(2) To believe of some proposition P that P is true entails believing that not-P is false.

That statement is not true.

A = B, B = C, -> A = C not A != C

As with all things, there is usually more than one correct answer.

What's that last bit in your allleged counterexample? Is that an exclamation point combined with an identity sign? I don't know how I'm supposed to read that. I'm not sure how a reference to the transitivity of identity is suppoed to qualify as a counterexample to my argument.

But, look, if I believe of some proposition that it is true, then, assuming that I understand what is said, I must also believe that the *denial* of that proposition is false. Surely, you don't wish to challenge this?

If I believe that God exists that I also believe that it is false that God does not exist.

Everything that I've said proceeds without a hitch. Religious propositions are, many of them, mutually contradictory. The truth of one entails the falseness of others. And so, my point is that when people charge, say, PTC Guy with "intolerance" simply on the grounds that he thinks his own views are correct and others are false, they are proceeding from an incoherent notion of tolerance.

Hi muddle

Let me try it this way.

(1) To believe any proposition P, *just is* to believe that P is true.
(2) To believe of some proposition P that P is true entails believing that not-P is false.

Why can’t there be a proposition where “A = P”?

"A" would still be “Not-P” but since “A = P” therefore “A” would be true.

I'm not sure I'm tracking with you here.

Is "A" itself a proposition? Or is our proposition the entire identity statement of "A=P" (e.g., "Mark Twain = Sam Clemens")?

Now if A is in some way identical to P then there is no possible sense in which it is also equivalent to "not-P". Reason: The result would be that P is identical to not-P.

But in the big picture, I still don't see how any of this is a challenge to the common-sensical claim that if I believe something, then I must also believe that the denial of that something is false.

I bet people looking over our shoulders and reading this exchange are just having an unbelievable adrenaline rush from the thrill of it all!

“Pro Choice” is code for “Pro Abortion” or “Baby Killing”?

As it’s been used today several times, fess up.

Pro Choice means exactly that “Choice”.

Now I’m going to bore you to death.

Several, many, a big number of, years ago while I was a business major, my “kind” and I were required to take an ethics class as part of our major.

I got lucky, a friend and I ended up in a medical ethics class with 82 nursing students. We looked upon it as a challenge. Two business majors against 82 Dr. want-a-bees, this was going to be fun.

Mind you that “Dr. want-a-bees” is what we called them from day one. That alone set them on the defensive and they never recovered from it. They just couldn’t debate logically from that point on. They mentally assumed an inferior position and we played off if it the rest of the year.

What we truly benefited from was a professor that would start a debate/argument and then slowly fade into the background and analyze how the debate was going. What the nursing students couldn’t come to grips with was the fact that my friend and I could “coldly” debate the issue with no emotional attachment what-so-ever. We could be pro abortion one day and anti abortion the next and they just couldn’t keep up. What my friend and I realized was the nursing students were “emotionally” attached the subject and were doomed from then on.

To keep this short, the professor passed the two business majors with the comment of “your debate tactics were exceptional because you never took it personally.” We were given a point to argue/debate and just went with it.

The moral to this story is that everyone has a “side” when it comes to abortion. Understand that and don’t get emotional about it and you may be able to persuade someone else to your side. Calling Pro Choice advocates “Baby Killers” will get you nowhere.

Human nature is to argue from the hart. Vary few people have been trained to, know and/or understand how to argue facts.

If you want to persuade someone, present them facts in such a way as they have no recourse other than to except your way of thinking.

You may not win every battle but the odds are you’ll win the war.

What a woman does with a pregnancy is none of your business. If you get pregnant then you can also decide.

I understand your assertion here.

But many of us believe that abortion involves the taking of a human life and that, therefore, if done at all, it must be done only where there is an overriding justification.

Perhaps we are mistaken in this.

But to assert, baldly, that it is a woman's private affair what she "does with a pregnancy" is to sweep a lot of important discussion under the rug.

Have you an actual *argument" to support your otherwise unsupported assertion?

I am against the pro-choice and pro-life stances. I believe that abortion should be available within reason. I believe that anything after the first trimester is wrong so I disagree with the pro-choice people who feel that any restrictions are wrong. I think that many people agree with this stance but it is an all or nothing with the extremists.

Muddle, the premise to your argument is invalid.

“Have you an actual *argument" to support your otherwise unsupported assertion?”

There is no need to support the posters assertion. The burden is your’s. I you feel that the posters assertion is unsupported than it is up to you to prove that assumption.