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AllanfromWales1 t1_jd83gj9 wrote

Reply to comment by Prof_ThrowAway_69 in The Fallacy Fork: Why It’s Time to Get Rid of Fallacy Theory by CartesianClosedCat

For what it's worth, my mother gave me a copy of Thouless' "Straight and Crooked Thinking" when I was around 10 to 12 years old (my memory fades on the precise date), and it has guided me these past 55 years. My position is that you can't prove a point by using fallacious arguments, but that without arguments you can't prove anything.

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Prof_ThrowAway_69 t1_jd8l195 wrote

Proving something isn’t the same as something being true. I agree you can’t prove something with flawed logic. That doesn’t make the statement true or false though. That exists independently of a persons ability to prove it. The laws of nature are going to govern the world whether or not anyone can prove that they exist.

We need to be careful not to confuse proving something with whether or not something is true. I agree with the article’s point that someone can make a statement that is truthful whether or not they used proper logic to come to that conclusion. Where I differ from the article is that I don’t believe that the person is guaranteed to be right about anything else, nor would I believe that their logic is valid.

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AllanfromWales1 t1_jd8lrws wrote

Quite. A flawed argument will not convince me that some proposition is true, but it also won't convince me that it is false. It just remains unproven (in this context).

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