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In a youtube video a commentator summarizes Andrew Klavan's argument as the following:

  1. If God does not exist, there are no objective moral values.
  2. There are objective moral values.
  3. God exists.

The commentator says it takes the form of modus tollens thus it is valid.

Is the commentator correct? It appears to me that you could substitute p for "God does not exist" and q for "there are no objective moral values". Then structure them as a modus tollens and get a valid argument:

  1. p -> q
  2. not q
  3. thus not p

which amounts to the argument above.

FYI what I mean by stated negatively is "God does not exist" vs if I stated it positively "God does exist".

jeffreysbrother
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fgharo91
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    While the logic is valid, the premises are debatable. –  Oct 08 '17 at 14:08
  • Yes. A placeholder in propositional logic can take the place of a negative statement (a denial that such and such is true); then, the negation of such a placeholder will then amount to a denial that a negative statement is true (an affirmation). The argument you presented is valid, but this alone says absolutely nothing about the veracity of the conclusion. – jeffreysbrother Oct 10 '17 at 03:55

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Logical formulae are blind to the content of the assertions that fill them in, and evaluations of logical validity are accordingly content-blind. One can substitute for "P" and "Q" any given sentence, affirmative or negative, universal or existential, or otherwise. One gets to evaluate the content when considering the soundness of the argument.

Daniel Coimbra
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This reasoning is correct. The modus tollens technique is also called Denying the Consequent. The quirk is this example is that Statement 1 is negative, P thus not-Q; Statement 2 is the denial, and so it ends up affirmative, Q. That said, the premises support the conclusion.

Mark Andrews
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Premise 1 is the contrapositive of, and so equivalent to, "If there are objective moral values, then God exists," so if you like you can look at this as a modus ponens rather than a modus tollens. Comes to the same thing, and it's valid, though possibly not sound.

Srap Tasmaner
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