On Wed, 20 Dec 2000, Tom Vogt wrote:
same). your problem is that it works perfectly well the other way around: james who says that the nazis are evil is wrong because he is himself evil, and he is evil because the nazis say so (because if he says bad things about the nazis, he must be part of the jew world conspiracy). on a pure logical level, these two statements have identical truth values. since they collide, the only possible conclusion is that they're both wrong.
That's true, but I do not think it means what you think it means. To start with, james, who is not nearly as famous for his crimes as the nazis are for theirs, can be assumed not to have committed nearly as many atrocities as the nazis. Murders on one side -- six million (est.) Murders on the other side -- unknown, but I'm pretty sure we'd have heard about someone who committed more than a few hundred. The logic as presented flawlessly distinguishes the evil ones in this case. The fact that each side can say the same things about the others is beside the point. I can say that pigs fly, and I can say that birds fly. On a pure logical level, these two statements are identical. Hence the only possible conclusion is that they're both wrong? Uh, no. The only possible conclusion is that it's necessary to observe pigs and birds and *see* which statement, if any, is true. Bear