physicsisphirst said:
well that's fine, but in the non-human animal case:
1. It is moral for a non-human animal to eat meat (if it desires to).
2. Humans are animals.
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3. It is moral for humans to eat meat (if they desire to).
the consequent (3) doesn't follow at all from the antecedents (1 & 2), therefore cogency exists not. (i guess you could say it is 'incogent' rather than 'incorrect'.)
Pardon me for seeming repetitious, but it seems that I may need to restate this: An argument is valid, cogent, if the conclusion can only be denied by denying one or more of the premisses. This is the case in the syllogism which I tabled: You cannot deny (3) without denying either (1) or (2). Thus, the argument is
cogent (but might still be incorrect - especially, e.g., if one or more of the premisses is incorrect).
Your treatment of the syllogism does not disprove the syllogism. Rather, it supports it. The fact that you can extract two cases, one invalid and another a tautology, proves the cogency of the argument. That is characteristic of a well-formed Barabara syllogism, and characteristic of any good deduction.
A parallel version of your treatment would be:
- Chimpanzees are omnivorous.
- Bonobos are chimpanzees.
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- Bonobos are omnivorous.
Following your approach, we divide out premiss (2) into "chimpanzess which are bonobos" and "chimpanzess which are not bonobos". Thus, we now have two syllogisms:
- Chimpanzees which are not bonobos are omnivorous.
- Bonobos are chimpanzees.
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- Bonobos are omnivorous.
(INVALID)
- Chimpanzees which are bonobos are omnivorous.
- Bonobos are chimpanzees.
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- Bonobos are omnivorous.
(TAUTOLOGY - COGENT)
Try your treatment on the classic:
- Humans are mortal.
- Socrates is human.
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- Socrates is mortal.
You will see that you get the same results.
So, the structure of my syllogism sound, even if you believe that the conclusion is false. This ought to drive us to question the premisses - which is what you
actually seemed to intend, under the cover of an apparent critique of the cogency of the argument. By dividing the first premiss into "human animals" and "non-human animals", you seemed to want to differentiate between kinds of animal.
I find this an agreeable step, especially when we say, "Humans are morally distinct from animals." (Another proposition with which, I think, almost all of us agree.)
physicsisphirst said:
it's like saying if 2*2=4, then new york is a large city (both the antecedent and the consequent are true, but there is no connection between the two and the latter doesn't flow from the former, hence it is incogent).
No, the two are dissimilar, because in my syllogism, to deny either premiss invalidates the conclusion, and to deny the conclusion requires denying one or both of the premisses (the test for syllogistic validity). In your construct (above), the precedent may be denied without affecting the antecedent, and vice versa.
I hope this clears the matter up. Let me know if I have not explained this effectively; I understand how easy it is to be vague under the guise of clarity, even when dealing with something as rigorous as syllogistic logic.
physicsisphirst said:
you keep attributing statements "of your own invention" to movements and people regardless of whether they say it or not.
I agree that I am coining these statements, but I also contend that they are characteristic thought for the animal rights/ethical vegetarian view. If they are not, I welcome your correction.
Further, as far as I can see, you are saying that you agree with my two premisses, but you then make the complaint that I am (inappropriately) attributing the statements to the animal rights/ethical vegetarian view. If you agree with what I am saying (in premisses 1 and 2), then you have no grounds to make such a complaint.
phyiscsisfirst said:
(btw, what this second premise "humans are animals" means is that humans belong to the set of animals. it doesn't mean that a human is a cat, platypus or any other non-human creature outside of the subset humans anymore than a cat is a platypus. this is really easy to see if you draw some venn diagrams.)
Which is completely consistent with what I am saying.
physicsisphirst said:
in any case, if there are no more syllogisms forthcoming, i will direct my energies elsewhere.
If you would like to be honorably released from this discussion, you certainly have my leave. I hope that the little bit of discussion we have had has been profitable to you, and I wish you well.
P.S. To quote Pascal - "Pardon the length of this message. I lacked the time to make it shorter."