stevestory
Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote | 146
Barry ArringtonJune 10, 2016 at 2:45 pm
daveS:
“That 2 + 3 = 5 is true by definition can be verified in a purely mechanical, absolutely certain way.”
This may be counter intuitive to you dave, but your statement is false. There is no way to verify that statement. It is either accepted as self-evidently true, or not. Think about it. What more basic steps of reasoning would you employ to verify the equation? That’s right; there are none. You can say the same thing in different ways such as || + ||| = ||||| or “a set with a cardinality of two added to a set with cardinality of three results in a set with a cardinality of five.” But they all amount to the same statement.
That is another feature of a self-evident truth. It does not depend upon (indeed cannot be) “verified” (as you say) by a process of “precept upon precept” reasoning. As WJM has been trying to tell you, a self-evident truth is, by definition, a truth that is accepted because rejection would be upon pain of patent absurdity.
2+3=5 cannot be verified. It is accepted as self-evidently true because any denial would come at the price of affirming an absurdity.
“Gratuitous torture of a child for pleasure is evil” is accepted as self-evidently true because any denial would come at the price of affirming an absurdity in the exact same way. |
Barry makes up for being stupid by also being really confident.
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