Nothing in the universe can make the rules of logic untrue. But there’s also the question as to whether the rules of logic relate in a meaningful way to reality. After all, for all its beauty in the abstract, math is also valuable because it allows us to make predictions about how the universe will behave.
Logic as a formal system is *true *by definition. Logic as a way of understanding the universe is *useful *because it gives correct answers. The two should not be confused with each other.
No, because you might be wrong as to what those inventions actually are. You can be wrong about your own thoughts. You can go as far back as you like, but as long as somewhere in your line there is or there relies on a judgment of some kind we can’t accept it as incontrovertibly true.
What? No, I don’t. I’m saying we can’t be sure whether what we’re calling abstract concepts are actually abstract concepts, because that requires an evaluation on our part, and we’re flawed.
If my imaginations of what the rules of logic are can be different from yours, how is it that you can be sure yours are correct, given that the very nature of needing to explain to someone that they are wrong implies the possibility of a mistake?
There’s a difference between the rules of logic existing - perfectly possible, as i’ve already said - and the ability to know what those rules of logic are. Logic might well exist. We are not equipped to know.
Heh, sorry - I read you as suggesting that it might be possible that a universe DOESN’T follow the rules of logic at some fundamental level, which just ain’t right, and I reacted to that.
Logic gives correct answers from true premises because that’s what its internal structure does, which is I suppose what you mean by it being ‘true’. The tricky bit is that you have to find bits of reality that fit nicely into the framework that logic sets up and mandates you use (if you want to do logic). If you can do this, it’s useful and correct due to its structure, which is established by definition.
You are simply wrong. There is nothing more I can say to convince you; I will have to leave it at that.
And I’m saying it doesn’t matter if there are literal And-beasts roaming the countryside, frolicking with Not-monsters and having little Nand-babies - it’s completely irrelevent to the properties of the abstract system and not worth mentioning.
My imaginings of the rules of logic work, due entirely to their internal structure. They are a system that functions machinelike to produce correct results given correct inputs when manipulated correctly according to its abstract rules. My abstract rules definitely exist at the least in whatever medium which is suspending my consciousness and memory; this is not debatable. And using these rules and applying them to things I think are true I can come up with novel ideas with a certainty of truth correlated with that of the premises.
If you imagine that logic has a different set of rules than I do, then they’re equally real as abstract ideas in the medium containing your mind, but they’re no longer assured to be a functional tool for discovering truths, because that functinality relies rather strongly on the rules of the system being what they are. If you’ve messed those up you might call it logic, but it ain’t gonna do for you what my logic does for me. To your detriment, I’d guess.
You have a strong opinion on logic, as I do. How do you answer, logically, the problem that our argument brings up; one of us must be wrong, ergo, people can be wrong and not realise this, ergo, we cannot be sure we are correct, while still making statements of such strength?
Then why did you start bringing up unicorns and dragons?
What leads you to believe my system of logic is different from yours? I’ve declared an uncertainty in whether what I think is true is true, but I haven’t declared that logic, itself, has problems. I’m saying that we, as flawed beings, have problems, and that includes our opinions of abstract concepts.
I disagree that you abstract rules definetly exist in whatever medium etc., because the statement requires an understanding of what they are. There’s no problem with A equalling A, but when we start saying what A actually is, we get into significant problems. We can be wrong about our own thoughts; our own conceptions, regardless of whether they are correct or incorrect objectively, may also contradict or differ from our own subjective views of them. There is a huge difference between something being so and us thinking that something is so; as i’ve said, repeatedly now, I agree with you on logic. I just admit the possibility that, not being perfect, a declaration of perfect knowledge is unreasonable.
That problem has little or nothing to with logic. Logic is the cogs of the machine; statements of debatable and fallaciously assumed accuracy are the input/output. Uncertainty in the truth of the input manifests as uncertainty in the truth of the output, GIGO-style, but this isn’t a bug; this is a feature.
Of course, I’m also making assertions about logic itself, as you’ve doubtlessly noted. My certainty in this assertions is based on the fact that logic is a purely abstract system, and I understand that one can make statements of absolute certainty about abstract systems without regard of the outside world. I know that is true due to education and experimentation; it just works. If you have not discovered this fact to be true I cannot do more than assert it at you, really.
To demonstrate that statements -as in, definitions and premises- can be made even when there is is real-world analogue for the subject of the statements. In fact, the statements can be made even when there are real-world analogues and you are wrong about them; at worst you’ll declare your resulting argument unsound, which is par for the course when you have erroneous premises. Either way you can always make arguments, even if the universe you’re residing in contains no objects or discernible properties to make statements and arguments about.
As for what this has to do with logic itself - logic itself is already abstract, and already has no relation to anything in concrete reality. It doesn’t need or want any such relation, though, so things chug along just fine - even in a completely empty and formless universe.
If logic itself doesn’t have problems, then it functions just fine no matter how screwed up your abstract concepts are, and I have no idea what you’re disagreeing with me for. Logic doesn’t require absolute certainty about premises in order to be used; if it did it wouldn’t have nearly as many practical applications as it does.
What A actually is has no bearing whatsoever on whether logic can be used, thus logic will function just fine in any universe.
But I have discovered this. I am as convinced as you are. I agree with you, as i’ve said, quite a lot now. You and I agree so far as logic goes.
My point is that your opinion on logic as a certainty is itself unreasonable, and in fact illogical. I have no problem with what you assert, but that you assert it, if that makes sense. The very fact that we disagree on this issue proves my point; we human types are fallible, and we can’t ever be sure of anything, because we are capable of being wrong and yet convinced of our correctness.
Of course it has relation, when someone in concret reality asserts it. That’s the problem; it’s not a problem with logic, it’s with us.
But you’re stating that as a result of your own thought on the issue. You, as well as I, are flawed. We cannot accept your statement because it is the result of a thought process of a flawed being, and as such has the potential to be flawed itself.
My argument is very simple. You could be wrong. I could be wrong. We could both be wrong. We are flawed. Hence, it’s foolish to claim with certainty that something is so, because our perceptions, our mental processes, our system of taking data and arriving at conclusions are all potentially flawed. And we’re using the tool in question to prop up the reliability of the tool. Using logic to show that logic works is like measuring a potentially inaccurate ruler against itself to show it’s correct.
I see! You’re not arguing that we’re flawed; you’re arguing that we’re not actually thinking, and that the thoughts we think we’re thinking were never actually thought by anybody. That is, that in the fiction book in which we’re characters says “begbert2 attended college and learned many wondrous things, including an abstract system called logic that achieves the impossible task of transferring certainty from statements to related statements”, without actually elucidating the details of that system, and that in reality that system would not actually work. And that every time I’ve referenced or used that system the text skips the details to avoid mentioning the fact they’re logically inconsistent.
Because of course if the text or whatever medium we’re existing in were to actually go into the details of the logic we were doing, this would necessitate that the logic actually functioned as an abstract system, even if we ourselved had no significant existence.
Okay, so that’s the argument - hardcore cogito ergo sum that even a solipsist would reject because it renders us unthinking and reduces the entirety of existence to a collection of vague statements where logic itself is only a footnote - one that’s not filled in.
There’s a problem with that theory - something providing me with a consistent-seeming illusion of reality. And that system includes the ruled of logic printed out in detail in various places. Which means that the rules of logic - and their workings - are written out in detail in the illusion of reality, presented to the user. Which means that since the illusion contains the concepts, they work in the abstract - and thus are real functional abstract concepts. Even if we don’t exist.
Two other errors:
the rules of logic hold even if nobody exists to articulate them; if A implies B, and A is true, then B is true, regardless of observers. So there doesn’t need to be anybody in concrete reality to assert it, flawed or otherwise.
I don’t use logic to prop up logic. No bootstrapping is occurring here.
Can I just say–I love how the title is “Ok, Atheist. <snip>”. As if there’s only one atheist out there, and everyone else is just deluded. Or as if we’re all just one huge hive-mind, linked together by NOGOD commands sent out by a central service station or something.
I am arguing that we’re flawed; i’m arguing other things in addition to that, but that doesn’t mean i’m not arguing something i’ve stated several times.
Problem is, you still have the issue of personal flaws. Something provides you with a consistent-seeming illusion of reality - nope, you can’t guarantee that one. You can’t know what that something is, whether it is a consistent thing, whether there’s a you, whether it’s an illusion, or whether it is actually consistent-seeming. You can’t guarantee the illusion anymore than you could the reality; that an illusion appears, to you, to be something doesn’t actually mean that it appears, to you, to be something. We have no way of actually knowing whether they are real or functional concepts.
Actually, that’s not necessarily the case. Certainly we may assert a system of logic which doesn’t rely on observation; you could argue for the possibility of that, and I would have no complaints. But we don’t have anyway to know it for certain. There doesn’t need to be anybody in concrete reality to assert it, in an overall sense, but there might well be in a practical sense.
You’re most certainly using logic to prop up logic. “The rules of logic hold even if nobody exists to articulate them; if A implies B, and A is true, then B is true, regardless of observers”, for example, would be bootstrapping in that manner; you’re using logic in order to show that logic works out without articulators.
I don’t think this is actually true. If there is nothing, then there is no ‘a = a’. To even start to think about the situation is to inject consciousness upon ‘nothing’.
A = A is true because it is definitional - it is one of the rules that language demands - to say it transcends language/sentient minds/etc is absurd though.
What is ‘A’? ‘A’ is a representation of something (potential), it is not a thing in and of itself.
It appears the masses have spoken and the answer to the great “grand design” question is “No”.
Have to admit it sure is hard to imagine a Being so tremendous. Kind of reminds me of the scene in MIB at the end.
But that in and of itself doesn’t make it not true. YOU weren’t there when it all began and neither was I. But we do know it ALL did begin at some point in time. Perhaps you’ll say “Began again…etc.” Isn’t that reincarnation? Maybe they did get it right in the “eastern religions/philosophies”.
Things that make ya go “Hmmm”. well maybe not you but it does me.
Man will eventually know much… hence science. It will take a bit of time. However it may take them to a place where heads explode… and religion might be part and parcel.
When the powers that be can figure out the Bing Bang and who was behind it then I’ll hang and listen.
No; it’s the person claiming that something exists who has to provide evidence for it. There’s no evidence that anyone was behind the Big Bang; there’s no evidence that it is necessary for there to have been; therefore the logical default should be your position. Namely, that there was no one behind it.
Why should it be assumed that there was someone behind it any more than with any other random natural event?