Logic, the prerequisite of all truth

[Aetherous]

This is a great free course:

 

https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/wi-phi/wiphi-critical-thinking

#MakeAmericaLogicalAgain

[Andrei]

Logic, rational and real are not the same thing.

[Aetherous]

Hi Aetherous,

 

Would you please say what you mean when you say "all truth"?

 

Thanks --

 

Merriam Webster provides one of the definitions of truth as: "the state of being the case". For all instances where something can either be the case, or not be the case, the tools of Logic can be applied.

[Taomeow]

My favorite example of the limitations of linear logic (from a book on Fuzzy Logic):

Dad asks his five-year-old, "how much is two times two?"  The kid's response:  "I want some ice cream." 

 

Now take an adult and give him a cognitive assignment in hopes of his adjusting his current position, which you consider illogical.  (I just did, in another thread.)  He won't respond by undertaking it, analyzing the arguments presented, and adjusting his position.  His response will still, in the final analysis, boil down to,

"I want some ice cream."

 

Edited December 2, 2016 by Taomeow

[Aetherous]

Thanks.

 

Another Q for u: Does "spiritual truth" fall under "all truth"?

 

Anything that we can talk about as being a true or false statement.

 

Anyway...I'm not the best person to answer these questions. I just think Logic is great and is a foundation of thinking that most people are missing, so I wrote "all truth".

[Aetherous]

My favorite example of the limitations of linear logic (from a book on Fuzzy Logic):

Dad asks his five-year-old, "how much is two times two?"  The kid's response:  "I want some ice cream." 

 

Now take an adult and give him a cognitive assignment in hopes of his adjusting his current position, which you consider illogical.  (I just did, in another thread.)  He won't respond by undertaking it, analyzing the arguments presented, and adjusting his position.  His response will still, in the final analysis, boil down to,

"I want some ice cream."

 

I guess Logic is limited only by its non-use. 

[Brian]

Anything that we can talk about as being a true or false statement.

 

Anyway...I'm not the best person to answer these questions. I just think Logic is great and is a foundation of thinking that most people are missing, so I wrote "all truth".

Logic is great and it is a foundation of thinking that most people are missing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Brian]

I guess Logic is limited only by its non-use. 

It is also limited by its limitations. This, sadly, is something a now-absent Bum simply couldn't see.

[Aetherous]

It is also limited by its limitations. This, sadly, is something a now-absent Bum simply couldn't see.

 

I think you're right...although I don't know about what situation or Bum you mean...

 

I plan on watching one of these videos (in the original post) each week, taking notes, and discussing it in this thread...I bet the class will go into Logic's limitations.

[Andrei]

Just watched the "cognitive biases" videos. Awesome! Highly recommended to watch them.

 

https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/wi-phi/wiphi-critical-thinking/wiphi-cognitive-biases/v/alief

[Taomeow]

Let me tell you what I know about logic. 

 

It was a compulsory subject at the university I graduated from, but I transferred there from another one where it was to be studied a year later, so I missed the whole year.  I was allowed to take the exam and, should I pass, get the credit, but should I fail, no transfer for me.  The catch being that the difference in programs was a late bureacratic discovery -- I had no idea I was missing a whole course -- and I was given 3 days to study what they spent a year on.  

 

I passed with flying colors.  I had out of this world memory back then, which I don't have anymore, alas, maybe in part because I abused it so much, since at the time it was not unusual for me to spend three days cramming after a year of goofing off for nearly all purposes.  So no one should blame me if my logic, today, is fuzzy.  Especially considering that later I spent an honest month studying fuzzy logic, on my own, for my own enlighenment.  

 

But one of the few things I remember from the course in formal logic is a syllogism that still serves me well now that I'm a taoist alchemist:

 

Thesis: All men die.

Antithesis: I am not all men.

Synthesis: I may be immortal.

 

 

[3bob]

are ants more logical than mankind?

[Wells]

.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Wells

[sagebrush]

some people like to hold on tight to logic

 

others might not.

[oak]

I guess Logic is limited only by its non-use. 

Is it so ?

 

The seven year old girl asks her father " Daddy do frogs become princes when they are kissed by princesses?" The father replies "They certainly do sweetie!"

 

Truth sometimes is beyond logic 

[Aetherous]

Is it so ?

 

The seven year old girl asks her father " Daddy do frogs become princes when they are kissed by princesses?" The father replies "They certainly do sweetie!"

 

Truth sometimes is beyond logic 

 

So she goes and kisses a frog, and sees that it's still a frog, despite her father calling her princess. She found a lie.

 

The only way I would say that truth is beyond logic, is because Logic always gives us a description or analysis of reality - "the map is not the place". Aside from that, Logic is the prerequisite of all truth.

 

Anti-Logic, arguing against Logic, is either coming from a place of not understanding what Logic is, or a willful promotion of what's false.

[Aetherous]

But one of the few things I remember from the course in formal logic is a syllogism that still serves me well now that I'm a taoist alchemist:

 

Thesis: All men die.

Antithesis: I am not all men.

Synthesis: I may be immortal.

 

 

I love it.

 

The premises are questionable. For one, we don't have knowledge of all men and whether they lived or died...we just assume they died because that's what we're aware of. We're also aware of stories regarding people that don't die, though...these could be entirely mythological, or could just be rare cases. This fact that no one knows opens up the possibility of immortality.

 

Two - you may not be "all men", but you're a human being (one of the "men" or humans). Unless, as a human being, there is some aspect which doesn't die, in either some or all. Some people say that all of human souls are immortal, and the bodies just die.

 

Here's an argument:

 

P1: I'm a human being.

P2: It's possible that there have been human beings who didn't physically die...no one knows with certainty.

P3: It's possible that there's a part of human beings which lives on after physical death.

C: I may be immortal in some way.

[rex]

So she goes and kisses a frog, and sees that it's still a frog, despite her father calling her princess. She found a lie.

A literal lie which when she starts courting will be found to express a particular truth.

[Aetherous]

Week One:

[3bob]

sounds like ants are more logical than us... (bees also)

Edited December 3, 2016 by 3bob

[Aetherous]

sounds like ants are more logical than us... (bees also)

 

Logic is a human tool...anyone that can speak a language can learn it. Animals don't have the capacity for it.

[3bob]

mankinds attempted use of "logic" is very tiny example, while working logic derived from laws of the cosmos and all beings in it and who use it in ways different from mankind makes for a much bigger picture.

[Taomeow]

Logic is a tool of linear reductionist cognition. 

 

It is distinct and separate from reality which is acausal, not reducible to its part or a sum of its parts, and not necessarily cognizable.  What's the logical reason for the ocean?  For Jupiter?  For neutrinos, the speed of light, the rate of depletion of  uranium, the non-oxidation of gold?  These are all in the domain of facts for which there is no logical anything to account for their existence.  Yet they do exist. 

 

Throw in the domain of feelings.  The five-year-old who responds with "I want some ice cream" to "how much is two times two" is not wrong.  He is not committing a logical error.  He is bypassing logic altogether as nonessential.  The essential part of the exchange is, he has wants and needs, and his dad can either ignore them, or punish him for having them, or overindulge them, or satisfy them adequately.  The main lesson will be derived from how his dad reacts to the acausal information -- to wit, to the illogical but indisputable fact that his son is more interested in ice cream than in arithmetic at the moment.

 

Logic is a tool of linear intelligence, but many other kinds successfully bypass it, notably emotional intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, sensory, proprioceptive, instinctual, artistic, musical, altruistic (sic!  It's not dumb for parents to sacrifice their time and resources to raising the young, or for the young to take care of the old, or for the strong to support the weak, or for the healthy to tend to the sick, or for the hero to sacrifice himself to a cause, even though logically they all could figure out that they are stealing from themselves in the process in a completely illogical fashion), social, interspecies (cat people and dog people and horse whisperers and all other animal communicators are intelligent by methods logic can't grasp), and so on.  The "so on" is infinite, as is intelligence. 

 

Logic is a tool.  Someone who uses it wisely is a skilled artisan in his or her chosen craft, that of linear reductionist cognition.  Someone who only knows how to use this one tool and no other is usually diagnosed with Asperger's, however...  

...or is a computer.    

Edited December 3, 2016 by Taomeow

[Aetherous]

What's the logical reason for the ocean?

 

[Taomeow]

"When complexity strikes, meaningful statements lose precision and precise statements lose meaning." -- Lotfi Zadeh

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic