It looks to me that Russell was pretty much making the same point that I was making. The lesson is not to confuse a rule of inference (Russell's "p, therefore q") with another premise (or proposition) to be justified (including propositions like "p implies q"). If all you had were propositions and no rules of inference, you'd never be able to get anywhere. No amount of mere propositions strictly by themselves will justify deduction.
The more general lesson is that it's a mistake to think you must answer the skeptic on his own terms. (It usually seems to be a he.) Ku http://www.umich.edu/~jsku On 3/2/07, gts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Fri, 02 Mar 2007 03:25:58 -0500, John Ku <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Skeptics are fond of pointing out that no non-circular argument can be > given to support inductive reasoning. That is true, but a century ago, > Lewis Carroll showed through his modern parable of Achilles and the > Tortoise that the same holds as well for deductive reasoning. Is that really true? What do you think of Bertrand Russell's answer to Carroll? Russell argued that Carroll failed to distinguish between asserted and unasserted propositions. The statement "if p then q" is not at all the same as "p, therefore q". The Tortoise in Carroll's story failed to make this important distinction, confounding poor Achilles. The Principles of Mathematics by Bertrand Russell http://fair-use.org/bertrand-russell/the-principles-of-mathematics/s.38 -gts ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=11983
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