Self Evident Truths

[Sam1]

I found this on Jim Wright's Stonekettle Station:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…

Life. Liberty. Happiness.

We hold these truths to be self evident.

Great words, great ideals, especially when you’re telling a king to stick it up his ass.

We hold these truths to be self evident.

Except for that that part, of course, where those truths weren’t self evident.

Not at all.

http://www.stonekettle.com/2014/06/self-evident-truths.html

[bemildred]

1. I think I like this guy. nt

[Igel]

2. Wright needs a better dictionary.

"Self-evidence" is a way of saying that no evidence is required. If something is self-evidence it's assumed, it's axiomatic, the thing is sufficient evidence of itself.

Two parallel lines never meet.

Two points are sufficient to define a line.

These are self-evident. It's a phrase that wasn't very old when it was used in 1776, and is rooted in Lockean discourse (since he's the coiner of the term). You'd only use it if you were familiar with this kind of thought, which would mean you were educated.

If Wright doesn't like "self-evident" he has the Greek-based synonym "axiomatic," but if he goes there, well, there there be dragons.

He'd have to argue that these "truths" aren't axiomatic at all. But to say that "we hold these truths to be axiomatic" is nonsesense because they lack evidence isn't anywhere close to being borderline incoherent. It's reached the heartland of incoherence. That's precisely when you *need* to say that the truths are axiomatic: You hold them as postulates that are assumed without proof or evidence. The rest of the thats are also axiomatic or "self-evident."

That they weren't axiomatic for all people is fine. It took a while for people to accept Euclid's axioms as axiomatic, but there's an irreducible number of axioms that form the basis of standard geometry. Check out Venema's Geometry for a nice introduction. Non-euclidean geometry has a different set of axioms, which are also necessarily "self-evident": Two parallel lines *do* meet (at infinity). But you get a radically different kind of geometry if you assume a different set of axioms. Perhaps Wright would like to go there and check to see which "self-evident truth" is right?

There's a drought in much of Texas. Wright's wasting straw that could be used for fodder.

[Sam1]

3. I think you missed the point. Your scholastisizm is showing.