Whoa whoa whoa - I refuse to even conditionally grant that any entity, universe, or inanimate object isn’t constrained by logic. Not even for the sake of discussion. As if logic was in any way dependent on being in our universe anyway!
Sorry, I just couldn’t let that pass.
ETA: gotta go - see y’all tomorrow if you haven’t hammered this into the ground by then.
Sure, i’d tend to agree with you. But how would we know?
Some scientists say it is possible for other universes to exist. Nothing can exist out of existence, I agree with you on the explaination of a god. Many people cannot agree on what the word God means. The question I have long sought an answer for: is where did God exist before place was created? Existing beings first need a place in existence before they can exist! The OT says God showed Moses His back side; that would mean he has dimensions as humans do.
Yes, they do say that. But I have not seen any scientists theorize that events in other universes have any effect on our own. The way I understand it, the idea of multiple universe theory is that in other universes, events have different outcomes than they do in our own universe. If they were influencing our own universe they wouldn’t really be separate. Maybe our understanding of this will evolve, but that’s the way I understand the thinking here.
The bones do more than act as a framework. They also store minerals that are used in other systems, notably potassium and calcium. Having titanium bones would eother require a wholesale change in human biochemistry or require some other method for storing other minerals.
Not that I want to argue for ID in anyway, I think the concept is laughable, but there is not requirement that that the “Creator” is either of those things. There is no evidence that any God that Man has invented is omniscient or omnipotent, this is just an assumption made by the faithful to justify their belief in a higher being. The only evidence that the Abrahamic ‘God’ is loving comes from its own admission, which could easily be a lie and is often disproved by its own actions.
We really have no evidence that any “Creator” would even be competent.
We’d know because logic is simply too simple to be wrong - or at least, predicate logic is. It is based solely on the idea that statements can be made that have a discernable truth value. I’ll leave it to the imagination what a universe lacking that property would look like, but suffice to say no entity could exist in it, because “that entity exists” would then be a discernibly true statement. Of course, “this universe is real” is such a statement too…
Once you accept that you can have discernibly true statements in your universe, no additional information is necessary to develop the concepts of ‘and’ and ‘not’, the behaviors of which are based entirely on abstract definition and are thus independent of any universe. And then once you have those, the entirety of the system of first-order logic explodes out from there. If you add the concept of distinct objects, then second-order logic (and set theory) erupts therefrom, again without relying on any other properties in the universe. (Though of course if no objects actually exist in the universe you won’t find that aspect of logic too useful. It’d still be valid though.)
Logic doesn’t rely enough on the properties of reality to be inapplicable in any universe, or to any thing.
Huh, I didn’t know that. Back to the biological drawing board I guess…
That only applies to some kinds of other universes, including the Many Worlds Interpretation alternate quantum universes you are speaking of. Other types of universes might or might not be inaccessible, and in some theories could even impinge on our own on a cosmological scale (which would probably be very, very bad).
A universe lacking that property might well look like this one - the question is, what exactly does this universe look like? We can’t know for certain. We can’t say that there are necessarily discernably true statements, for one thing because that requires a perfect discerner, which we likely aren’t but we wouldn’t be able to say anyway, because that evaluation would require discernment.
I’d say that, when it comes down to it, there are no statements which can be made that have a discernable absolute truth value.
I never said anything about statements with discernable absolute truth values. I said statements with discernable truth values, period. These values need not be objectively correct. In fact, the existence of false statements are an integral part of logic; they are presumed to exist, by the existence of the ‘not’ operator.
In a universe wherin statements can’t be made that have a discernable truth value, it would literally be impossible to compose a statement of fact, true or false. This would include statements that weren’t about the universe! “1 + 1 = 2” is a statement that has a discernible truth value, and doesn’t rely on the universe at all.
Thank you - you have just proven that no universe can possibly exist wherin logic does not apply.
Yes, it does, because it requires discernment.
And it is impossible to compose a statement of fact in any universe, because we can’t be certain of anything. We don’t know that 1+1 does equal 2, because our ability to understand ourselves requires that we use ourselves as the tool to check that.
My problem is not with your conclusion - as i’ve said, I agree. My problem is not with your argument, but with your idea that we are actually capable of knowing the answer to it. It relies on assumptions we can’t check, or that we cannot check the veracity of our checks. If your assumptions are correct, it works, but we don’t know whether we should assume or not. It requires the study of a tool using that tool.
Maybe that’s the case for you, but it certainly isn’t the case for me. To me 1 + 1 = 2 is purely abstract, as are many, many other things. Like the properties of unicorns, for example. Unicorns have cloven hoofs, did you know that? True fact. You’ll never find a unicorn that doesn’t.
You are simply wrong - certainty of veracity is competely unnecessary to figuring out how to do logic. We can be certain of this because if it weren’t, we wouldn’t have figured out logic in this universe. And we have.
That seems illogical (suitably!). If I am wrong, then that shows that people in general can be wrong. I am convinced of my views, so people can be wrong and yet convinced they are right. How do you know that you are right, and not wrong but convinced of your rightness?
No, we haven’t. You are correct that we don’t need to know that unicorns exist in order to make logical statements about them, but we do need to know that logic, as we understand it, exists. And we don’t.
That seems illogical (suitably!). If I am wrong, then that shows that people in general can be wrong. I am convinced of my views, so people can be wrong and yet convinced they are right. How do you know that you are right, and not wrong but convinced of your rightness?
No, we haven’t. You are correct in that, say, we don’t need to know that unicorns exist in order to make logical statements about them, but we do need to know that logic, as we understand it, exists. And we don’t.
I don’t. But I don’t need to, to make logical arguments - if my premises are bad my arguments become invalid but they’re still sound.
We haven’t figured out propositional logic? We’re unaware of the concept of statements with truth values? The notions of ‘and’, ‘or’, and ‘not’ have never crossed our minds?
This would all come as a shock to my old Logic 201 professor, as well as to most of my math professors and all of my computer science professors. And I have at least one leftover logic textbook that is apparently completely blank.
Actually all of my old textbooks are apparently blank, if we haven’t figured out how to make statements of fact yet…
Only if our grasp of logic is sound, which is as potentially up in the air as our premises.
There’s a difference between believing we have figured it out, and actually knowing we have. I’m sure in your various classes or textbooks mention was made at some point of some archaic ideas or formulations whose pushers were, nonetheless, convinced of their correctness.
It’s pretty simple. We disagree. One of us is wrong, yet we both consider ourselves to be right. Therefore, people can be wrong and not know it. Our methods of evaluating ideas can be flawed without us knowing it. Therefore we can’t accept as true any argument, since the possibility exists of us being wrong and not being aware of that.
No, it ain’t, because if I declare “I’m inventing an imaginary character named Fred, who is defined to be a dragon”, then we can be absolutely certain that the imaginary character named “fred” is indeed a dragon, by the magical power of defining things.
Logic is constructed the same way - it’s invented, not discovered, at the core of it, which means we can’t be mistaken about our own definitions.
No we can’t, because, at the base of it, we don’t know that A is A, even when defined subjectively. We can be mistaken about our own definitions, because the very nature of defining something isn’t something we can be sure works as an idea. Removing outside context still leaves you with inside context. How do you know that you are inventing such an imaginary character? You can’t just not prove that you’re thinking what you believe yourself to be thinking, as an abstract concept it still doesn’t work because you can’t show it to be an entirely abstract concept.
Logic is itself a hypothesis about the nature of the reality. We can’t PROVE that the universe is logical. However, when we use logic to predict its behavior, we get correct results, which means that even if the universe DOESN’T follow the rules of logic at some fundamental level, we’re justified in treating it as though it does for all practical purposes.
I can’t believe there are two people arguing against this.
Of course defining something works as an idea - regardless of whether I myself am invented. Because if I am invented, then the person inventing me is inventing everything I invent, and thus my inventions have been invented regardless.
And you think that having real-world analogues disrupts the existence of abstract concepts? Why would it?
Seriously, you are not making sense to me.
What, exactly, do you imagine the rules of logic are? My rules of logic can be drawn with truth tables:
A (Not A)
T F
F T
A B (A and B)
T T T
T F F
F T F
F F F
A B (A or B)
T T T
T F T
F T T
F F F
…and so on. Nothing about the universe can make these things untrue.