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Philosophy

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    You say that "to disprove IF A THEN B, you must show either that A is false, or that the relationship doesn't hold". This is wrong. If A is false, then "IF A THEN B" is vacuously true whatever B is. To disprove "IF A THEN B", you must show both that A is true, and that B is false. Commented Nov 30, 2015 at 15:29
  • Thanks for this detailed explanation. The most important point is this: "Either, per dualism, the mind works outside of physics". A defender of the argument in question would say, that this is not enough and use the principle of sufficient reason: The mind (soul) obviously knows something about the world and is influenced by it. If the decision made by the mind isn't determined by this and the psychological state, what is the reason for a certain decision? How could we explain that if we can't give a reason, it doesn't follow that the decision is random? Commented Nov 30, 2015 at 23:43
  • @PatrickStevens - That doesn't seem right. Or at least, it seems like an oversimplification. Consider a premise like "If I eat breakfast, an asteroid will strike the moon". There's clearly no causative relationship between 'A' and 'B', so how is it reasonable to require someone to show both that 1) I ate breakfast and 2) no asteroids struck the moon in order to disprove that statement? Particularly when both events are fairly commonplace, which may make it exceedingly difficult to point to a case where you have 'A && !B'. But that doesn't make the premise even vacuously true. Commented Dec 1, 2015 at 1:24
  • @aroth Then you should probably rephrase as "My eating breakfast will cause an asteroid to strike the moon" :) the only way "If I eat breakfast, then an asteroid will strike the moon" is vacuously true, by the way, is if either you never eat breakfast or if you see an asteroid strike the moon, so perhaps you meant to use "If I don't eat breakfast, then an asteroid will strike the moon"? Commented Dec 1, 2015 at 3:39