Philosophy

What can make a philosophical theory "trivial"? Is triviality different from circularity?

Comments

Great question! I do not believe that "trivial" is a technical term in our discipline, unlike the notion that an argument may be circular. A circular argument is one that assumes what it sets out to establish, rather than providing independent reason for thinking the conclusion is right. A textbook example would be if two persons are arguing whether God exists, and "the believer" argues that God exists on the grounds that the Bible asserts God's existence and the Bible is a revelation from God. Presumably the interlocutor is not going to concede that the Bible is God's revelation if (s)he is in doubt whether God exists. A non-circular argument might take a related, but different form in which "the believer" argues (for example) from religious experience or from the contingent cosmos that theism is more reasonable than the best alternative (e.g. secular naturalism). Some famous philosophical arguments are the subject of great controversy over whether they are circular (the ontological argument, the modal argument for dualism, Mill's argument for the value of happiness, Descartes' argument for the reliability of reason, Descartes' claim "I think, therefore I am," arguments about consciousness that appeal to first-person experience, zombie thought experiments, etc). A "trivial" argument would (I suppose) be one that is in some sense insignificant or inconsequential. Some so-called circular arguments (such as those I cited) may be quite significant and philosophically interesting and some non-circular arguments may be insignificant. Identifying an argument that all philosophers would regard as insignificant is not easy, but perhaps most philosophers would think that merely appealing to the authority of a philosopher (rather than appealing to the phliosopher's arguments) does get close to being insignificant. So, if the only reason I put forward for position X is that Quine believed in X, that may be a reason for us to ask why Quine accepted X, but if I am then at a complete loss for words, I think my colleagues would conclude that there is little interest in my enfeebled effort to present an argument.

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