Logic 911, 1-800, 011

I always felt something strange when I saw how “logic” was treated (in school, in logic 101 type of guide, etc).

Recently, by reading what Faust is doing, and then talking with him in another thread, I started to think about the reason why “academic logic”, including formal logic and others, usually avoid to tackle the premises.
I had the vague feeling that it’s a fault of Aristotle and (mainly) monotheist scholars who followed him.
So, I checked some webs and I do think it’s him who set the tone (the wrong tone, at least to my taste).

Socrates is supposed to be the guy who started “Philosophy” by trying to be more strict in some way and then coming into conclusion that he doesn’t know anything (or he had no certainty).
Then, Plato set it back, pretending to know this and that. And Aristotle twisted it even more.

The “logic” of Aristotle starts on the premise/ground that we have the 100% certainty of the proposition, which is far away from the realization of Socrates. And by starting from the presumption of certainty, Aristotle set the tradition of academic logic, which is more concerned about argument than statements, so to say.

Strangely, it seems that both Arabic scholars who studied Aristotle logic and then Christian (or Jewish) scholars who learned it from Arabs found no problem in it, just kept learning and conserving/teaching it, making it a tradition.
I’m guessing that Aristotle’s logic was very convenient for these often religious scholars because it allowed them to start off with the silly but well believed religious dogma as truth and then build system by combining them, or evaluate something using a theory based on them.

In other words, Aristotle’s logic was useful for someone who wanted to presume something as truth. Then, they could enlarge and expand the territory of (presumed) truth using valid argument.
And this could be important for religious people because they wouldn’t/couldn’t cast any doubt on religiously important matter.
I think the presumption of certainty (either positive or negative) used by traditional logic is somewhat similar to how small kids think in absolutes before learning that things aren’t so certain.

Personally, I see of logic as something nearly synonym of reasoning, rationality, or the evaluation of different focuses and there relation (from various perspectives). And this includes how we identify what we evaluate (focus), and relations of different focuses (this may make up basic propositions and then the argument part academic logic love to handle).
I think my view is probably closer to what people vaguely imagine in our daily thought/conversation as logic. And I can understand that someone who live by the academic definition can be frustrated with the usage of the word “logic” by general public. But I’d think it’s them who’s mind is trained to see logic in the limited way.

I think everyone does this to some degree. Assumptions must be made in order to come to logical conclusions. In absence of this method, and consideration of our ever-changing external environments and internal perspectives, nothing would hold as valid. Even now, certainty cannot be measured but by the strength of speculation against rigorous testing – I doubt absolute certainty even exists.

Assumptions must be made, we just try to minimize risk by using our safest, or ‘strongest’, assumptions as grounding.

It’s concerned with consistency, not truth. Making sure you’re at least not contradicting yourself by extrapolating from what you do hold to be true.

It’s got nothing to do with existence, or the axioms you start with.

I don’t think so.
I don’t think everyone fancy about “truth”. to begin with. For example, people busy with obtaining food to eat, each day, may not have lots of time to think about anything much.
I don’t think everyone is interested in expanding the land of truth. In my case, I’d rather examine and reduce the territory of subconsciously presumed truth.
There are cultures that are far less concerned about “absolutes”, too.

Maybe nothings is valid. :slight_smile:
And what’s wrong with it, if we happened to have conclusion that there is nothing (definitely, absolutely) valid?

Also, we can probably have different methods based on likelihood, probabilities, guesstimate, etc.

Rationally, logically speaking, I don’t think we can have absolute certainty on any positive assertion.

But many people seem to claim the absolute certainty. Religious people very often talk like god and angel and hell and other things are real/fact/true and so on, in absolute manner, for example.
Some materialists talks as if physical materials are there god and the last hope, with firm enough attitude that suggest the absolute certainty they might be holding.
When we ask question about their beliefs, they tend to show similar evasiveness, denials, and other not so rational reaction patterns, too.

I think what I call as the “logical mind” is potentially very flexible and dynamic, similar to the RAM (random access memory) of computer. We can hold any focus/perspective if we wanted, and we then discard when it’s done.
I don’t think we MUST make assumptions. I think we CAN make it IF we wanted.
Also, the assumptions do not need to be persistent/permanent.
We can use any assumption and we can hold it while it’s needed.
In other words, I don’t think we need to identify ourselves with a set of assumptions and stick to them, such as religious belief, ideologies/idealism, and so on, when we think with our flexible and dynamic mind scape where we can play with any hypothetical views.

Holding persistent/permanent assumption (which is more like beliefs) in the dynamic memory is to limit the potential of our mind and use it as if it’s a programmable ROM.
It’s similar to how our emotional mind works (with more or less persistent and harder to modify subconscious data). Not utilizing the dynamic nature of “logical mind” doesn’t seem to be very rational, to me.

If it’s concerned with consistency (of the result), I think it’s concerned about the consistency of obtaining the certainty of truth or falseness.

I think leaving the statement and playing argument is contradictory.
I think even Aristotle wanted to avoid mistakes and wrong conclusions.
Now, I agree that we want to have valid relation in constructing our thought.
But it’s useless in avoiding mistakes and wrong conclusion if we accept bogus premises.
So, I think it’s important to have reliable premises and well constructed perspective chain.

I don’t agree. It presumes the premises that evaluate to either true or false.
There are requirements/preconditions to it.
Although there are fuzzy logic and variants that may handle wider range of premises, these days. classical formal logic is very limited in what it can be fed. It’s like a spoiled kid who only eats true or false and think in all or nothing. Maybe Aristotle was a spoiled kid who served another spoiled kid who spoiled lots of other countries.

Well, you can never be more certain of your conclusions than you are of your premises.

All cats are green
My pet is a cat
My cat is green.

That’s a logically sound argument, and that’s what logic does. It doesn’t tell you if things must be true, but it tells you if things can’t be true. Now, it presumes that there are premises, I’d agree.

I must confess, I’m not sure what it is you want; logic dealing with premises of which we’re uncertain? That’s why you have if-then-else. Premises that are neither objectively true nor false? It’s unsuitable for them, but what can you reasonably do with such statements?

Good OP! My take is that what is ontological as experienced becomes abstract in description. I don’t think this has to be the case. But how do you go about describing experience as indicating reality without supposing everyone has the same experience? That question would shoot down a lot of religious certainties, since not everybody shares these experiences. Aristotle is still the diety of rational explanations in most colleges and universities. But, reason is only one adaptational possibilty!

So, it’s natural and normal to examine the certainty level of the premises IF one is interested in the certainty level of conclusion, isn’t it?

Aren’t we concerned about the validity of argument because we are concerned about the certainty of the conclusion (among other concerns)?

I think it presumes that premises have 100% true or 100% false value.
So, it’s presuming the absolute certainty of premises, in a way, and I think it’s a bit naive or childish.
I know that some people are working on theories that can digest less than 100% true/false, but I don’t think it matured or very popular, yet.

Partly, yes.

That’s why I said in this thread or in another one that I think most of elements of premises (most words) contain conditional focuses and each one of premises may well have argument structure (logical OR, AND, IF, etc), which can be evaluated in method similar to “formal logic”.

Maybe it’s easier to understand if I say this way.
I see micro argument (logical structure) within the statement (especially when we do analysis of subconscious perspectives and motives).
They can be examined by more or less traditional classic and limited “logic”.
And leaving these would render the effort of validating argument structure useless IF we are ultimately and basically concerned about the certainty level and/or accuracy of conclusion.

What Is the premises that are objectively true or false?
I think similar to premises that are absolutely true or false, objective version of them may be pretty hard to find, if possible.
In other words, presuming the statement to be evaluated to 100% True/False can be wrong.
Limiting ourselves to the kind of “logic” that is built upon wrong presumption can be wrong.
And examining premises is important in this regard, as well.

I think more and more any positive certainty (of objective, absolute, universal, permanent, or definitive nature) is most likely to be a result of bad evaluation mostly due to our natural tendencies to presume to presume such certainty (subconsciously, and without much though nor examination).
And this includes the type of certainty called the sense of reality.
I don’t think we can be very highly certain of our experiences, if we are very careful and critical about the accuracy/precision.
Although we may find many common tendencies, I don’t think there are any exactly identical experiences.
It mean we can share and understand some part of experiences, but not all.
And universal claims like religious person may make would sound odd/funny/absurd/irrational from this kind of perspective.
But it also applies to most moral claims, ideological claims, and so on.

Aristotle’s logic is good for making these claims, as it presumes definitively true or false value for the statement it treats.

Also, depending on the cultural back ground plays a role.
Monotheism is definitive and absolutist.
And people in monotheistic culture may have more definitive and absolutist tendencies with their thoughts and opinions, I’d say.
Other cultures can be more reserved, or conservative about how certain they can be.

In US (or in Canada and in some other nations), kids seem to be encouraged to say their opinions, evn on matter they have no idea, especially at school. Although their opinions might be examined by other kids and teachers, this can lead to contribute to having definitive and absolutist idea/opinion without thinking well, first.

I feel it strange that most people don’t feel strange about traditional academic Logic.

Nah -

If you want to call inductive logic, “logic”, which many are willing to do, then we do not, any of us, limit ourselves to deductive (“traditional”, as you call it) logic.

Everyone figures probabilities.

However, there is a point that you just don’t seem to be getting. Deductive logic assumes a truth value is assignable to premises. As long as you are aware that this is an assumption, logic is useful to many.

Clearly, you are not one of those many.

It’s not a “wrong presumption”, it’s a set of assumptions that are patently obvious.

You seem to be saying that logic is not the only method available to us in our thinking.

But everyone agrees with that. There is nothing controversial about that.

Do you “feel strange” about mathematics? The logic I present in the Logic 101 thread is reducible to mathematics - in fact, the system I show is called Boolean Algebra, because it’s…algebra.

Nah - lemme ask you a question. You make the claim that “traditional” logic is limited.

How certain are you that this claim is true?

Put another way, are you certain that it’s true, or would you say that it’s only probably true?

In doing so they are using logic, as fundamental as it may be…

I do not want to be hungry.
Eating food cures hunger.
I will eat food to not be hungry.

OK.

I don’t even think “absolutes” exist. However, I do treat certain things as if they were absolute for practical purposes.

If I see a basketball coming at my face, I will treat the injury from impact as an absolute and duck for all intensive purposes. Even people who don’t dwell in absolutes use the concept for practical reasons.

Nothing. And I don’t believe anything is indefinite personally. But to treat every object of experience in life as such would be impractical. How would you operate?

We do. Look at all the various ‘isms’ that have developed over history. The Socratic Method, the Scientific Method are prime examples.

“In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.” - Karl Popper

These people are not asserting an absolute truth (as much as they might think they are). They are proposing what should be treated as such – and often doing so poorly.

You’re getting it!

As I said these assumptions are not to be considered universal/absolute, nor held as such. For practical purposes we simply hold onto an assumption until we think it safer to assume something different.

It is “programmable” (your word, not mine) to some degree. Ritual practice, muscle memory, training, studying, etc. These are all methods of “programming”. Some even seek to program others through indoctrination, marketing, and deceit.

Emotions stray, or cause a stray, from logic quite often; wouldn’t you agree? Human beings are not rational animals, we strive to be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

This statement prepared for a thread in another forum may be appropriate here. It has to do with the ground as somehow detached from its explanations–an unresolved philosophical conundrum.
There are many ways of “doing” philosophy. A general statement of what you do when you do philosophy is that you present and defend a concept, yours or somebody else’s, in ways that support its legitimacy. This legitimacy is not always based on anyone’s idea of how your concept should be stated; it may be dependent on whether or not the concept makes sense. A method we have for justifying our concept or verifying that it makes sense is finding a harmony that includes both “it feels right to me” and “it feels right to another person”, while realizing that the harmony is dependent on a consensus of agreement. We are not, in this way, establishing an "objective “truth”. Our concepts of verification require verification (Rorty 1979). We can skip this infinite regress by simply asserting that verification by consensus of agreement is the only type of verification humans are capable of. This assertion puts “It feels right to me” on the back burner and assumes that concepts and their verifications owe everything to the social milieu and its historical development.
Apparently, doing philosophy is not for the weak. It is not for the weakness of assuming that thinkers listed in the canon of Western philosophy have said all that can be said about the problem of grounds, extensions and descriptions. Without a questioning of “authorities” of the canon, philosophy would be dead in its tracks. Case in point–Richard Rorty in “The Mirror of Nature” presents Quine’s and Sellar’s arguments against concepts proposed by Russell and Carnap. Then, Rorty challenges Quine’s and Sellar’s arguments. This process of argument and rebuttal is not done to prove an ultimate right or wrong concept; it proves that philosophy can expand and evolve–that it is not dead yet.

Let’s not let a good thread go to waste!
As I see it, both Plato and Aristotle believed there were grounds for our descriptions of what is real or true, grounds that verify and justify our claims. Where they differed is that Plato believed the grounds were abolute ideals, whereas Aristotle believed they were natural phenomena. Descartes search for certainty reveals the problems of seeing grounds in either way. Kant tried to show how you can have it both ways. But, can you? That’s what most post-Kantian philosophy is about–how to reconcile the personal “feel” with the impersonal description. 20th century philosophers address the situation with attacks on justification or verification that exclude social, historical biases.
Although Aristotle was a stickler for parsimonious expression, his take on givens did not resolve the problem of verification. I’ve heard that all philosophy since the Greeks amounts to footnotes on Aristotle and Plato. But, I really don’t think either of them would have believed that the problem of verification can be resolved by lingustic analysis.

As I learned logic (in the formal deductive sense) by playing with digital circuits and then making and programing computer, I tend to treat most things as “information”.
Also, I see thinking/reasoning/logic/etc as “information processing”.

In addition to these, I tend to think in concepts/perspectives and then translate then into words.
So, it’s normal/usual for me to see underlying logical structure even within a single word (depending on the context, though).
In other words, observing “micro logic” isn’t really “linguistic analysis” but more like perspective analysis, to me.
Seemingly simple concept may already have layers of logical structure and conditional perspectives.
This is one reason I think it’s strange to leave the statement/premises without due examination in traditional logic.

I can understand that this can be hard to see for some people as these can be done nearly totally subconsciously for them.

About the ground:
As the focuses that make up different perspectives and logic are already relative to criterion, I don’t think there is absolute ground in logical thinking or reasoning.

About authority:
I feel that people of old continent are more inclined to pretend the authority.
If you compare how Brits or French people talk, you may be able to sense that it’s more pretentious than American or French Canadian, for example.
And I think this is coming from the pretended sense of certainty (at the base), which is expanded into pretended sense of authority, civilization, intelligence, knowledge, and so on.
It’s lovely as long as they are just pretending to be the authority of love affair or cuisine (like some French do), though.

Do you see that premises often (if not always) contains logical structure (in the sense of deductive logic)?

For example, “All men are mortal” already has presumption that we can know of all men and we can know if they are mortal or not.
Now, I do understand traditional logic isn’t concerned once we consider something as a premises.
However, in the spirit of seeking reliable thinking process, why should we leave the verification of validity of argument structure that can be detected in premises?

As a programmer, I use it (among other methods), nearly daily.
Clearly, you are not thinking well, here.

I learned truth table and things like that when I was a kid. I thought it was interesting.
I learned and used it with making digital circuits and computer. I didn’t feel strange about logic, at first, because we actually check the premises (voltage and also sometime current that go into the chip). When an input isn’t connected to any output and thus uncertain, we usually “pull it up” or “pull it down” to make sure it would have the Low (more or less associated with 0 or False) or High (1 or True).
I felt strange about it when I re-learned silly but famous example like “all men are mortal.” and when I saw not many people into checking premises, and especially when religious people using valid argument and pretending to be thinking well, among others.

I did feel strange about math, actually, a few years ago. I found it strange to “count” things, to begin with.
I thought about it a few months. I thought about the presumptions that let us “count” things.
And I understood several things and lost the sense of certainty/reality and interest in counting and math, altogether, :slight_smile:

I can still count and calculate but there is “virtual” feeling.

First, it’s a conditional claim that seeing it in the context of thinking well (reducing mistakes, more precision, etc).
I would say it’s about 87% certain in my subjective certainty scale considering the possibility that I’m making mistake somewhere, etc.

I agree if you are including subconscious evaluations and reflexes in logic.
I see logical structure (in the sense of focuses and their relations and evaluations of them) in pretty much everywhere.
But i don’t think this type of logic is about (definitive) Truth.

Lots of presumptions of absolutes happens in subconscious evaluation.

Reflex and many of emotional evaluation seem to work in the absolutes sense, just like how most kids thinks.

By being specific and conditional rather than assuming generic absolutes.
I think it’s more practical and we focus on each matter.

Maybe we can put it this way: “The theory of everything” often ends up in bullshit beliefs.
Presuming Truth and expanding the territory of Truth isn’t so different from Christian Science.
Feeding bad premises in a valid argument isn’t rational logical thinking, at least to me.

Nah -

Sure.

Yup. But it’s an argument I have never made. I don’t have a dog in this fight.

I don’t know what “verification of validity of argument structure” means. If we don’t wish to accept the truth of this premise, then I see no reason to use it in an argument.

Then what are you complaining about? You use it. It seems to me your argument, then, is with yourself.

I’m sorry to hear that. Presumably, you had someone else balance your checking account for you.

And so what is the difference, in your life, between 87% and 100%?

Nah,
So computer input and output cannot be described as involving a language? What ground of certainty is there that can separate knower from known, since only the knower seeks certainty? Is computer language in any way the something other than the self-other relationship that some see as necessary for an unbiased or unattached evaluation of that relationship? Is language in general this Rosetta Stone? Is representation? Is intention or will? You’ve only scratched the surface of these deeper issues.

I know it’s not your bone.

I’m simply saying that I felt strange that “deductive logic” doesn’t bite what it can chew well (logical structure in the sense of deductive logic) when someone says the magic word “It’s a premise”, among other things.

And I also felt strange that most people seem to eat the magic word and shut their eyes on premises.

Maybe you can understand if I say like this.
To me, lots of premises (statement) are already argument themselves in the sense they have multiple logical relations (either clearly visible or easily guessed). As the (micro) argument contained within premises can be studied by deductive logic just like treating any argument, I think it’s better to check them IF we want to think in precise/reliable manner.

I don’t have 100%, unless it’s about something very well defined and pretty limited (like simple math).
In even in these matter, I know I may make a simple mistake that I don’t usually feel 100% certainty.