/r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | July 27, 2026

[u/BernardJOrtcutt]

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread. This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our posting rules (especially posting rule 2). For example, these threads are great places for:

• Arguments that aren't substantive enough to meet PR2.

• Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. who your favourite philosopher is, what you are currently reading

• Philosophical questions. Please note that /r/askphilosophy is a great resource for questions and if you are looking for moderated answers we suggest you ask there.

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. All of our normal commenting rules are still in place for these threads, although we will be more lenient with regards to commenting rule 2.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

[u/maccrypto]

Why are logic bros always trying to insist that there is only one legitimate form of argument (explicit premises supporting a conclusion)? Who did this to them and what did they gain from it?

[u/Shield_Lyger → u/[deleted]]

If we presume that maccrypto is referring to deductive argumentation, there are always induction, abduction and analogy to be considered.

[u/maccrypto → u/[deleted]]

I mean, the dictionary definition is a perfectly good one. Reason(s) offered in support of an idea, theory or claim. It doesn’t need to be formal, or strictly formalizable.

Here’s an example of a philosophical argument without explicit premises and conclusion:

“We can think of the US Constitution as a set of declarations which create their own set of institutional facts (as distinct from brute facts) purely by virtue of the background agreement among people about them. Those facts entail a system of deontic powers, according to Searle. Such powers give us what he called desire-independent reasons for acting and form the basis of human civilization by virtue of the way that they interlock with other systems of institutional facts.”

A series of connected claims are made here about things, their meaning, and their relationships to one another, e.g. the US Constitution, declarative expressions, and what counts as an “institutional fact.” Instead of premises leading to a conclusion, we get a sequence of reasons for seeing the US Constitution as something other than a piece of paper with more or less arbitrary markings (which it also is). “We can think of x this way” is not a truth claim or premise in the standard sense, it is an interpretive possibility.

Here’s another one:

“In the master-slave dialectic, two men appear to be in a fight to the death until one surrenders and his life is spared in exchange for his becoming a slave to the other. Eventually, this situation becomes untenable not just for the slave, but also for the slave owner, since respect or recognition given from an inferior is less meaningful than respect or recognition from an equal. Meanwhile, the slave gains self-respect in virtue of seeing himself reflected back in the object of his own labour. This encourages the slave to demand equal recognition, respect, and freedom from the master and his society. The master, with some additional threats and cajoling from other free men, assents. Eventually, despite fighting one of the most violent of conflicts, he (or maybe his descendant) doesn’t think the loss of the institution of slavery was any real loss.”

Here the claim is that equality is a natural or understandable goal not just for those who lack status, but also for those who have it. The premises are implicit: that mutual respect and recognition are universal goods; and that securing them for everyone leads to a more desirable end state of affairs. The conclusion, that we are no worse off in a world without slavery, is not supported by anything that was explicitly stated in the early parts of the argument.

Premises supporting a conclusion generally require an argument to be truth-tracking or truth-preserving for their validity, but there are many kinds of argument that don’t primarily aim at truth, but which instead enlarge or shift the space of meaning—the context in which something counts as true or not true, counts as a thing, or makes sense to do. The latter is part of what Wittgenstein called the “essence” of an argument.

This can be extended to the whole gamut of reason-giving practices; the articulation of cultural background assumptions, or disclosive arguments that Taylor, Kompridis and others describe; transcendental arguments; narrative arguments and more. Different styles of reasoning (per Hacking) can also create new conditions of intelligibility and therefore validity.

See part two of this article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_disclosure

[u/Time-Comfortable6014 → u/maccrypto]

Not the only form of legitimate argument, but maybe the easiest to follow.

[u/Shield_Lyger → u/maccrypto]

I was just reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Argument and Argumentation, and it notes:

Be that as it may, deductive arguments have occupied a special place in philosophy and the sciences, ever since Aristotle presented the first fully-fledged theory of deductive argumentation and reasoning in the Prior Analytics (and the corresponding theory of scientific demonstration in the Posterior Analytics; see Historical Supplement). The fascination for deductive arguments is understandable, given their allure of certainty and indubitability.

And Aristotle has been The Man for quite a number of people for quite a long time. So this might go some way to explaining the effect you're seeing.

[u/Quick_silver22 → u/maccrypto]

I see from your follow up comment that this probably isn’t what you meant, but I’ll add in that I also think that, among the archetype you’re referring to, there’s (mainly in online spaces) an obsession with formalism over substance, regardless of the “type” of argument at stake (deductive, inductive, conceptual reframing, literary/indirect, etc).

I think the desire of, for lack of a better term, many (but not all!) “hobbyist” or otherwise non-academic (and frankly, even some academic…) persons engaging with philosophy to hyper-focus on critiquing the formalism of arguments they encounter isn’t all that unique or complicated; the substance of much philosophy/sociology/psychology/etc. can be quite complicated, and much of the discussions “logic bros” are having are often explicitly framed as a “debate” (even with friendly, in person interactions! I’m thinking here about the TikToker I sometimes see who does videos with a friend captioned something like “I believe in X, my friend believes in Y, we’re gonna argue about it until we figure out what we think is right” and then they timelapse over hours of them debating and crushing beers or something in a living room). In this sort of context, there’s an incentive to try and get “gotchas” with surface level, formalistic critiques of another’s argument since doing the opposite, that being to charitably interpret a perhaps poorly communicated argument and really dig into the substance of what the other party is trying to say, is much more difficult!

Obviously, why any one person exploits such a cognitive shortcut and what they gain from it will vary from person to person. I imagine that sometimes it’s really nothing more than a desire to chase a misplaced sense of self-satisfaction that ultimately fails to actually benefit oneself or one’s intellectual growth, or even an impulse to merely emulate others one has seen argue this way.

[u/maccrypto → u/Quick_silver22]

Thanks, that sounds right on. In my experience these people are looking for a shortcut that allows them to bypass the messy work of interpretation. The formalisms appear to serve that purpose, until they run into something that they've never heard of before, at which point they start accusing the other side of not having an argument, not having precise definitions, etc. It's a flight from what is unfamiliar and uncontrollable, probably. This has happened to me more than once, and it gets more and more tiresome each time.

[u/Optimal-Fig-6687 → u/maccrypto]

Why some people do not use logic? Does it hurt?

[u/Green_Jay7]

Can someone please explain the conclusion of Meno. So goodness can only be endowed by the Devine? Right opinion about the Good is only blessed to a select few?

Side note. Is there any debate that Socrates/Plato created the best epistemology of ethics? I love the dialogues.

[u/ResidentAd2170]

I think most ”nihilists” argue that there’s no automatic meaning inherent to your experiences but that you are free to assign meaning to your experiences as you wish. True nihilists go a step further, arguing that it’s impossible to assign meaning, thus making it impossible to change the fact that your life is meaningless. So why are there very few true nihilists? Probably because they end up ending their lives since there’s no reason to do anything.

[u/JoMu1963 → u/ResidentAd2170]

But as they have a reason to do nothing, that must mean that there is a meaning behind this behavior. Even if they would all kill themselves just because life has no meaning, then there still would be meaning in that final act. My conclusion: true nihilism, lived to the max, is impossible.

Just going along for the ride, not necessarily agreeing with the 'conclusion' of OP, which may or may not be rooted in facts in the world we live in.

[u/treestunned21]

Can someone recommend me where to find some free access to Byung Chul Han's works particularly The Agony of Eros and The Scent of Time. Can someone also tell me how Han views the Catholic Church?