Expand Your Thinking

Book Review: Necessary Existence

Everything that exists that we know of is contingent. Something being contingent means it exists because of something else existing that caused it to exist, or at least provided the necessary conditions, for it’s existence. Contingent beings thus depend in their very existence on other things that exist. They could have thus failed to exist to begin with if not for the existence of other things. Trees, rocks, planets, galaxies, and everything else in the universe apparently, all exist contingent upon other things. The entire collection of everything we know of is an interconnected, interdependent web of contingently existing things…

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The Straw Man Fallacy

Starting our look at a few logical fallacies, we have perhaps the most well known one, the “straw man” fallacy. The straw man fallacy is misrepresenting or misunderstanding an argument. You are stating or attacking/refuting an argument that is different than the one your opponent holds. To “attack a straw man” is to attack your misunderstanding or caricature of a person’s argument, not the real one. A “man” made out of straw (scarecrow) may look superficially like a real man, but it isn’t. Attacking or beating up a straw man is easy. Beating up a real man is harder. He…

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