The responsibility on him as the one presenting the argument to make the point. My job as an assessor of an argument is not to argue that he's wrong, but to critique the strength of his argument. His argument for the weight of life expectancy as part of an evaluation of his moral philosophy is weak.

No, it's not. Making an argument from ignorance, while not a formal logical fallacy, is an informal fallacy and is an indication of the weakness of an argument. Indeed, there's a full list of informal fallacies that, while not being formal logical fallacies, are all things for which an argument may be criticized for. It may not be "poor logic" (from a formal sense) but it's a "poor argument."

Thats not what the informal fallacy of argument from ignorance means.

Crap. Wrong phrasing. Serves me right for trying to go quickly.

From the point of view of assessing the argument, false information (false assumptions, etc) undermine the strength of the argument and are valid points of criticism of an argument.

Ok, but it seems to me that if the worst sin Dawkins made there was slightly over emphasizing the impacts of Down syndrome on life expectancy/quality you should accuse him of being ignorant or intellectually dishonest rather than being a philosophical light weight.

Aaron do you feel like the research i posted is in line with the picture you are conveying of having a kid with downs?

But my point is that pre-scientific attempts to learn about the world are no different from literary criticism.

I think I know what philosophers want to be. We call them mathematicians and scientists. I am making the pejorative statement that they aren't doing anything but lit crit.

I've assumed that you don't mean this literally, but perhaps I'm wrong. So, when I think of literary criticism, I think of people who study literature in an effort to understand its narrative and rhetorical structure, the themes and ideas the author was trying to convey, what it says about the culture around it, and so on. Some examples would be the people who write review essays in the New Yorker or NYRB, famous academics like Elaine Showalter or Harold Bloom, and most people who teach in English departments.

Is it your claim that this is what philosophers are doing? Or do you mean something different by "literary criticism"?

Is how philosophy departments teach Wittgenstein closer to that or is it closer to how math departments teach Gauss?

You were correct by accident (taking the entire thread and arguments into account).

We cannot disprove that all of modern physics could be rationally derived, therefore rationalism is sufficient to prove all of modern physics. That is an excellent example of an argument from ignorance.

I don't know.

EDIT: It doesn't look like a continuum to me.

Good point. Could this be the greatest fallacies of them all? Always taking things to the extremes.

Take away 1 from 10. Then you don't have 10. So 1 must be 10.

Observe humans from the outside only?

Also trying to find out which structures and dynamics are responsible for what people are telling, when it comes to moral etc. Making databases of course of the different views, giving people a possibility to participate and compare, and get the knowledge about themselves they want.

I'd like to know what's responsible for my thoughts, preferably as they happen. That could really add. From the outside? Well...

What is "the outside"?

We could get systems better than religion and philosophy, they are too crude. Placing yourself on a probability function of love, care, comfort and survival could be more fruitful.

What the Ubermensch has become in 2016...

It sounded like an invite for exclusive and partial views from limited vantage points. Similar to accounting for only part of the information available to determine knowledge. I do like the values you mention. Love and living aren't really exclusive to any institution.

There are also other things, for example the hunt for knowledge isn't religion anymore and not philosophy either, at least not markedly. Take the philosophical discussion on determinism. Feels somehow pathetic.

Religion and philosophy will continue to have a niche as history. Like dead people have. Hence RIP. We will remember you for the attempts, the good and the bad.

That maybe wishful thinking or fortune telling.

One thing is almost for sure to me, the behaviors of philosophizing and religious practices are each going to remain as observable as any view which make a categorization error by generally equivocating the two.

Of course it's a gradual process, but why wouldn't it happen? You are right in that religion and philosophy are a bit different categories, especially nowadays. So they will not die together, maybe you could say partly independently, but ok, that's my theory.

There are already vast groups of secular people, think they will return to religion? Why would they? You do fine without, if not having the burden of growing up with it. A middle generation has to do a compromise, for not feeling too bad. Then the following generation can take the full step. Then they are getting rid of at least one thing blurring minds.

They could get rid of cogito ergo sum and ubermensch too, after doing the mental experiment.

Even though a dictionary still refers to the word sacred as an exclusively religious word for an experience, people without any claim to a religion still account for having sacredness in their life and experience. I can see change happening more that direction with exclusivity further diminishing. Going after whole categories nilly willy is too much like donaldism for my tastes.

If you say so I will back off totally

And of course the aim is not getting us become old fashioned robots.

Nice article about this

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161...d-unification/

We'd all be pretty cool as a race of Datas, though that's not far at all from a race of locutus of borg. But we gonna be the human beings we become however one chooses to proceed. :

So the Legacy of 2+2 is to find as solution to permanently ban people that started eg these kind of threads that i personally find interesting on pure positivist thinking about what is possible given enough time and drive and will and intelligence. Oh but all kinds of people that insult and spew hatred daily on many here in countless forums are sanctioned as not racists or worthy of permanent banning. They are in fact those that sustain racism and make it difficult to defeat.

The forum needs at least an official explanation of why it lost an active member so that we know what we are dealing with here. Not long ago we lost another very important member account with permanent banning and inability to access past posts (see above in this thread also unclickable name) . It is our disagreements that make us greater than when we all agree. As long of course as we disagree in good will. Only a better idea can defeat another idea. Shunning will never achieve that.

+1

Whether you agree with it or not, it should be obvious why.