A philosopher designs a marvellous sausage machine. A scientist comes to marvel at this wonderful creation, and raises an eyebrow.
The philosopher says, “Ah, behold the wonderful cogs and sprockets and temperature-controlled mixing chambers in my wonderful machine - surely you can see how it must produce the most fantastic sausages!”
The scientist says “Yes, that is all very interesting. Show me the sausages.”
The philosopher says “How dare you, a mere scientist, question my wonderful philosophical reasoning?”
Scientist: “I’m not questioning your reasoning - I want to know if your machine really produces sausages.”
Philosopher: “Can you point to any flaw in my argument that it produces sausages?”
Sci: “I don’t know - I just want to know if it produces sausages. Here is some meat. Why don’t you feed it through and see if you get any sausages?”
Phil: “And sully my wonderful machine with mere offal?”
Sci: “You said it was a sausage machine. I want to see the sausages.”
Phil: “Are you questioning my ingredients?”
Sci: “I’m just questioning whether it produces sausages or not. Show me the sausages.”
Phil: “Ah, so you cannot attack my premises and you cannot attack my argument. Therefore I’m right and you lose.”
Sci: “Don’t be such a melodramatic prancing arse. Show me the sausages.”
Phil: “The sausages inevitably flow from the argument. You see my fine machine. You can even inspect the meat & onions. The sausages necessarily flow.”
Sci: “Show me the sausages or I’m off to Tesco.”
Phil: “You are a mere scientist with no understanding of philosophical matters.”
Sci: “Bye.”
awesome, i will be using that argument at some point…
Yup, that’s about the size of it. However, there is one small but critical part missing. That’s where the philosopher insists that it is furthermore impossible, even in principle, to make any sausages at all without his magnificent machine.
'Luthon64
That may just be because (even) philosophy > theology… >:D
Sausages can’t be proved to exist, and neither can you prove that YOU exist, your argument is invalid.
I’m going to be eating non-existant sausages now-now… this whole thread just made me hungry.
I far prefer pork non-sausages to beef non-sausages.
This may sound saucy, but the sage course would be to assuage it with a sausage, of course.