How to spot illogical thinking

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

We can spot illogical thinking in ourselves and others by examining how the argument is made.
It’s what Faust is showing is Logic 101: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=171862

However, I do think there is even more essential and also easier way to detect illogical and potentially bogus thinking in us.
It’s to check if the statement/proposition/evaluation has any condition or not.

A statement like “All men are mortal” does not have any explicit condition, and I think it’s a sign of illogical thinking UNLESS implicit/implied conditions are made clear elsewhere or deemed to be clear for all intended audiences.

I think that any evaluation depends on the definition/identification of what is evaluated and the method of how to evaluate. In other words, any statement is conditional to the definition/identification of the subject matter and the methodology and agreement on these.

Even a simple statement like “All men are mortal” is implying/presuming a lot about what we should/might agree as the conditions and it leaves rooms for confusions (and debates).

For example, what is the subject matter, here?
Does “All men” means all human beings of past, present, and future?
Then, there would be questions like can we really know about all men of past, present, and future?
I mean, knowing the mortality of a single person can be a huge task, especially if we follow a modified version of the crude method loved by Faust (Dropping a CRT display on the head to see if the person dies, proving the mortality). It takes time (probably jail time, too), muscle, and precious old antique CRT, a rare item these days.
Also, can we safely assume that all men of the past is really all dead? A LOT of people fanatically believe that some men don’t die but revive and talk/walk after the death.
Is this temporary death counts as the mortality?
Can we drop CRT to these men to see if they are still mortal?
And how about all men of the future? Would there be enough CRT for them all?
How can we conduct the CRT test on them to declare the statement at present moment without a time-machine?
And to prove it for all men, we need to drop CRT on our head, too…but there would be no one to note and certify it. Do we need to train dogs or cats to be intelligent enough to declare it for us?
So, seemingly simple statement can be pretty tough to verify UNLESS we assume and presume whole a lot and making it unreliable, not really sure at all.

Let’s take the example of “2+40=42”.
There are implied conditions in this one, too.
Usually, with the mathematical formula, it implies that we are agreeing to think within the mathematical system.
So, it’s more like “2+40=42 (IF we think and evaluate within so and so mathematical system)”.
In the case of “1+1” it can be evaluated as “2 (decimal, for example)”, or “10 (binary)”.

I guess we are trained to presume so much all the time about too many things that we tend to forget about conditions that should be there with any evaluation. And this makes our thought inaccurate and often vague, confusing us and creating some of paradoxes, as well.
Some people don’t even understand that there are implied conditions associated with evaluations. They often believe that simply declaring assertions makes it logical, true, fact, whatever…

Now, seeing from another angle, making unconditional statement might be a sign of overconfidence, “a leap of faith”, metaphysics, and so on because it is overboosting the certainty level of something vague and uncertain, and also because it is to present something conditional as unconditional (as if it’s absolutely, universally true for everyone, everywhere, and forever).

So, IF we want to think clearly, we can check to see if there is any condition associated with the evaluation we are making/verifying. If it’s not explicit, we can ask (to ourselves or to others) to clarify what is implied.

2

Husserl nicely refutes the concept that somehow our logic, which is based on language, can reveal experiential reality. When will we get past word games, past what can be said, in order to analyze what is said and why?

3

Ierrellus - Husserl was wasting his time. Anyone who has gotten to the first chapter of a logic book knows this.

Nah - you’re confusing the baby with the bathwater. If you had read my thread, or understood it, you would see that there is no requirement that the premises of an argument be arrived at in anything like a logical manner. Logical method itself is not about the truth of the premises. To criticise logic for lacking a feature it doesn’t require is to miss the point of logic.

4

As you want. :slight_smile:

So, why did you say these? Please explain if you think it’s relevant in this thread.

How can you say that “our logic is based on language”?
Please elaborate in your own words (if you can).

5

Ierrellus can speak for himself, but the fact is that logic is based on language. This is not controversial.

Except at ILP.

6

Faust, did I said that I’m only talking about the formal logic, here?
I guess you presumed that wrongly and reaching wrong conclusion based on it.
I’m not using “logic” in the narrower sense of your thread.

While I do think it’s good to know about what you are writing, I made this thread because I think one of the fundamental reason we think badly is “presuming too much” and taking something uncertain as if it’s a fact, 100% certain, and so on.
And I do think it comes from our habit in using statement without conditions.

In other words, I think ALL statement should come with conditions for it to be precise and clear.
And I do think it is a part of logical thinking. Also, I think there are too much emphasize on Logic 101 of your type compared to other areas.

Also, I would like to hear why you want to limit yourself to the validity of argument structure, leaving out the premises (or the accuracy of the propositions and their perspective)?

7

Then, you can speak for yourself. :slight_smile:

What is the “logic” you are talking above, and what is the “language”?
Is it still formal logic?
Is it human spoken language? Or dose it include things like computer language?
Please specify.

8

Well, you cited my thread on formal logic. And you used as an example a mathematical equation, which is about as formal as it gets.

Perhaps you could share with the class just what you mean by “logic”, then. So far, your references have been to the formal kind.

I am not limiting myself to this - formal logic is limited to this.

9

Yah. I can understand it’s a bit normal to think in the same perspective when you are well into the thread.

But I made this thread because what I wrote wouldn’t be in your thread, most probably.

I put these examples partly because I think formal logic should evolve more and think of conditional statement to be the normal form of statement and unconditional (and/or simple) form to be exceptional/special one.
(It’s a little like considering a circle as a special case of oval.)

I don’t feel that current formal logic is sufficient.
(I fee the same thing with current programming languages, but it’s another story.)

As for the “logic”, I think of it as the methods of evaluation and analysis based on the relations and comparison of different focuses/perspectives.
And what formal logic does is a part of what I see as “logic”.
It requires “division/separation (or at least hypothetical one, if we can’t find any absolute division/separation)”, relations and comparison between them (including dependency), etc.

I’m more interested in the “primitive” or “atomic” or “basic” area of “logic in general”.
And I think some of the major reason why we tend to think so badly can be found in this area of logic.

I think you said you are limiting to the formal logic.
So, it’s the same thing as you are adopting the limitation of formal logic and limiting yourself.

This is what you wrote.
Faust: “First, we must limit our usage of the word, for it has many. Here, we are considering only what is called formal, deductive logic”

Why you must limit to the formal logic, first, and not starting from the premises, for example?
If you want to proceed from simple element to more complex/compound structure, I think it’s better to treat the perspectives of evaluation that makes up statement, first, (although I do understand it’s somehow customary to treat what you are doing at the beginning).

10

Ohhhh. I see. The thread is about formal deductive logic. I’m not talking about the mating habits of giraffes, either. That’s just not within the scope of formal deductive logic.

But I actually answered your question in the thread itself.

You’re considering perhaps pre-logical issues. Logic wants to look at the formal structure of the premises, and not at how those premises were generated. You might be doing something akin to what Russell does with language analysis. His efforts were directed at formulating better premises for use in formal deductive logic, however, so we have come to call this Logical Analysis. Where your efforts are headed I do not know, so i can’t tell if there’s anything logical about them or not.

11

To my personal taste, formal logic is like semi-logic.
What’s the use of good argument (structure) if we are feeding bullshit premises?

Maybe it helps some people to boost their confidence level in the bullshit result…

Anyway, you are somehow focused only about bad argument and I’m more focused on bad thinking.
And you are still not answering why are you limiting yourself to the arguments.

As I said before, I consider that as an important part of logic.

Also, from educational point of view, I think it’s probably better to show how to construct/analyze premises before to go into argument.

Well, I called it “perspective logic” in a thread or two. It’s perspective analysis.
And I personally think it’s a core part of logic/reasoning/evaluation.

Proposition like A=B (IF it’s in the sense A has equal value as B for the property such as length, quantity, etc) has the focus on A and the focus on B and the sub-focus on the property for each of them, for example. If any one of these focuses isn’t clear, it won’t yield accurate result.
And it was relatively simple example. When we treat something like “human”, “existence”, and so on, focuses (perspectives) would get A LOT more delicate and also possibly complicated.

The difference between simple (and implicit) statement and conditional explicit statement is the difference in the awareness. By making things explicit, it forces us to examine each element a lot better.
Although there are people who think relatively well and still express their thought in a simple form for the sake of simplicity (or laziness, habit, etc), I think it’s rare. Exceptions are in specific professional/academic field where almost all participants know the jargon and/or special rules allowing them to make coded and simplified thinking/communication.

With the explicit form, I think the thinker/writer is more likely to find and correct own error, and then it’s more visible to others if s/he didn’t detect and correct her/himself.
It will reduce the bad habit of considering one’s own limited view as “fact” and start talking “In fact …”, and so on with overboosted certainty level, too.

PS. Also, the main purpose is to simply think better, and not to construct unified model of universe or to reach at desired conclusion.
I think too many people are thinking to fit their thought in a pre-destined (or simply desired) mold, to “justify” their preference/desire.

By thinking better, we may well reach the conclusion we don’t like at all. :slight_smile:
But, at least, it would be satisfying to our logical mind because we didn’t cheat to reach comfortable result.

Also, it may lead us to loose unexamined certainty and/or the sense of reality on some matter.
It can be shocking, but it can feel good to loose the grip of subconscious (fake) certainty.
It allows us to think even better, too.

12

Well I think you might ask a scientist about that.

I did answer that. Before you even asked it. If i did it again, that would be three times.

Be my guest. I originally thought you were addressing some point in the Logic 101 thread. Clearly, that is not the case.

13

As I said before, I’m addressing things left over by the traditional (semi) logic 101.

I think we see lots of valid arguments (thanks to traditional logic 101), but with silly or vague premises.

I’ve done lots of debugging of different software (and sometime the soft+hardware combo) and also troubleshooting in different field including customer services. It takes examination of both structure and what was fed into it to find out what was wrong.
Also, in programming or construction of something, both need to be addressed.
I feel it’s the same in logical thinking.