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Is there such a thing as a "canonical source" for an argument? There might be certain well-known or classical sources, but new perspectives and new chains of re

Is there such a thing as a "canonical source" for an argument? There might be certain well-known or classical sources, but new perspectives and new chains of reasoning may be popping up all the time.

AndrewKemendo 4y ago
Of course, though I surmise that he’s using “canonical” as a metaphor for “best argued” or “most robust proof.” For example though The 1963 paper titled "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", is the canonical source of the Gettier Problem That was less than 100 years ago, so definitely not classical. I doubt the time period is relevant to whether you’ve made the best/canonical argument on a topic.
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  For example, if I asked for the canonical argument for the existence of god, I'd probably get a wide variety of answers proposing essays from various theologicians throughout history, like Thomas Aquinas or René Descartes. Since there are a large number of them, no single one of them can be the canonical source. Perhaps one could link the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God) which summarizes most of them, but as a third-party summary, it's hard to accept that as "the canonical source" too. I think David Chalmers will just need to be satisfied with a well-presented or well-curated source, of which there may be several. And as there are more than one points of contention / confusion on the AI risk issue ("Can human-level AI ever be built?" "Maybe it's not possible for anything to be smarter than a human?" "Wouldn't AI just be smart enough to know right from wrong?" "Couldn't we just unplug it?" "How could a computer program cause harm in the real world" "Why would it want to hurt humans" "Isn't that just science fiction"...) it really seems that any source will be a basic framework plus a large collection of peripheral arguments that address the broad surface area of contention.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    I don’t see that as a problem. If there are numerous mutually exclusive arguments for the same broad conclusion, then feel free to point that out and maybe try to link to one or more of them. It just makes no sense whatsoever that a believer in God would just say “I could never possibly even begin to present an argument because there are so many ways to do so and so many different rebuttals people might make.”
    - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
      It seems to me more like a request for an argument of such strength that, if I can find a weakness in it, I can be confident in the falseness of the conclusion without doing any further research to see if that weakness has been buttressed elsewhere in the literature. It seems like it would therefore need to be a living document, actively maintained and updated, sort of like the IPCC reports. And probably at least 100 pages long. In which case, that's basically the website Less Wrong? But most people want something condensed, in exactly the way that addresses their specific doubts without any of the other stuff they don't care about.

Is there such a thing as a "canonical source" for an argument? There might be certain well-known or classical sources, but new perspectives and new chains of reasoning may be popping up all the time.

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

Of course, though I surmise that he’s using “canonical” as a metaphor for “best argued” or “most robust proof.” For example though The 1963 paper titled "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", is the canonical source of the Gettier Problem That was less than 100 years ago, so definitely not classical. I doubt the time period is relevant to whether you’ve made the best/canonical argument on a topic.

mitthrowaway2 4y ago
For example, if I asked for the canonical argument for the existence of god, I'd probably get a wide variety of answers proposing essays from various theologicians throughout history, like Thomas Aquinas or René Descartes. Since there are a large number of them, no single one of them can be the canonical source. Perhaps one could link the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God) which summarizes most of them, but as a third-party summary, it's hard to accept that as "the canonical source" too. I think David Chalmers will just need to be satisfied with a well-presented or well-curated source, of which there may be several. And as there are more than one points of contention / confusion on the AI risk issue ("Can human-level AI ever be built?" "Maybe it's not possible for anything to be smarter than a human?" "Wouldn't AI just be smart enough to know right from wrong?" "Couldn't we just unplug it?" "How could a computer program cause harm in the real world" "Why would it want to hurt humans" "Isn't that just science fiction"...) it really seems that any source will be a basic framework plus a large collection of peripheral arguments that address the broad surface area of contention.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  I don’t see that as a problem. If there are numerous mutually exclusive arguments for the same broad conclusion, then feel free to point that out and maybe try to link to one or more of them. It just makes no sense whatsoever that a believer in God would just say “I could never possibly even begin to present an argument because there are so many ways to do so and so many different rebuttals people might make.”
  - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
    It seems to me more like a request for an argument of such strength that, if I can find a weakness in it, I can be confident in the falseness of the conclusion without doing any further research to see if that weakness has been buttressed elsewhere in the literature. It seems like it would therefore need to be a living document, actively maintained and updated, sort of like the IPCC reports. And probably at least 100 pages long. In which case, that's basically the website Less Wrong? But most people want something condensed, in exactly the way that addresses their specific doubts without any of the other stuff they don't care about.