Is transgender something to get upset about?

[Harbal]

The fallacy only occurs because "Scots" is unrelated to the specified criteria, as in "No true Scotsman drinks ale." Ale-drinking is unrelated to issues of nationality. However, if the criteria are appropriate, as in "No true Scotsman is without origination in Scotland," then there's no fallacy at all. It's a statement of fact. So is "No true cat is a canine." It's not a fallacy at all, despite the parallelism of the grammar. Again, it's a statement of fact.

Ah, so you're using the "no true Scotsman" method to try and say that the no true Scotsman fallacy doesn't mean what you don't want it to mean, and hoping no one will notice what an idiot it makes you appear. I don't think you'll get away with it.

I agree 'No true Scotsman' isn't exactly a fallacy, it is a shifting of one's ground from an empirical to an analytical assertion.

Whereas 'No Scotsman drinks ale' appears to be empirical, something that could be disproved by the example of Hamish the beer drinker, inserting 'true' seems to make it analytic, about the meaning of the word 'Scotsman'.

This gets us into the question of private languages; I could be saying (like Humpty Dumpty) that when I say 'Scotsman' it means what I intend it to mean. But if that was my contention, I shouldn't have used the word 'true', because that implies that there is an objective meaning to the word 'Scotsman'. (We can find out that meaning by asking people, looking it up in a dictionary etc.)

So I would say that what is wrong with 'No true Scotsman' is the ambiguous subject of the word 'true'. Does it mean 'this is true about the world?' Or 'this is truly what I meant'?

Regarding 'true Christians' the same question arises. Does the word 'Christian' mean whatever I want it to mean? Or are there a set of objective criteria? The second seems preferable, since it excludes nutcases who think Jesus wants them to murder prostitutes. But on the other hand, if we say 'being Christian' is about conforming to objective criteria, then Christianity is no longer a moral matter. I would be Christian as a matter of empirical fact. For example, Christianity would be about following the rules; whatever they were, irrespective of conscience. So while we could say that today's solo prostitute killer cannot call themselves a Christian, it is at the cost of allowing that if the church as a whole decided killing prostitutes was good then we would have to accept prostitute killing as Christian.

You've managed to take something quite simple and straight forward and turn it into a load of obscure rubbish, for what purpose, I know not.

[Londoner]

You've managed to take something quite simple and straight forward and turn it into a load of obscure rubbish, for what purpose, I know not.

Philosophy isn't for everyone.

[uwot]

Ah, so you're using the "no true Scotsman" method to try and say that the no true Scotsman fallacy doesn't mean what you don't want it to mean...

Without meaning to sound patronising, that is very perspicacious of you.

I agree 'No true Scotsman' isn't exactly a fallacy...

It is exactly an informal fallacy.

[Londoner]

It is exactly an informal fallacy.

I don't think it is a fallacy because I don't think it is an argument. We can't tell what is being asserted. We would need to ask further questions to understand what is being claimed.

[Immanuel Can]

So I would say that what is wrong with 'No true Scotsman' is the ambiguous subject of the word 'true'. Does it mean 'this is true about the world?' Or 'this is truly what I meant'?

The former, I would say. "What I truly meant" could be right or wrong. What is true about the world would have to be objectively true.

Regarding 'true Christians' the same question arises. Does the word 'Christian' mean whatever I want it to mean? Or are there a set of objective criteria? The second seems preferable, since it excludes nutcases who think Jesus wants them to murder prostitutes.

I would agree. At the very minimum, looking at it analytically, to call someone a "Christian" is to identify them as a "follower of Christ," a (lit.) "Christ - ian." That allegation can be tested objectively, with reference to Christ Himself: is person X or Y following in the way of Christ in this or that matter...

But on the other hand, if we say 'being Christian' is about conforming to objective criteria, then Christianity is no longer a moral matter.

The opposite, I would say, is the case. If there is no objective reality to what it means to be "Christian," then there is are no moral criteria by which such an assessment can be formed or justified.

I would be Christian as a matter of empirical fact. For example, Christianity would be about following the rules; whatever they were, irrespective of conscience.

Non-sequitur, I would say. "Following rules" is not the only -- or even the best way -- of following a person. One follows by association with that person, by adopting his character, by modelling his attitudes and behaviours, and by responding to his teaching...not simply by following a list of rules.

If I were a "follower of Picasso," it would not mean only that I had a list of rules from him. It would mean that when I painted, I operated in a particular Cubist style of the previous century, employing the palette, techniques, materials and aesthetic philosophy of the master painter from whom my art was inspired. And I could be judged as a true "follower" by the objective criteria of my simulation of his methods and the extent to which I represented and extended his attitudes to art. I could be judged as an even more intense "follower of Picasso" if I also practiced his lifestyle (not recommended), and perhaps a consummate follower of Picasso if I could actually so absorb his spirit so as to make Picasso-authentic judgments in new areas of life and art.

All this can be entailed in what it means to "follow" someone.

So while we could say that today's solo prostitute killer cannot call themselves a Christian, it is at the cost of allowing that if the church as a whole decided killing prostitutes was good then we would have to accept prostitute killing as Christian.

There are several problems with this conclusion. One is simply finding the right body of persons to identify as "the church" in question: many people claim things to which their right is contestable, as when boor calls himself a "lover of art," or when a tyrant calls himself, "a servant of the poor." Such things are not rare.

So one would have to have criteria beyond the mere self-identification criterion by which to differentiate between authentic and inauthentic claims to "Christianity." (That is the main point we are considering, I think.)

But secondly, if the right way to identify a Christian is, as I suggest, by relative association with the Master, Christ Himself, then if the whole "church" (however conceived) and Christ should be at variance on an issue, then by what standard could we speak of the church itself as "Christian" any longer, at least in that particular respect? I think you can see that would be hard to justify rationally. We would have to say that the entity we were calling "church" was no longer acting in a particular way that was "Christian."

Is the "Christian" moral position the position contingently taken by a "church," or is it the moral position occupied by the example of Christ? That's the key question here.

[Hobbes' Choice]

No True Scotsman fallacy.

Actually, you misunderstand that fallacy if you suppose it means there can be no criteria for any claim. You should look it up and review.

The fallacy only occurs because "Scots" is unrelated to the specified criteria, as in "No true Scotsman drinks ale." Ale-drinking is unrelated to issues of nationality. However, if the criteria are appropriate, as in "No true Scotsman is without origination in Scotland," then there's no fallacy at all. It's a statement of fact. So is "No true cat is a canine." It's not a fallacy at all, despite the parallelism of the grammar. Again, it's a statement of fact.

The question is the justification of the criteria. And in this case, it's the willingness of the person not to deliberately disobey all the explicit commandments of Christ. That seems a fair explanation of "not a Christian."

No, the only one confused here is you. You commit the fallacy for the simple reason that you deny others their christianity because they fail your personal standard.
Do you follow Jesus, and if so do you hate your family? (Matthew I think)
Do you accept Jesus' advice to follow the laws of the Torah? If so, when was the last time you stoned a adulteress?

[Immanuel Can]

you deny others their christianity because they fail your personal standard.

Not at all. The standards are neither set nor met by me, and I make no claim to being the Judge of them. The Judge is Christ...no one else is qualified. But He did set a standard. And to whatever extent a man or woman meets it, to that extent and no more may he or she be called a "Christian."

As for me personally, let me grant you any critique of my personal standing you wish. Not only let me invite you to imagine me falling short of perfection; let me invite you to imagine me a complete liar, laggard and wretch. I don't protest on my own behalf at all; I am no better than anyone, and worse than some -- many, perhaps. And though I assure you I would probably be a much worse person than I am were I not a Christian, that may still not be a very high standard, for all you can tell on a forum. So I make no protest of my own virtue. I can tell you that I'm a sinner saved only by the kindness and love of God. I don't deserve a thing. Let us grant that.

Let all that be true, and it will not have one stroke of bad effect on what I say. For it's simply ad hominem, and off topic. For even were I a skilled liar, I would still be compelled to tell the truth on most occasions, lest my lies should become too easily detectable. Thus, to know whether or not I was lying at a given time, you would have to look beyond carping about my character, and instead evaluate the truthfulness of my claims on their own objective merit.

If what I was saying were true, it would be true -- regardless of my character; and if it were false, then no virtue or perfection in my personal character could possibly render the false true.

So who among us cares what I do, or even what my personal character is? If truth is the issue, then it's what I have claimed that matters. It will be true regardless, either way. Or it will not. But there will be no way to know without evaluating the claims themselves.

[Londoner]

Me: Does it mean 'this is true about the world?' Or 'this is truly what I meant?
The former, I would say. "What I truly meant" could be right or wrong. What is true about the world would have to be objectively true.

It might or might not be objectively true, but it would be a claim that it was.

But in that case, we would have to agree what 'Christian' or 'Scotsman' meant. If I made the claim 'Socrates is X', but declined to give a meaning for 'X', then it would be neither true nor false, because it was incomplete. So, in the case of Christians or Scotsmen, we need to point to some specific meaning of those words, something we would both accept as authoritative.

Me: But on the other hand, if we say 'being Christian' is about conforming to objective criteria, then Christianity is no longer a moral matter.
The opposite, I would say, is the case. If there is no objective reality to what it means to be "Christian," then there is are no moral criteria by which such an assessment can be formed or justified.

Let us suppose the objective criteria for being a Christian is simply 'was baptised'. That would just be a fact, it would not contain any moral judgement, nothing the person concerned thought or did would unmake that fact.

Me: I would be Christian as a matter of empirical fact. For example, Christianity would be about following the rules; whatever they were, irrespective of conscience.
Non-sequitur, I would say. "Following rules" is not the only -- or even the best way -- of following a person. One follows by association with that person, by adopting his character, by modelling his attitudes and behaviours, and by responding to his teaching...not simply by following a list of rules.

I mean 'rules' in the sense of whatever objective criteria we have agreed designates a Christian; 'being baptised', having a particular set of beliefs, having a propensity to do certain things, whatever.

You say they should 'respond to his teaching'. Now either there is a fixed set of rules (i.e. objective criteria) that count as 'respond to his teaching' or it is up to us individually to determine our response. In the first case we can say 'X is a true Christian' but in the second it is for the individual to determine, in which case their idea is as good as ours.

If I were a "follower of Picasso," it would not mean only that I had a list of rules from him. It would mean that when I painted, I operated in a particular Cubist style of the previous century, employing the palette, techniques, materials and aesthetic philosophy of the master painter from whom my art was inspired. And I could be judged as a true "follower" by the objective criteria of my simulation of his methods and the extent to which I represented and extended his attitudes to art. I could be judged as an even more intense "follower of Picasso" if I also practiced his lifestyle (not recommended), and perhaps a consummate follower of Picasso if I could actually so absorb his spirit so as to make Picasso-authentic judgments in new areas of life and art.

In that case, I would ask what is the difference between being a 'follower of Picasso' and a 'Picasso impersonator'? For the second, we would say they were are 'true impersonator' in proportion to how exactly they copied the life of Picasso. Any deviation would be a fault. But in that case you are not an artist.

I think the phrase 'Picasso-authentic judgments' is self-contradictory. The only judgments that are authentic to Picasso were made by Picasso; in as far as I make those judgments, they can't be authentic. (Indeed, we might say they would have no authenticity at all, being neither Picasso's nor mine!)

There are several problems with this conclusion. One is simply finding the right body of persons to identify as "the church" in question: many people claim things to which their right is contestable, as when boor calls himself a "lover of art," or when a tyrant calls himself, "a servant of the poor." Such things are not rare.

So one would have to have criteria beyond the mere self-identification criterion by which to differentiate between authentic and inauthentic claims to "Christianity." (That is the main point we are considering, I think.)

I agree, my point being that such criteria
But secondly, if the right way to identify a Christian is, as I suggest, by relative association with the Master, Christ Himself, then if the whole "church" (however conceived) and Christ should be at variance on an issue, then by what standard could we speak of the church itself as "Christian" any longer, at least in that particular respect? I think you can see that would be hard to justify rationally. We would have to say that the entity we were calling "church" was no longer acting in a particular way that was "Christian."

But if we are to say 'the church is wrong' then we are saying there is no longer any agreed set of objective criteria, since plainly some Christians are saying other Christians are not 'true Christians'.

At which point we would either be back with Christianity as subjective, such that no opinion is better than any other...unless we were to claim that our own opinion is objectively better than anyone else's. And that is what people do; they say 'my opinion is in the scriptures' or 'I am the anointed successor to St Peter', or 'Jesus came to me in a dream'. But since there is more than one such claim to authority, we are no better off.

Is the "Christian" moral position the position contingently taken by a "church," or is it the moral position occupied by the example of Christ? That's the key question here.

As with the 'true Scotsman', I'd say it isn't a real issue, it is just a confusion created by the ambiguity in words. If asked whether (say) Henry VIII was a 'true Christian', surely the rational response would be to ask 'How do you mean?' Yes; he was a member of a church, yes; he was baptised, yes; he thought of himself as a Christian, but no; not all Christians think like Henry VIII. It is silly to think the word 'Christian' must somehow cover our every use of the word in a completely consistent way. In one sense the word 'Christian' describes various concrete facts, in another sense it is an open ended 'work in progress'.

So, when asked about bad behaviour by Christians, I think saying they were not 'true Christians' serves to distinguish genuine differences in the meaning of 'Christian' (whereas the 'real Scotsmen don't drink ale' difference is contrived). But it should not be an alternative claim. Bad Christians are also 'real Christians' - but in a different sense of 'Christian'. That is nothing special; it comes up all the time in normal speech. I can say 'I try to act morally' and also 'Hitler had a morality' without anyone concluding I'm saying 'I try to act like Hitler', just because the same word 'morally' occurs in both sentences.

[Hobbes' Choice]

you deny others their christianity because they fail your personal standard.

Not at all. The standards are neither set nor met by me, and I make no claim to being the Judge of them. The Judge is Christ...no one else is qualified. But He did set a standard. And to whatever extent a man or woman meets it, to that extent and no more may he or she be called a "Christian.".

If that were the case there would be only one type, yet there are a range of sects and major divisions that argue over key points, and each of these have changed and mutated over history to be unrecognisable.

So, as usual you are quite wrong; staggeringly wrong.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Cant wrote:

Not at all. The standards are neither set nor met by me, and I make no claim to being the Judge of them. The Judge is Christ...no one else is qualified. But He did set a standard. And to whatever extent a man or woman meets it, to that extent and no more may he or she be called a "Christian.".

I Cant's claim implies that Humanists, Muslims, and Jews don't participate in the same set of ethical precepts as do Christians.

The defining creed of a Christian is the Resurrection event, not a set of moral precepts.Do you not know, Immanuel Cant , that only if you accept the Resurrection event will Christ save you, and if you do acccept the Resurrection event Christ will save you no matter how sinful you are? The other ethical stances certainly do not include that.

In Christian theology, the resurrection of Jesus is a foundation of the Christian faith.[1 Cor 15:12–20] [1 Pet 1:3] Christians, through faith in the working of God[Col 2:12] are spiritually resurrected with Jesus, and are redeemed so that they may walk in a new way of life.[Rom 6:4] As Paul the Apostle stated: "If Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless".[1 Cor 15:14]

[Harbal]

Do you not know, Immanuel Cant , that only if you accept the Resurrection event will Christ save you, and if you do acccept the Resurrection event Christ will save you no matter how sinful you are?

Not even that would save IC. I'm afraid he's drawn a Go directly to Hell, Do not pass the Pearly Gates, do not collect free admission to Paradise card. He belongs to Satan.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

You've managed to take something quite simple and straight forward and turn it into a load of obscure rubbish, for what purpose, I know not.

Philosophy isn't for everyone.

It's clearly not for you. Aren't there any religious nut-job sites around for you and IC to slither around?

[Londoner]

You've managed to take something quite simple and straight forward and turn it into a load of obscure rubbish, for what purpose, I know not.

Philosophy isn't for everyone.

It's clearly not for you. Aren't there any religious nut-job sites around for you and IC to slither around?

I'm not religious. Try reading the post before you jump straight into the ad hominem.

[Harbal]

Aren't there any religious nut-job sites around for you and IC to slither around?

I'm not religious.

There must be plenty of secular nut-job sites that would suit you.

[Londoner]

Aren't there any religious nut-job sites around for you and IC to slither around?

I'm not religious.

There must be plenty of secular nut-job sites that would suit you.

Not exactly a deep thinker, are you?