What is Carmelics all about?
We all share important questions. In fact, they're really important. Like, course-of-your-life-altering, fate-of-the-world-determining, important. But how do we go about answering them?
The common strategy is to find someone you trust or enjoy who has assuredly thought about these issues much more than you have and believe whatever they say. But now you're putting the fate of your life (and the course of the nation) in the brain and hands of someone else. Is it worth it? Is it safe?
Another option is to do your own research. The problem here, though, is that it takes so long. Not everyone has the time to read 100 books on the existence of God just to get an idea of the arguments and figure out if God exists. You're reading a whole lot of the same information over and over, and it's just not efficient. Plus, scholars are not very hesitant to tell you that there is an endless amount to read and learn; there's just no way to read all the books that ought to be read. Your life just doesn't have enough time, so eventually you have to circle back around and trust someone, bringing you to the first strategy again.
Carmelics attempts to be an avenue for a third option. Using the art of hierarchical syllogisms, every argument can be presented once, and only once, in a structure that allows you to get a bird's-eye view of the entire discussion. By clicking on the parts of the arguments that interest you, it allows you to explore the arguments that you want to learn more about so that you can learn as efficiently as possible. That way, all the facts and beliefs can be laid out in as simple a manner as possible, once and for all, so that you can effectively evaluate the different beliefs the world holds and find the conclusions that actually make the most sense.
Where does all the content come from? You! If you're willing to learn how to structure arguments, this humble site would greatly appreciate any questions or theories you would like to develop for the sake of all others who may stumble on this site.
Sound interesting? You can join in the discussion by learning how to format arguments properly and adding arguments to the discussions–your own or popular ones of history.
If you're weeping at the awful state of this website, you might be a web developer. Want to help make this better? Please get in contact! loyalcj at outlook dot com
If you're a philosopher, you might notice a couple limitations of this strategy: can the same arguments, reduced to be a simple as possible, be represented in multiple different types of syllogistic arguments? When linking similar arguments, who gets to decide when one argument is the exact same as another? Is this favoring a coherentist approach to knowledge by its very design? While I (Loyal) don't find problems with any of these, I would be happy to talk with you about any of them. It remains to be demonstrated, however, whether arguments can have multiple valid structures or if the very nature of a structure biases people toward a conclusion.
Thanks for visiting!
— Loyal Juraschek 2021/05/24 11:20