People do things that they know are self-destructive and that they can't explain. Logic does not govern our behavior.

#2: yes. cause and effect

... whoa :shocked: - if you've discovered a logic that can predict the swings of the stock market, you simply have to let me in on it!!!

People do things that they know are self-destructive and that they can't explain. Logic does not govern our behavior.

... darn!!! - and here I thought I was going to be a fat cat the rest of my life!!!

Anyhoo, if we take the perspective that cause and effect is all that is real in this world, then I cannot disagree with your assertion - in a subatomically deterministic world, all things composed from the subatomic level are also deterministic (at least in principle) ... and if we can map a logic to cause and effect, then all things composed from the subatomic level are also logical (again, at least in principle) ... unfortunately, this perspective is a lot like Lucy - it's got a heck of a lot a'splaining to do! (said in my best Ricky Ricardo imitation) ...

That 'splaining is done at higher levels than subatomic determinism ... it's done at the level of, say, life, markets, and earthquakes - some pretty unpredictable (illogical?) things as far as I'm concerned ... is my experience of unpredictability (illogicity?) due to the fact that I am a boundedly rational agent (as opposed to an omniscient agent)? ... of course it is ... subatomic cause and effect is way beyond my experiential capabilities, let alone my computational capabilities to assemble into, say, a market prediction ... so I instead ground my predictions in phenomena that I can experience using logic that I can compute ... unfortunately, my predictions are frequently off - the stock market crashes; a black swan turns up in Australia; all when I least expect it ... how illogical!!! ... so can it be said that reality is at once logical and illogical? ... that is, can reality be logical at one level of description yet illogical at another? ... (Btw, this is just a variation of Dennett's argument in Freedom Evolves that beings with free will can evolve in a deterministic universe.)

ok then, cause and effect.

So there's no inherent logic in the assignment of cause and effect just because we can.

I've never laughed soo hard at a post. That Lucy bit was pure gold!

... and that highlights a point that I failed to make ... using math and logic to make predictions about the structure of the world is theoretical physics - until such time as those predictions are either corroborated or refuted by experimental physics, they are considered speculative ... that is, the isomorphism of various maths and logics to the real world can never be taken for granted simply because they happen to be isomorphic at some other level ... so to refine a statement I made above:

"... if we can map a logic to cause and effect, then all things composed from the subatomic level are also logical (at least in theory) ..."

I thought cause and effect were insight, and proving them true takes logic, which is more of a process to determine true cause and true effect...

Proving them true takes evidence. Logic helps determine how we can prove them true.

I'm not so sure about such axioms existing in science.

... that's a fair statement ... the axioms of a science are typically the result of decades of experimentation ... only an engineer would ever dream of whipping out an axiom (aka "engineering assumption") at the drop of a hat ...

The Axiom of A is A is called conservation in physics and science... All identities are conserved, lines stay lines no matter how long or short, mass or motion is conserved

Oh come on. The assertion that A is A is contingent solely upon the linguistic meaning of the verb to be. It doesn't matter what A is so long as A is repeated on the opposite side of the is.

Oh come on. The assertion that A is A is contingent solely upon the linguistic meaning of the verb to be. It doesn't matter what A is so long as A is repeated on the opposite side of the is.

Conservation of mass or of energy (for instance) in science may be used axiomatically, but that is because it's abstracted out of bread and butter empirical science. I mean we derived PV = nRT (the ideal gas equation) in my physical chemistry course in college. The variables in this case DO matter, because the statements denote relationships of variables, not tautologic statements of basic linguistics.

If reality was illogical then A would equal any and everything possible.

I am just giving you the facts ma'am...

Identity is the same as conservation, and that is its meaning, and has nothing to do with being, which is another axiom, but with the stability through time and place of concepts...

Exactly, A=A, to me, always has and always will be true. Think about it, if A=/=A then what does it equal? If reality was illogical then A would equal any and everything possible. Which, obviously, doesnt make sense.

I just wonder why you're trying soo hard to say A=A isnt true. Do you really believe that? I understand that absolute certainty scares people (especially philosophers for some reason) but seriously, when has something ever been identified as illogical? Never. Never has and never will.