Philosophy Now Forum

raw_thought wrote:But the validity (logical form) of Pascal's wager must be invalid because its form leads to two contradictory positions. That it is benificial to believe in God and also that it is beneficial to not believe in God.

Ah, thank you! Now I see your point. But the syllogism has to be contradictory internally to be invalid, no? The validity of a syllogism rests only on whether the conclusion follows from the stated premises. If two syllogisms of the same form lead to contradictory results, so long as each is internally logical, they are valid syllogisms. Of course, the contradictions show us that at least one is unsound. It does not show them to be invalid, though. But now, at least, I understand your reverse wager. That was a good one, and much better than the Thor/elves examples.

raw_thought wrote:Each argument (Pascal's wager and my argument that not believing in God is beneficial ) seem valid. However, they cannot both be valid because they lead to contradictory conclusions. Remember, we are talking about validity not truth.

They cannot both be true. They can both be valid. The validity of a syllogism is not determined in comparison to another syllogism.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/ wrote:A deductive argument is said to be valid if and only if it takes a form that makes it impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion nevertheless to be false. ... the validity or invalidity of an argument is determined entirely by its logical form.

(PS This still doesn't mean you can't show the argument to be invalid, just that you can't show it to be invalid because it contradicts another argument of the same form.)



Also, here's the first comment on TBI you made: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15041&start=60#p194998 Seems OK to me