Quote Originally Posted by DTLarca View Post
I believe I have free will too - but how do we know we have free will?



Rhetoric is the art of persuasion - persuading people of some position. The position can either be a truth or a falsity.

Philosophy is different - it is argument and evidence based. And it follows rules that cannot be broken. in other words they are laws.

In physics you have laws such as that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but only converted, transfered, concentrated or diffused.

In philosophy you have the first law - the law of non contradiction - that something cannot both be and not be at the same time. If you say to me you were in Paris all day yesterday and then to someone else that you were in Barcelona all day yesterday you would have broken the first law of philosophy - the law of non contradiction. If you tried to explain how you were in some metaphysical way in both Paris and Barcelona yesterday you would be merely playing with words - the philosopher will not be fooled by your words



Dominating a conversation versus identifying falsities or inconsistencies in another's arguments are two different things.



Exactly - and the only possible way of knowing what is right or even whether knowing right will never be possible is to philosophise on the question sticking to or employing the growing arsenal of rules being built by philosophers as physicist stick to the growing arsenal of laws being built by physics.

Ok..


If I admit that you might be better educated than me and have learnt how to philosopise (spelling), how can we possibly carry on??

Will I always be wrong or will my oppinion be valid even if I can't debate why?

Cheers

coolrunnings

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