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Full Idea
Philosophical arguments are never incontrovertible - well, hardly ever. Their purpose is to help expound a position, not to coerce agreement.
Clarification
'Incontrovertible' means 'impossible to challenge'.
Gist of Idea
Arguments are nearly always open to challenge, but they help to explain a position rather than force people to believe
Source
David Lewis (Lewis: reduction of mind (on himself) [1994], p.419)
Book Ref
'A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind', ed/tr. Guttenplan,Samuel [Blackwell 1995], p.419
A Reaction
A bit over-cautious, perhaps. Most philosophers are converted to a position when they hear a single key argument, though it is probably 'tipping the balance' of previous discussions.
| 3990 | The whole truth supervenes on the physical truth [Lewis] |
| 3989 | I am a reductionist about mind because I am an a priori reductionist about everything [Lewis] |
| 3991 | Where pixels make up a picture, supervenience is reduction [Lewis] |
| 3992 | Folk psychology makes good predictions, by associating mental states with causal roles [Lewis] |
| 3993 | Arguments are nearly always open to challenge, but they help to explain a position rather than force people to believe [Lewis] |
| 3994 | Human pain might be one thing; Martian pain might be something else [Lewis] |
| 3995 | A mind is an organ of representation [Lewis] |
| 3996 | Folk psychology doesn't say that there is a language of thought [Lewis] |
| 3998 | If you don't share an external world with a brain-in-a-vat, then externalism says you don't share any beliefs [Lewis] |
| 3997 | Nothing shows that all content is 'wide', or that wide content has logical priority [Lewis] |
| 3999 | A spontaneous duplicate of you would have your brain states but no experience, so externalism would deny him any beliefs [Lewis] |
| 4000 | Wide content derives from narrow content and relationships with external things [Lewis] |