Law School Discussion

Quote from: babyeatsdingo on July 19, 2007, 04:28:35 PM

Does the state create the rights of men or merely protect the rights men are endowed by their Creator? If there is no Creator, no God, then men create rights for themselves that they do not possess in virtue of what men are or how men have come into existence.

Unless and until we find a non-arbitrary secular basis for inalienable rights the religious voice will always be present in the public square.

This statement's as baseless as the argument that without God a person cannot be moral.

Is it? Would you then please supply a non-arbitrary secular basis for inalienable rights?

On an aside, I'd argue that we cannot give substantive meaning to the term 'moral' on an atheistic view. But perhaps we should just focus on the issue I raise above for now.

If knowledge is merely what (1) one believes that (2) happens to correspond to one's experience then knowledge means anything at all and so means nothing at all (meaninglessness is the fate of all open definitions). This in turn means we can't know that knowledge consists of points (1) and (2).  If we know anything at all, we know that knowledge is more than (1) and (2).

What does this have to do with science and religion?

If we don't know what knowledge is then how do we know whether science and religion give us knowledge? If there is no such thing as knowledge then what is science anyway? What would it do?

Folks sometimes say QM shows bivalent logic to be weak sauce. That depends on whether the implications of QM are ontological, epistemic or both.

Gotta go.

Pace.

And this is why I hate philosophy majors

I studied international business, worked as an analyst for a satellite company and am now heading toward law. I read philosophical stuff when I can.

I can say that classical logic is not absolutely valid.

Classical logic must be absolutely valid in order for this statement to be true which means your statement is false.

Consider the proposition P: "classical logic is absolutely valid". I say P is true. You say ~P is true. If you are correct then it must be true that either P or ~P obtains (i.e., law of excluded middle) and must be false that both P and ~P obtain (i.e., law of non-contradiction), which is to say that classical logic is absolutely valid.