Talk:Existential assumption

Attribution
Some content from http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Existential_Fallacy 15:45, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Something else
"Imaginary animals" and "real animals" are not the same terms, yet the discussion of the example treats them as if they were. "Unicorns are animals" means only that "Unicorns, the imaginary entity, are imagined to be animals/are imaginary animals." Imaginary animals don't exist in the real world of animals, but they do exist qua products of imagination. And they obviously are not in the same category as real-world, actual-flesh animals. Is "dangerousness" being attributed only to all real animals, or is it being attributed to both all real animals (as actual dangerousness) and (as imaginary dangerousness) to all imaginary animals (including unicorns)? Or is it being attributed only to all imaginary animals? Certainly an imaginary dangerousness of all imaginary animals does not "require existence" except for the existence of imagination. And unicorns do "need to exist" if they are classified as _real_ animals. P1 does "require existence" if the animals that unicorns are said to be are real animals. There are no unicorns in the real world, so such a premise would be an incoherent mashing of the imaginary with the real.

The referents of the premises and conclusion are thus ambiguously stated. But if we make clear in the syllogism that we are never talking throughout about anything but imaginary creatures with imaginary features, so that the imputation of dangerousness is imaginary too, the conclusion is obviously valid. And there would, in that case, obviously be instantiation throughout if the realm that we understand to exist is that of the imagination and of the imaginary creatures that people conceive.

(The premise about the dangerousness of all imaginary animals is false if the world of imagination includes all actual imaginings or stories about unicorns. Some unicorns, at least, have been portrayed as benign. But the conclusion would still be valid GIVEN premises that are referring only to imaginary features of imaginary creatures.)

There is no "fallacy of existential import." Products of the imagination exist. We do have, for example, a fallacy of equivocation (which often also entails the fallacy of four terms). In the example supplied, only if we assume that "animals" is being used equivocally can we be justified in claiming that the syllogism is invalid. But the fallacy is equivocation.


 * I think the article would benefit from a better example, ideally an actual "real world" example, of the fallacy, because if the premises are false and the conclusion is false, it's hard to perceive any error in the reasoning. Annquin (talk) 13:13, 1 August 2016 (UTC)