Proving Morality

[Mountaineer]

1. Something is real, even if we don't understand it or see it and we are a part of that reality, in some form or another.

2. We are living breathing creatures with the ability to have conscious thoughts.

3. We are each unique individuals. No one else other person occupies the space that we are in. No one else other person can literally enter our minds and control our bodies. (of course we can be brainwashed or threatened or pressured but this is external activity).

5. Opinions are subjective value statements made by individuals and cannot be proven wrong. They can be wrong, they can be a lie untrue, but another person can't prove an opinion is wrong untrue.

6. A statement of fact is a statement about reality. It Facts can not be proven wrong.

7. A statement of opinion about a fact is not an opinion, it's a weak-form statement of fact, like trying to have your cake and eat it to. Even though the person claims to be stating their opinion....they in fact can be wrong, just as all opinons can be proven wrong. "It's my opinion that the Earth is flat" is not an actual opinion it's a statement of belief in a fact.  (I am not sure I understand the root idea of this premise or exactly what you are driving at?  It seems to me facts are never untrue, whereas opinions may or may not be true.  Facts are always true, it is just our understanding of or about the fact may or may not be correct.)

8. Either God exists or he doesn't, independant of our opinions. Whether God exists or not does not change whether reality exists. He is either a part of it or not. If he exists he may have created all reality that we can perceive or can't.

The definition of “right”? is: In accordance with fact, reason, or truth; correct.
The definition of “wrong”? is: Not in conformity with fact or truth; incorrect or erroneous.
manner - a way of doing or being
truth - the property of being in accord with fact or reality

Your definitions of "right" and "wrong" are A definition, not THE definition.  I believe right and wrong have moral connotations (at least in my dictionary) and thus require an external reference point to determine if they are true or not.

Fact, truth, correctness and the like ("and the like" makes the statement nebulous) are objective statements about reality. That doesn’t preclude opinion. Even opinions can be fact, truth, correct etc. as long as they aren’t lies untrue. If I really prefer chocolate then it’s a fact I prefer chocolate and true that I prefer chocolate.  This last sentence has a time component that you have not discussed; I may prefer chocolate today and not tomorrow - thus, it is not universally a true or factual statement.

11. given the above definitions: if a DECISION is "in a way of doing or being not in conformity with the property of being in accord with fact or reality" ...... it is objectively incorrect/wrong I think your statement mixes truth and moral relativity, thus is not universally true without an external reference point, i.e. source of truth.

12. When humans make decisions it's always influenced by their perception of reality. Another way to say it: When humans make decisions, they believe/feel/think/perceive/expect some type of outcome or possible outcome(s).

13. There is no such thing as un-owned property. Something isn't property unless it is owned.  By humans, animals, God, goldfish, an amoeba, alien beings?

14. Ownership of property is a term used to describe the state whereby some person (see above for other entities that may or may not have ownership claims) (let's leave out animals for the moment please) has first claim on the use of or possesion of something.* That is, if there are multiple individuals trying to use or posses the same thing at the same time, if one has a higher claim than the all others we describe that state as ownership.  What does "higher claim" specifically mean and who or what determines the definition of higher claim?

* - I realize some of you might not believe this exists in reality. I'm putting forward initially that the idea or concept is described as ownership. We'll work on the rest.

15. A statement that is self contradicting must be false. (I don’t know how to use the English language).

16. The negation of a false statement is true.  I disagree.  The negation of a false statement may or may not be true; you can negate one false statement with another false statement (I think).  "The earth is flat" - "The earth is not flat, it is an ellipsoid" - both are incorrect but the second negated the first.

17. The non-inclusion of some decisions into the realm of moral or immoral does not dissprove the existance of morality.

My comments for your consideration are in bold red above.  I only spent a few minutes on this so likely I've made some serious blunders, and I'm not well trained in technical logic (engineers are just more of the practical types, i.e. good enough vs. perfect) 

... Mountaineer

[Kshartle]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll address them individually. I must say some of these exact objections were already raised, dispelled and consensus was reached. Let's go through one more time...then move on for good please.

[Kshartle]

16. The negation of a false statement is true.  I disagree.  The negation of a false statement may or may not be true; you can negate one false statement with another false statement (I think).  "The earth is flat" - "The earth is not flat, it is an ellipsoid" - both are incorrect but the second negated the first.



... Mountaineer

Your example is not a negation. The negation to "The Earth is flat" is "The Earth is not flat". The first one is false, thus it's negation is true.

Here is some interwebs agreement on the concept, examples are endless.

http://www.regentsprep.org/Regents/math ... mpound.htm
http://www.csm.ornl.gov/~sheldon/ds/sec1.1.html

[Kshartle]

6. A statement of fact is a statement about reality. It Facts can not be proven wrong.

You are creating the exact same straw man argument as before and I will give my exact same answer.

I did not say facts can be proven wrong, I said statements about facts can be proven wrong. If I state that "the Earth is flat", this is a statement of fact, and it's provable that it's wrong.

I'm trying to point out the difference between a statement of opinion and a statement of fact, which is constantly confused by people here.

It's the statement that is wrong, thus my original premise/statement/whatever does not require alteration.

I hope that's clear enough for you to agree again.

I don't mean to be terse M....just trying to get through some of these before I leave for a party.

[Kshartle]

13. There is no such thing as un-owned property. Something isn't property unless it is owned.  By humans, animals, God, goldfish, an amoeba, alien beings?

We agreed to confine this to a discussion of humans and leave animals out. They can come later.

If you want to make a case for aliens, or that goldfish and amoebas can own property then I'm all ears 

Iwon't be discussing aliens and animals until we finish with humans.

God is admittedly un-provable even by those who believe in him so let's let the statement addressing him be sufficient please.

I appreciate that you want lots of clarification. I think I've clarified. I hope there's no objection that what I'm saying is wrong, even if you'd like more.

[Kshartle]

3. We are each unique individuals. No one else other person occupies the space that we are in. No one else other person can literally enter our minds and control our bodies. (of course we can be brainwashed or threatened or pressured but this is external activity).

Works for me. The "devil made me do it" argument can always be claimed by some. I hope that rationale people will see that for what it is.

[Kshartle]

5. Opinions are subjective value statements made by individuals and cannot be proven wrong. They can be wrong, they can be a lie untrue, but another person can't prove an opinion is wrong untrue.

If I give an opinion that is untrue (not actually my opinion) it's a lie. Lie would imply an intentional misstatement. Well.....is it really possible for me to give you an opinion of mine that isn't really my opinion without me knowing that?

Either way I don't care. This is a distinction without a meaningful difference.

[Kshartle]

7. A statement of opinion about a fact is not an opinion, it's a weak-form statement of fact, like trying to have your cake and eat it to. Even though the person claims to be stating their opinion....they in fact can be wrong, just as all opinons can be proven wrong. "It's my opinion that the Earth is flat" is not an actual opinion it's a statement of belief in a fact.  (I am not sure I understand the root idea of this premise or exactly what you are driving at?  It seems to me facts are never untrue, whereas opinions may or may not be true.  Facts are always true, it is just our understanding of or about the fact may or may not be correct.)

Again I did not say facts can be proven wrong, I said statements of belief about facts are falsely presented as opinions, which they are not truly. Someone's statement of "opinion" about an objective fact is really a statement of fact. That statement can be proven wrong.

"It's my opinion that the world is flat" - nope, sorry you don't get to hide behind calling it an opinion. There's a big difference between this and real opinion. There is objective criteria with which we can measure the correctness.

[Kshartle]

Gotta run.....the remaining few later as well as yours Desert.

[doodle]

Gotta run.....the remaining few later as well as yours Desert.

Sounds good.  I hope you'll be out celebrating "Immigrants with Superior Firepower" day. 

 

Ha! :-)

[Mountaineer]

Gotta run.....the remaining few later as well as yours Desert.

Sounds good.  I hope you'll be out celebrating "Immigrants with Superior Firepower" day. 

 

Lewis Wetzel is a West Virginia hero.  His story sounds a bit like he was one of the original anarchists - maybe he boarded PS's train quite a while back.  Watch it Desert, or his ghost will have to come a lookin' for ya! 

http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/spring97/wetzel.html

... Mountaineer

[doodle]

A look into the libertarian mind: understanding libertarian morality http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Ad ... ne.0042366

But what might explain the libertarian focus on liberty to the exclusion of other moral concerns? Recent work in moral psychology suggests that moral attitudes arise, at least in part, from low-level “dispositional traits”? [23], emotional reactions [8], [24], social function [17], and the moralization of preferences [10]. These moral attitudes have, in turn, been found to be associated with ideological self-identification [3], [9].


This work suggests that one explanation for the unique moral profile of libertarians is that they feel traditional moral concerns less than do most other people. Tetlock, et al. [25] found that libertarians were less morally outraged by “taboo”? moral tradeoffs (e.g., buying and selling body parts for transplantation) than were liberals, conservatives, or socialists. Recent research in moral psychology has emphasized the importance of intuitive and emotional reactions in producing moral judgments that appear, on their face, to be based on principled reasoning [8], [24], [26]. Might libertarians be more tolerant on issues of private consensual behavior than conservatives because they exhibit lower levels of disgust sensitivity [27]? Might libertarians depart from liberals on social justice issues because they have weaker feelings of empathy [15]? Indeed, libertarian writers have historically been proud of the rational — rather than emotional — roots of their ideology [28]. The possible exception to this rule, of course, is the vigorous reaction libertarians often have to violations of personal freedom. Libertarians' characteristic pattern of emotional reactions (and lack thereof) may constrain the types of concerns that they moralize, which in turn affects their attraction to libertarian self-identification. We investigate this possibility in Study 2.

Finally, emotional reactions, and the moral principles that derive from them, serve interpersonal functions [17], [29], such as navigating the social world [30] and forming groups with others [31]. Libertarians may have a dispositional preference for independence, perhaps even for solitude, and therefore less use for moral principles that bind them to others. In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand [32] writes about the importance of maintaining one's individuality within social relationships. Do libertarians identify less with the people in their lives, with groups, and with their nations? Do they derive less enjoyment from the company of others? This relative preference for individualism may gradually become moralized into a conscious endorsement of liberty as a moral principle [10], predisposing them to a libertarian self-identification. We investigate these possibilities in Study 3.

[doodle]

The autistic libertarian connection?

Empathizer-Systemizer Scale

The Empathizer-Systemizer scale (adapted from Baron-Cohen [62]) measures the tendency to empathize, defined as “the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion”? and to systemize, or “the drive to analyze the variables in a system, and to derive the underlying rules that govern the behavior of the system.”? In short, empathizing is about understanding the social world whereas systemizing is about understanding the world of inanimate objects and nature. We selected 20 items from the full 40-item empathizer scale, and 20 items from the full 75-item systemizer scale to create a single survey that could be completed in less than 10 minutes. Cronbach's alphas for these measures were .80 (systemizer) and .84 (empathizer). The measure was completed by 8,870 participants (4,532 men, 6,525 liberals, 877 conservatives, and 637 libertarians).

Results.

Table 3 shows that libertarians score the lowest of any group on empathizing, and the highest on systemizing (also see Figures 3 and 4). In fact, libertarians are the only group that scored higher on systemizing than on empathizing. Given that these traits are known to differ between men and women, it is important to examine these effects in each sex separately. Table 3 shows that the same effects hold when looking only at men, and when looking only at women.

Research by Baron-Cohen [62] has shown that relatively high systemizing and low empathizing scores are characteristic of the male brain, with very extreme scores indicating autism. We might say that liberals have the most “feminine”? cognitive style, and libertarians have the most “masculine.”? These effects hold even when men and women are examined separately, as can be seen in Table 3. Indeed, the “feminizing”? of the Democratic party in the 1970s [63] may help explain why libertarians moved increasingly into the Republican party in the 1980s.

[doodle]

I would also add this great lecture by Rick Roderick  to help give a little background to the process and forces that shaped the rise of the individual and modern ethics. http://youtu.be/m-JW4X6QpPk

But with the advent of modernity a new problem arises and that is that Human subjects for the first time get to be fragmented into individual atoms. Now it is very important to understand that this concept of the individual is a historical one. That what we understand as our isolated psyche, the little private spot in our head and the little wall of our body as being "us" is not a datum of factum but something that is theoretically constructed and developed historically from other and differing views

Btw, if you enjoy great lecturers on philosophy Rick Roderick and Wes Cecil are two particularly engaging speakers

[Pointedstick]

That all makes sense to me, Doodle, and matches my own observations, not to mention a frank appraisal of my own personality. I firmly believe that stereotypes exist for a reason, and I think it's no coincidence that libertarians are often stereotyped as cold, emotionless robots. I myself have been accused of that a number of times by liberals who I would characterize as weepy gullible dreamers, and conservatives who seem like wrathful, ignorant fetishizers of the past. 

[doodle]

That all makes sense to me, Doodle, and matches my own observations, not to mention a frank appraisal of my own personality. I firmly believe that stereotypes exist for a reason, and I think it's no coincidence that libertarians are often stereotyped as cold, emotionless robots. I myself have been accused of that a number of times by liberals who I would characterize as weepy gullible dreamers, and conservatives who seem like wrathful, ignorant fetishizers of the past. 

In other words....The world is, as you are :-)

[Mountaineer]

This seems like a fitting article for the subject at hand.

... Mountaineer


Satan Laughs and Spreads His Wings
July 2, 2014 - 2:06 PM

By Jen Kuznicki

"How foolish and fickle they have become.  Their only thoughts are wants as they've been given their needs.  Their bodies tuned to immediate gratification and their minds are wasted.

"Right and wrong are no longer discernible since discernment is rare.  They have left their religion behind as they have learned to put themselves above God.

"They have accepted as a moral virtue that action which kills their own offspring and proclaim it to be what keeps them free.  They have left the battlefield of the war on evil saying it will bring them peace.  They see bodies piled like cordwood, and turn away, self-righteous in their innocence.

"They have begun to scowl at each other, though they praise what is happening.  They have created games of murder, and brought them to life.

"They have despised His name and wickedly cheated the ancients.  They have chosen to leave Him behind as a relic of the ignorant past, putting their own designs on the souls of the masses.

"They have excelled at twisting the true meaning of words and philosophy, raping the work of the righteous and good to serve at the altar of the damned.  They have rejected the idea that man is good, and accepted that his thoughts and actions hold to no higher power than his own shallow pleasure.

"They have laughed in the face of the seven deadly sins, thinking their rebelliousness will change the rule.  Lust has been accounted for, accepted as unavoidable.  Gluttony is only disparaged if you set out to create wealth.  Greed is utilized to gain power, but projected onto the powerless.  Sloth is praised as freedom.  Wrath is bursting at the injustice of it all, making sinners of the righteous.  Envy is the agitprop of the destroyers of production, and pride has been made a moral good.

"The Ten Commandments they have changed to ten suggestions, unaware of the darkening of their invisible souls.  They have made themselves as God.  They have rejected their father and mother for a future of their own making.  They are numb to death.  Adultery is a norm, and theft, a means to amass wealth.  And bearing false witness has been made to be virtuous as a means to an end.

"They have rejected Him completely and have chosen to follow me."

Then Satan laughed, and spread his wings.

[doodle]

This seems like a fitting article for the subject at hand.

... Mountaineer


Satan Laughs and Spreads His Wings
July 2, 2014 - 2:06 PM

By Jen Kuznicki

"How foolish and fickle they have become.  Their only thoughts are wants as they've been given their needs.  Their bodies tuned to immediate gratification and their minds are wasted.

"Right and wrong are no longer discernible since discernment is rare.  They have left their religion behind as they have learned to put themselves above God.

"They have accepted as a moral virtue that action which kills their own offspring and proclaim it to be what keeps them free.  They have left the battlefield of the war on evil saying it will bring them peace.  They see bodies piled like cordwood, and turn away, self-righteous in their innocence.

"They have begun to scowl at each other, though they praise what is happening.  They have created games of murder, and brought them to life.

"They have despised His name and wickedly cheated the ancients.  They have chosen to leave Him behind as a relic of the ignorant past, putting their own designs on the souls of the masses.

"They have excelled at twisting the true meaning of words and philosophy, raping the work of the righteous and good to serve at the altar of the damned.  They have rejected the idea that man is good, and accepted that his thoughts and actions hold to no higher power than his own shallow pleasure.

"They have laughed in the face of the seven deadly sins, thinking their rebelliousness will change the rule.  Lust has been accounted for, accepted as unavoidable.  Gluttony is only disparaged if you set out to create wealth.  Greed is utilized to gain power, but projected onto the powerless.  Sloth is praised as freedom.  Wrath is bursting at the injustice of it all, making sinners of the righteous.  Envy is the agitprop of the destroyers of production, and pride has been made a moral good.

"The Ten Commandments they have changed to ten suggestions, unaware of the darkening of their invisible souls.  They have made themselves as God.  They have rejected their father and mother for a future of their own making.  They are numb to death.  Adultery is a norm, and theft, a means to amass wealth.  And bearing false witness has been made to be virtuous as a means to an end.

"They have rejected Him completely and have chosen to follow me."

Then Satan laughed, and spread his wings.

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

[moda0306]

That all makes sense to me, Doodle, and matches my own observations, not to mention a frank appraisal of my own personality. I firmly believe that stereotypes exist for a reason, and I think it's no coincidence that libertarians are often stereotyped as cold, emotionless robots. I myself have been accused of that a number of times by liberals who I would characterize as weepy gullible dreamers, and conservatives who seem like wrathful, ignorant fetishizers of the past. 

Well. Put.

[moda0306]

doodle,

I think the reason that (for now) we can put all the super metaphysical stuff aside is that because if "we don't exist," or "we don't control ourselves," then either 1) "we" aren't acting at all (much less morally or immorally) no matter what we think, or 2) we can't choose our actions, meaning that morality is almost a moot point, but so is ANY sort of logical exercise around decision-making.

So we are willing to accept these premises as true, because if they're not true, we've got much, much bigger, weirder, more unanswerable questions to ask about ourselves.  And those are good questions to ponder and investigate, but in the meantime, I have to decide whether or not I should torture puppies on my front lawn (Sorry, K... this one is just part of our banter at this point).

If there is even a possibility that we DO exist, we DO have choice, and humans (and possibly animals) have some sort of intrinsic value that we OUGHT to sort out how to deal with then we owe it to ourselves and our children to work it out.  If the universe has no meaning, or we don't even exist, what have we lost?



I'm not so much interested in the perfect SOUNDNESS of an argument (all the premises being 100% perfectly true) as the validity of it (once we accept some premises (a few of which we might be able to debate on a metaphysical level), what logically follows these premises).

Even if we take some liberties with accepting certain premises that we could probably debate until the end of time, K is still tasked with connecting all those premises into a NECESSARY logical conclusion.  That is one difficult b!tch, IMO.

And then... to me, even if you COULD prove self-ownership and the NAP are both valid, there would be little-to-no logical connection to some really tough topics outside of ourselves, such as dealing with:

External Property
Self-Defense
Children
Animals
Pollution
Mentally ill & elderly
Nuisance (noisy neighbors)
Risk
Positive Obligations (jump in a shallow pool to save a drowning baby)

None of these even exist, though, if we can't agree that we exist .  If we don't exist, or we can't make choices, it pretty much nips every single discussion we have right in the bud.  Global warming doesn't exist.  Murder doesn't exist.  Words don't exist.  Etc.

So I accept those premises as true, even if it's impossible to PROVE things down to the very base physical core of everything.  I know we have given Kshartle a tough task, but let's at least agree, for the purposes of a debate about actions that we, as individuals, OUGHT to take, that 1) we exist, and 2) we make choices about actions. 

Where we should ABSOLUTELY challenge K is in more subjective premises, or, more importantly (I think), any lack of logical necessity for a conclusion to follow a set of premises.  Even if we accept the premises that we exist and we have the capacity to CHOOSE our actions, I still think K has a very tough job ahead of him.  We might be able to discover some interesting, useful aspects about our own personal moral (or utilitarian) philosophy by examining facts given those premises are correct.  But even if we exist and choose our actions and conscious beings, where, in logic, exists the imperative to act a certain way?  This is what K has to prove for us, and even if we accept those premises, I see no path to a valid conclusion of self-ownership (even in its simplest form, much less all the messy areas of conversation mentioned above).



K... sorry if I'm pre-judging your future arguments.  I'm trying to get folks here to rid ourselves of this will to challenge certain premises that to reject would be undermining the ability for us to ever PROVE anything at all.

We all exist in a world where if we were to go about life assuming that we don't exist or don't control our actions, we're really dooming ourselves to a pretty miserable outlook on life... which, as "unprovable" as the concept of "happiness" and "misery" might be in objective terms, in subjective terms (which how we take in the world), they're about the only REAL things we know to be true.

So I hope you see that while I've given you some grief on the concept of an action being "correct" or "incorrect," I am actually trying to move this beast forward.... or at least I think I exist, and I have the capacity to choose to "try" something vs accept something else.

[Xan]

I wish Kshartle would just post his argument here, at long last; then we could all stop falling over ourselves to apologize for assuming things about it.

Post the argument!  From there we can tweak the premises or the argument if necessary.  From there it will be obvious which premises are actually used in the argument and which are unnecessary, and the argument and/or premises can be tuned, tweaked, and changed as need be.

The only reason I can think of for holding back is that it doesn't actually exist.  Just lay out, from premises, how you get to your conclusion.  It doesn't have to be perfect to start with.

[moda0306]

I wish Kshartle would just post his argument here, at long last; then we could all stop falling over ourselves to apologize for assuming things about it.

Post the argument!  From there we can tweak the premises or the argument if necessary.  From there it will be obvious which premises are actually used in the argument and which are unnecessary, and the argument and/or premises can be tuned, tweaked, and changed as need be.

The only reason I can think of for holding back is that it doesn't actually exist.  Just lay out, from premises, how you get to your conclusion.  It doesn't have to be perfect to start with.

I agree for the most part.  I'd love to think K has this thing laid out in a word document, but the problems I can see are this:

1) If it's got a lot of premises, we're having 15 debates at once about what is wrong with each one of them.

2) Sometimes slowly discovering something is easier to digest than having to accept a bunch at once. 


But at this point I would have liked to have seen it all laid out.  By no means did I expect perfection on the first go.  I just think we could have focused on the most glaring logical disconnections first, and maybe didn't have to have a 10-page debate on EXACTLY what it means for a action/decision to be "correct" vs "incorrect."  We wouldn't have to worry about whether or not "we exist," because, perhaps, even if we DO exist, his argument may have failed.

That's what is cool about logical structure.  It so-well organizes thought and facts, that it is easy to identify where the most glaring disagreement lies, rather than worry about metaphysical BS or wonder about what a God might do to all this logic we're trying to work with.  If the argument is an obvious fail on the basis of validity (connection of premises to a logically necessary conclusion), who cares if we disagree on if one of the premises is 100% deductively true.

For instance, if I make the argument:

- All trees are plants.
- All plants have green leaves.

--- Therefore, I will turn green if I eat enough tree leaves.

I don't have to go on a crusade to disprove the second premise.  The argument fails from a validity standpoint.  All I have to say is, "Even if your premises are true, it does not logically follow that I'll turn green if I eat too many tree leaves."

So after seeing how this has played out, I have to say, I think t would have been more efficient to just lay out the argument.  Little definitional debates, and debates around whether actions can be "incorrect," or whether there are universally preferred states, or Gods, might just be unnecessary.  It could just be that the argument fails on its face due to a much more glaring validity error.

But I'm willing to tango.  I'll see this through.

[Mountaineer]

I wish Kshartle would just post his argument here, at long last; then we could all stop falling over ourselves to apologize for assuming things about it.

Post the argument!  From there we can tweak the premises or the argument if necessary.  From there it will be obvious which premises are actually used in the argument and which are unnecessary, and the argument and/or premises can be tuned, tweaked, and changed as need be.

The only reason I can think of for holding back is that it doesn't actually exist.  Just lay out, from premises, how you get to your conclusion.  It doesn't have to be perfect to start with.

Yep!  I keep wondering if the premises will be built on shifting sand or bedrock.  It would be nice to know.

... Mountaineer

[moda0306]

I wish Kshartle would just post his argument here, at long last; then we could all stop falling over ourselves to apologize for assuming things about it.

Post the argument!  From there we can tweak the premises or the argument if necessary.  From there it will be obvious which premises are actually used in the argument and which are unnecessary, and the argument and/or premises can be tuned, tweaked, and changed as need be.

The only reason I can think of for holding back is that it doesn't actually exist.  Just lay out, from premises, how you get to your conclusion.  It doesn't have to be perfect to start with.

Yep!  I keep wondering if the premises will be built on shifting sand or bedrock.  It would be nice to know.

... Mountaineer

I'm sure there will be one or two premises that I may reject, but I'm more interested in the glue between them than the structure of the premises themselves.  Does the conclusion LOGICALLY follow the premises.  If not, who cares if they're quicksand or bedrock, because you've used silly-putty as mortar.

But really it's a two front war in deductive logic.... neither of which I think he can win.  I'm loving the "war," though, as inefficient as it is.

[Mountaineer]

Right now it is an iceberg ... much of it underwater and invisible, floating aimlessly in a sea of sharks.

Perhaps it will become a mountain, well grounded and visible to all.

Who will be the first to climb the mountain?  To fall from the mountain?  To fly over the mountain on the wings of eagles?  To boldly go where no man has gone before?

... Mountaineer