/lit/ - Literature

>>15750903
You getting annoyed people aren't taking your stupid bait bro?

>>15750903
Very well put
All of us should be studying logic

>>15750903
OP is correctamundo

>>15750903
peak reddit

>>15750924
>>15750917
>>15750903
At least one is a samefag itt.

>pee pee poo poo
>kaka doo doo

>Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

>>15750903
This statement is one of those clues that should make you realize that Hitchens was not as smart as he liked to think he was.

I mean, does he think we can have a knowledge base without axioms?

>>15751176
I support this post.

i made this exact same thread (except with a soijack) on /int/ in late 2018 and no one liked it

>>15750903
why would you assert something without evidence, if you had evidence? alternatively, if u dont have evidence, why would you assert something?

>>15751275
Ever heard of a hypothesis?

>>15750903
Cute dog.
>>15751195
Also cute dog.
I like this thread

>>15751275
All bachelors are single men
>REEEE GIB EVIDENCE

>>15751260
how do you 'like' forum posts on this forum? asking for a friend new to this imageforum.

>>15751195
He never said that, smoothbrain. Read it again.

>>15751288
I'm a bachelor from a prestigious university, and I'm not single. There's your evidence, evidence of your statement being FALSE, DUMMY.

NEXT!

>>15751288
The key word is "can" anon. I hate Hitchens probably more than the next /lit/izen but it's a mostly fine statement.

>>15751302
>and I'm not single
How many of you are there?

>>15750903
Generally true except in instances where the asserter denies the evidenceless refutation as "not an argument."

>>15751275
>Why would you assert something without evidence?
We literally cannot function, as human beings, if we do not assume certain things, certain axioms, are true. "Pure" knowledge unfortunately doesn't exist. You need to start somewhere, from some set of assumptions.

Even reasoned argument that pretends not to assume anything starts from the assumption that you can make a reasoned argument (think of the Cogito). Every time this simple assumption is questioned, it leads to language games, basically shit-tier conversation. It's not worth engaging in discussion without assuming at least one thing is true because then you can't know if anything else is true

>>15751302
You can tune a piano, but you can't tune-a-fish.

>>15750903
>Person A: I am here now.
>Person B: You haven't provided a shred of evidence to support your claim. Dismissed.
>Person A: But I am here now!
>Person B: Dismissed!

>>15751374
There is a famous proof of an external world by Moore that is a lot like this.

>>15751288
>there's no evidence that bachelors are single men

>>15750903
Well it depends. What does it mean to 'dismiss an assertion'? Are you merely refusing to respond, not wanting to engage with someone whom you believe is arguing poorly, irrespective of the veracity of his conclusions? But then why have you specified that your dismission is done 'without evidence'? Surely if such a specification is necessary then 'dismiss' in this context can not mean simple refusal to engage, since 'evidence' plays no part in such an action; then it has to mean that you take the opposite position, that you actually deny the proposition and hold its opposite. Your statement is then fallacious. Obviously just because someone asserts P without evidence, it does not follow that ~P is true, nor is it rational to hold to it.
All around a witless, foolish statement. Poetic techniques (like the repetition of 'without evidence' to create symmetry in the sentence) are only effective if the content is meaningful. Without the content, poetry is just an untuned harp.

>>15752200
If, in the course of a debate, one side asserts a substantiative proposition without providing evidence, then the other side is not obliged to provide evidence to refute it. It's basic debate hygiene regarding burden of proof.

>>15751336
>We literally cannot function, as human beings, if we do not assume certain things, certain axioms, are true.
>it leads to language games
Sure but, pardon my edge here, you're conflating the world of logic with the actual world we live in. Physics has no formal axioms. Nothing is assumed to be true. In general terms, when someone says,
>what can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence
they aren't referring to someone positing Zerkel-Fraenkel set theory. They're referring to some theist making a totally arbitrary set of assumptions about the real world, totally opaque to reality, which could have been served in any of an infinite number of different ways to the same exact end. And regardless, even if opaqueness was a requirement for reality ("to see through everything is the same as seeing nothing"), that does not mean that anything goes.

>he only ever fully believes or fully doubts a proposition
You're actually supposed to do the exact opposite