Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Grab this before it's gone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Here is a clip from the above page to whet the appetite:

"

For example, consider the proposition Cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos (literally: 'for whoever owns the soil, it is theirs up to Heaven and down to Hell'. This is also known as Ad Coelum.

A legal reductio ad absurdum argument against the proposition might be:
Suppose we take this proposition to a logical extreme. This would grant a land owner rights to everything in a cone from the center of the earth to an infinite distance out into space, and whatever was inside that cone, including stars and planets. It is absurd that someone who purchases land on earth should own other planets, therefore this proposition is wrong.

(This is a straw man fallacy if it is used to prove that the practical legal use of "Ad Coelum" is wrong, since Ad Coelum is only actually ever used to delineate rights in cases of tree branches that grow over boundary fences, mining rights, etc.[3] Reductio ad absurdum applied to Ad Coelum is, in this case, claiming that Ad Coelum is saying something that it is not. If anything, the reductio ad absurdum above argues only against taking Ad Coelum to its fullest extent - which in fact nobody ever does anyway.)

In a strict logical sense, this is a reductio ad incommodum rather than ad absurdum - in logic, the term 'absurdity' applies only to impossible self-contradiction, not the merely undesirable consequence we see here. It is only in everyday (or legal) usage that this could acceptably be called a reduction ad absurdum."


No comments:

Post a Comment