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Let's break this down because I am a little confused as to why you and the other poster brought up the inverse of the original argument. Original Claim: Becaus

by csh0 5y ago

Let's break this down because I am a little confused as to why you and the other poster brought up the inverse of the original argument. Original Claim: Because I pay taxes I should have a say in how that money is used. Restatement: If I pay taxes, then I should have a say in how that money is used. If P then M. You suggested that the OP is making a mistake because he is rejecting the inverse of his statement and that somehow his original claim is weakened as a result. You say that OP is wrong to reject "If Not P, then Not M", however the inverse of a conditional statement is NOT logically equivalent to the original statement and as such it's rejection has nothing to do with the validity of the original claim. The inverse of a conditional does not follow from the original conditional. What follows from the original conditional statement "If I pay taxes, then I should have a say in how that money is used" is the contrapositive: "If I do not have a say in how the [tax] money is used, then I do not pay taxes". That is all, nothing more. You cannot infer anything beyond that from a simple conditional. I suspect you have committed the inverse error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent

ALittleLight 5y ago
Say P is "Pay taxes" and M is "deserve to vote". The original claim is: If P then M. What I am pointing out is that the original poster thinks M without P. In other words, the original poster thinks that you can deserve to vote even without paying taxes. If that's true, then "I pay taxes therefore I deserve to vote" isn't meaningful because you apparently deserve to vote whether or not you pay taxes. Another way of looking at it is, suppose the original comment said "I am tall, therefore I deserve to vote." If someone replied "Do you think short people deserve to vote?" What this line of questioning is trying to pin down is, what is it, exactly, that entitles people to vote. If short or tall people can vote then it seems that height is not really related to the right to vote. Analogously, if tax payers and non-payers alike can vote, then it seems you think paying taxes is unrelated to the right to vote. To return to symbolic logic - "If P then M" and "If not P then M" means that P isn't really related to M. P says nothing about whether or not M. That's the point I was trying to make by asking about the inverse.

by csh0 5y ago

ALittleLight 5y ago

Say P is "Pay taxes" and M is "deserve to vote". The original claim is: If P then M. What I am pointing out is that the original poster thinks M without P. In other words, the original poster thinks that you can deserve to vote even without paying taxes. If that's true, then "I pay taxes therefore I deserve to vote" isn't meaningful because you apparently deserve to vote whether or not you pay taxes. Another way of looking at it is, suppose the original comment said "I am tall, therefore I deserve to vote." If someone replied "Do you think short people deserve to vote?" What this line of questioning is trying to pin down is, what is it, exactly, that entitles people to vote. If short or tall people can vote then it seems that height is not really related to the right to vote. Analogously, if tax payers and non-payers alike can vote, then it seems you think paying taxes is unrelated to the right to vote. To return to symbolic logic - "If P then M" and "If not P then M" means that P isn't really related to M. P says nothing about whether or not M. That's the point I was trying to make by asking about the inverse.