A Speculative Fiction: Part II

In response to the comments on the previous post.

"by stating that it is an unstated premise I'm making the claim that I'm skipping steps--logical fallacy--because I don't have the time or inclincation (generally time) to walk through the entire argument..."

As the saying goes "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." The action of using anecdotal evidence in philosophy is not a correct action merely due to one's agreement with a given premise; neither is another person guilty of abusing logic due to one's disagreement with their premise as a reason in itself. Reasons and evidence must be provided by all parties involved in serious discourse (and the time to explain/present them must be taken), otherwise nothing in the way of problem solving will result. This is not to state one is wrong in their thinking as it concerns a given premise. It is acknowledgment that without the time taken to present evidence/reasons for the support of a premise to those who inquire, the premise and the knowledge thereof will remain unknown. Such a premise might only be true in the individual mind since knowledge has not been shared through critical discourse with the minds of others.

"I don't have the time to walk down certain paths because it takes too much time... so maybe instead of saying I'm using a fallacies to make my argument... I should say "here are my unstated premises, which if you don't accept, means I have nothing to say to you..."


When involved in philosophy, it may be better to not engage in critical discourse than to take short cuts during formal conversation, as opposed to informal conversation. Otherwise there could be a loss of learning for all involved. Again, the purpose of philosophy is to gain knowledge. If honest inquiry is not respected, there can be neither understanding nor gaining of knowledge. Unstated premise serve no purpose if the other party is unaware of said premise during the actual discourse. How can all parties be assured the unstated premise is understood if time is not granted to the philosophical discourse? As you mentioned previously on your blog, we are none of us mind readers (as far as I know).

"this is language usage not logic in-itself in my mind...."
Does this statement apply towards philosophical discourse, informal conversation, or both? If you are referring to informal conversation, then I can understand your meaning. If you are referring to philosophical discourse, then I do not understand your meaning. The following sentence was taken from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "Typically, a logic consists of a formal or informal language together with a deductive system and/or a model-theoretic semantics. The language is, or corresponds to, a part of a natural language like English or Greek. The deductive system is to capture, codify, or simply record which inferences are correct for the given language, and the semantics is to capture, codify, or record the meanings, or truth-conditions, or possible truth conditions, for at least part of the language." As it relates to philosophical discourse, classical (non-mathematical) logic involves language and can be applied in differing degrees with language but not separate from language itself.