Apparently ad populum AND circular!

Here's one. In yet another pointless twitter exchange: @PhxApologetics, a user parrotting the work of Jason Lisle insists on the 'immaterial, universal, and invariant laws of logic' must exist in the 'atheistic worldview', because they exist in his.

https://twitter.com/atheistic_1/status/1189966387135045632

When presented with: https://www.britannica.com/topic/laws-of-thought

my response, "The laws of logic are well documented & generally agreed upon by everyone, save you. There's no requirement for them to be immaterial, universal, nor invariant. Your failure to engage with accepted definitions & applications of these axioms shows you have nothing to contribute."

@PhxApologetics reply was: "So they are valid because they are agreed upon? Truth isn’t based upon consensus. If it was, then a contradicting proposition could be true if the majority says so."

To which my reply was, "They are valid because they have been used, challenged, tested and proofed by countless individuals over thousands of years. What part of this are you failing to comprehend?"

And to which @PhxApologetics replied, "The circular reasoning and ad populum fallacy. Those parts."

To which I replied, "A scientific theory (method), the cited laws of logic (https://britannica.com/topic/laws-of-thought), are all tested & open to correction by challenge by anyone who believes they have a viable alternative & that they can defend. That's neither an ad-populum nor circular."

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So, argumentum ad populum & circular?

Byron

I'd say Mr. Apologetics is caught up in a straw man argument with a smidgeon of equivocation fallacy.

Phoenix Apologetics: "So they are valid because they are agreed upon?"

Straw man argument: Misrepresenting,misinterpreting and fundamentally misunderstanding scientific methodology. Scientific consensus
is not a mere function of agreement.

"Truth isn’t based upon consensus".

Equivocation: Sneakily inserts the word truth for empirical evidence and scientific consensus.

The word truth here is ambiguous and the premise is certainly false. Truth can be, and is very often based on consensus e.g. The Declaration of Independence

"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."

This is the consensus view of the founding founders, but it is not a widely-held truth around the world.

Some laws of logic are not entirely universal, although they are more consistent from one culture to another than people think. I wrote an article about this a lot of years ago. The publisher authorized the University of South Carolina (where I taught for 12 years) to put it on the Internet as a preprint:

https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=aiken_communications_facpub

Here's another one I wrote about cultural variations in logic. The publisher released the complete article on line:

Click the link, scroll down, and then click on the .pdf: https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/index.php/informal_logic/article/view/2487