promethean75 wrote:i've found that pathos and ethos is far more effective than logos in rhetoric, and so i've become a sophist. hey man it works.
You're not wrong that pathos and ethos work, which in itself hides an undercurrent of logos in your method. Is that gonna keep you up at night and plunge you into an intellectual crisis?
As far as rhetoric goes, sticking only to logos is somewhat analogous to restricting your life to the sterilised and sanitised - leaving your immune system vulnerable to attacks of pathos and ethos, which almost all other people are equipping to their tool belt to give them the highest chance of emerging successful. Imagine now, a perverse and somewhat masochistic immune system that thrives from the punishment of holding its own arms behind its back - to mix metaphors even further. I don't like the dirt, I want to be the diamond - so I revel in the pain of the dirt that others inflict on me just to prove by contrast how sharp and invincible I am, at least to myself. And everyone else can laugh at how I've proven nothing, but you gotta entertain yourself somehow right?
obsrvr524 wrote:Then you misunderstand the problem being presented.
I'm sensing a theme here. I still think you're mistaking misunderstanding for lack of acceptance, but that's what the logical content of our argument is for - as follows:
obsrvr524 wrote:There are things that are not defined. I don't believe there is anything that is undefinable. To say that something is undefinable is to say that it cannot ever be understood, that there can never be a description of it, that no word could ever represent it. But if such a thing existed, how could it ever be brought into a conversation?
Firstly consider the set of all things definable.
You're saying there are no other sets, or if there are any other sets they are empty?
The latter would be strange, as other sets would by definition be the sets of all things not in sets: a contradiction, yes?
The former is also strange, if it implies that all things are definable - then what is that compared against? You offer "the not yet defined", making the opposite of finite like the "prefinite". In doing so you make the possibility of the undefinable undefinable - thus validating its existence through this property.
Negation is an interesting concept. You take a definition and then you say "not that". Have you then successfully defined everything that isn't what you initially defined? I find this dubious.
Define the finite: this is fine for me, no contradiction. Then say "not that" - have you then defined the infinite?
I can bring into conversation a not-tree and the meaning you'd extract would exist as a product of the meaning communicated by defining a tree. The meaning understood, after bringing into conversation a "not-tree", doesn't come from all the other defined and pre-defined things that exist other than trees. You don't have to define everything else in the universe just to understand "not-tree", even if you could and did define everything else in the universe. All that is relevant to the meaning of "not-x" is the meaning of x, and knowing that "not that" excludes it.
To further this line of thinking, it's possible to bring into conversation black whiteness, upward downness, or square circles. You understand each concept separately, and you understand confusion and/or the concept of one thing not being another. 1 is not 2 - we can discuss this, but this does not validate 1-2ness where 1 is 2. Contradictions can be discussed without them being true.
So being able to bring something into conversation is a poor test to justify logical and/or definitional congruence of the subject matter.
Being able to describe something via negation is not a description of "what isn't that thing that has been negated".
As such "..." can be spoken of in conversation, and defining any finites by which it is constituted makes perfect sense. But, for example, if you exactly define "here" and exactly define how to move away from "here", have you exactly defined where you'll end up? For all the finites involved in attempting to define "...", this is where we can specifically define the point after which it goes astray from the defined into the undefinable. Defining the start point of departure from the defined isn't defining "the departure from being defined" itself, just what's around its starting point. It's like saying "count upwards from zero, we've defined zero and counting upwards, therefore we know the number we'll get to if we never stop".
obsrvr524 wrote:Before you say that the concept itself has no bounds, realize that any finite value is outside the bounds of the concept of infinite. It certainly has bounds, The quantity one is outside of the bounds of the concept of infinite. Anything that has an opposite or even a definable difference has a bound or limit.
This is an intriguing inversion. With the infinite being beyond the scope of the finite, the finite can also be thought of as beyond the scope of the infinite?
I'm warey of the possible formal fallacy of Affirming the Consequent worming its way into here: (P => Q, Q) => P, is the reverse true?
Is one really beyond the bounds of the concept of infinity, or is one contained infinitely within the concept of infinity along with infinite quantities of other quantities?
If one was thought to be contained in an infinite set of all finites, then it would not follow that one is outside infinity, whilst it would still be consistent to say that infinity is beyond the finite quantity one.
You have to me careful of how you structure this conception of infinity as different to e.g. one, and as you've gathered, I would say you have to be careful of structuring the negation of the structured (the infinite).
obsrvr524 wrote:When James defined infA as [1+1+1+...+1] he was saying that infA is NOT [2+2+2+...+2], which he described a "infB". He was intentionally putting a limit on it. It was infinite but NOT any and all infinite concepts. InfA was distinguished from other infinite entities - finitely - "well" defined.
James may have
intended infA as [1+1+1+...+1] to be NOT "infB" as [2+2+2+...+2], but as you will have picked up, 2 can be represented as "1+1", making infB [(1+1)+(1+1)+(1+1)+...+(1+1)], and by the associative property of addition infB represents [1+1+1+1+1+1+...+1+1], and since "..." is an endless string of "1+1"s, [1+1+1+1+1+1+...+1+1] is just another representation of [1+1+1+...+1] as implied by "..." - meaning infA is indistinguishable from infB. Note that I am not saying that they are therefore same, succumbing to the fallacy of Affirming the Disjunct. I am saying that one endlessness is not definably different from another endlessness. Again, endlessness is a quality, not a quantity - its quality is that it defies quantity. So intending infA to NOT be infB by attempting a definition of each that "looks" different, doesn't mean it is different - nor does it mean it's the same. There is a False Dilemma fallacy to be warey of here, when it comes to the infinite (the endless).
obsrvr524 wrote:You have been conflating a boundless series with a boundless description of the series. And I suspect that I know why. The description has been bounded and complete all along else you couldn't write it or talk about it. It has been the description of a series that by definition has no end. That is its finite definition. The definition is finite. The word is finite. The concept is finite. The only thing that is not finite is the reality being signified.
If you don't buy that, please don't merely repeat your declaration again and again but instead, prove that the concept known as "infinite" cannot be defined, explained, conceptualized, or understood.
So we're distinguishing here between the description of infA or [1+1+1+...+1], and the boundless series that they represent. The former describes the latter as boundless. The former has the form of boundedness, the latter has the lack of form of boundlessness. As such you can talk about the bounded appearance of the former without contradiction, and the bounded description is of the boundless, therefore the boundless is defined and bounded? I'm saying that properly scrutinised, the former (the description) when fully unpacked and every element evaluated, in order for it to validly describe boundlessness, there must be at least some element of boundlessness in the description. Otherwise, the description improperly applies to that which it describes. I'm not conflating the two, I'm demanding precision such that they can validly match to prevent any conflation from occurring. To treat the appearance of a description like infA or [1+1+1+...+1] as "defined" and therefore the infinity that it describes as bounded and defined fails to meet up to these precise criteria that I'm demanding. If you don't accept these demands, as you very well may, all that means is that you're content to be insufficiently precise in order to force sense where there is insufficient sense upon further scrutiny.