity of the argument, since "is a typical pig in all respects, and flies" seems to be a contradiction, and replacing a term in an argument with a contradiction isn't necessarily truth-preserving. But perhaps it is, I don't know... common sense would reject it, but we're clearly not operating in the realms of common sense here.