About logic

@Neshama,

A syllogism is an assumed area within a particular form of logic
it is an assumption of a reality that brings you to your conclusion
for example, from wikipedia:
men are mortal
i am a man
therefore i am mortal
there is a huge assumption being made in this statement to bring me to my conclusion, that is the syllogism..
im not implying that men are not mortal with this post, thats not my point at all
Im just demonstrating what a syllogism is
syllogistic logic, though useful for finite magnitudes, has no use in an infinite magnitude and will not allow you to see the infinite expressions of the absolute
the aspirant must be able to look at his environment from many different perspectives and paradigms
this is why everyones opinion is important and should be interpreted equally and absolutely
and i am sad to see complaints from people on this forum who feel that unfounded philosophy isn't worth of posting when in fact this forum has many different sections of discussion whether it be for our own personal observations or for discussions of other more popular studied philosophers observations, there is a section for both so those complaints seem to confuse me
and finally and foremost
i am not insulting anyone
i am not insulting syllogistic logic or anyones logic either
im just posting my observations just like everyone else

Quote:

As far as I can see, the core principle at the base of logic is the avoidance of contradiction. Every logical deduction gives us a conclusion, the negation of which would be a contradiction. The ultimate test of whether a conclusion is logically valid is that (given the definitions of the terms you have used) its negation would involve a contradiction.

its funny to think about this
but to me still the reason anyone comes to a conclusion is determined by intuition
no matter how much "reasoning" you do to arrive at your conclusion
what you internally feel is right is what you believe is right
because we are sovereign beings
and our will can not be influenced by anyone without our acceptance of it

@l0ck,

You are right, 10ck. People can act for all kinds of reasons - intuition, feeling. It would be difficult to imagine an individual who acted only on logic. The nearest you could come to imagining it would be some kind of robot.

Taking that as agreed, it is still an interesting question to consider what the essence of logic is. As far as I can make out, the crucial point in logic is to avoid contradiction.

Peter

@kennethamy,

I just came across this and thought it might prove entertaining. Very Happy

[INDENT]:eek: 38 Ways To Win An Argument
by Arthur Schopenhauer
1 Carry your opponent's proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it.
The more general your opponent's statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it.
The more restricted and narrow your own propositions remain, the easier they are to defend.
2 Use different meanings of your opponent's words to refute his argument.
Example: Person A says, "You do not understand the mysteries of Kant's philosophy."
Person B replies, "Oh, if it's mysteries you're talking about, I'll have nothing to do with them."
3 Ignore your opponent's proposition, which was intended to refer to some particular thing.
Rather, understand it in some quite different sense, and then refute it.
Attack something different than what was asserted.
4 Hide your conclusion from your opponent until the end.
Mingle your premises here and there in your talk.
Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order.
By this circuitous route you conceal your goal until you have reached all the admissions necessary to reach your goal.
5 Use your opponent's beliefs against him.
If your opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage.
Example, if the opponent is a member of an organization or a religious sect to which you do not belong, you may employ the declared opinions of this group against the opponent.
6 Confuse the issue by changing your opponent's words or what he or she seeks to prove.
Example: Call something by a different name: "good repute" instead of "honor," "virtue" instead of "virginity," "red-blooded" instead of "vertebrates".
7 State your proposition and show the truth of it by asking the opponent many questions.
By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted.
Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the proponent's admissions.
8 Make your opponent angry.
An angry person is less capable of using judgment or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.
9 Use your opponent's answers to your question to reach different or even opposite conclusions.
10 If your opponent answers all your questions negatively and refuses to grant you any points, ask him or her to concede the opposite of your premises.
This may confuse the opponent as to which point you actually seek him to concede.
11 If the opponent grants you the truth of some of your premises, refrain from asking him or her to agree to your conclusion.
Later, introduce your conclusions as a settled and admitted fact.
Your opponent and others in attendance may come to believe that your conclusion was admitted.
12 If the argument turns upon general ideas with no particular names, you must use language or a metaphor that is favorable to your proposition.
Example: What an impartial person would call "public worship" or a "system of religion" is described by an adherent as "piety" or "godliness" and by an opponent as "bigotry" or "superstition."
In other words, insert what you intend to prove into the definition of the idea.
13 To make your opponent accept a proposition, you must give him an opposite, counter-proposition as well.
If the contrast is glaring, the opponent will accept your proposition to avoid being paradoxical.
Example: If you want him to admit that a boy must to everything that his father tells him to do, ask him, "whether in all things we must obey or disobey our parents."
Or , if a thing is said to occur "often" you are to understand few or many times, the opponent will say "many."
It is as though you were to put gray next to black and call it white; or gray next to white and call it black.
14 Try to bluff your opponent.
If he or she has answered several of your question without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow.
If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the technique may succeed.
15 If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment.
Instead, submit for your opponent's acceptance or rejection some true proposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it.
Should the opponent reject it because he suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject an obviously true proposition.
Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your side for the moment.
You can either try to prove your original proposition, as in #14, maintain that your original proposition is proved by what your opponent accepted.
For this an extreme degree of impudence is required, but experience shows cases of it succeeding.
16 When your opponent puts forth a proposition, find it inconsistent with his or her other statements, beliefs, actions or lack of action.
Example: Should your opponent defend suicide, you may at once exclaim, "Why don't you hang yourself?"
Should the opponent maintain that his city is an unpleasant place to live, you may say, "Why don't you leave on the first plane?"
17 If your opponent presses you with a counter-proof, you will often be able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction.
Try to find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent's idea.
18 If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to its conclusion.
Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.
19 Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his argument, and you have nothing to say, try to make the argument less specific.
Example: If you are asked why a particular hypothesis cannot be accepted, you may speak of the fallibility of human knowledge, and give various illustrations of it.
20 If your opponent has admitted to all or most of your premises, do not ask him or her directly to accept your conclusion.
Rather, draw the conclusion yourself as if it too had been admitted.
21 When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial and you see the falsehood, you can refute it by setting forth its superficial character.
But it is better to meet the opponent with a counter-argument that is just as superficial, and so dispose of him.
For it is with victory that you are concerned, not with truth.
Example: If the opponent appeals to prejudice, emotion or attacks you personally, return the attack in the same manner.
22 If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.
23 Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating their statements.
By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into extending the statement beyond its natural limit.
When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the original statement.
Contrarily, if your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than your intended, redefine your statement's limits and say, "That is what I said, no more."
24 State a false syllogism.
Your opponent makes a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you force from the proposition other propositions that are not intended and that appear absurd.
It then appears that opponent's proposition gave rise to these inconsistencies, and so appears to be indirectly refuted.
25 If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary.
Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the opponent's proposition.
Example: "All ruminants are horned," is a generalization that may be upset by the single instance of the camel.
26 A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent's arguments against himself.
Example: Your opponent declares: "so and so is a child, you must make an allowance for him."
You retort, "Just because he is a child, I must correct him; otherwise he will persist in his bad habits."
27 Should your opponent surprise you by becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal.
No only will this make your opponent angry, but it will appear that you have put your finger on the weak side of his case, and your opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.
28 When the audience consists of individuals (or a person) who is not an expert on a subject, you make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience.
This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes your opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs.
If your opponent must make a long, winded and complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen to him.
29 If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion--that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had a bearing on the matter in dispute.
This may be done without presumption if the diversion has some general bearing on the matter.
30 Make an appeal to authority rather than reason.
If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case.
If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance.
Authorities that your opponent fails to understand are those which he generally admires the most.
You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have entirely invented yourself.
31 If you know that you have no reply to the arguments that your opponent advances, you by a fine stroke of irony declare yourself to be an incompetent judge.
Example: "What you say passes my poor powers of comprehension; it may well be all very true, but I can't understand it, and I refrain from any expression of opinion on it."
In this way you insinuate to the audience, with whom you are in good repute, that what your opponent says is nonsense.
This technique may be used only when you are quite sure that the audience thinks much better of you than your opponent.
32 A quick way of getting rid of an opponent's assertion, or of throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious category.
Example: You can say, "That is fascism" or "Atheism" or "Superstition."
In making an objection of this kind you take for granted
1)That the assertion or question is identical with, or at least contained in, the category cited;
and
2)The system referred to has been entirely refuted by the current audience.
33 You admit your opponent's premises but deny the conclusion.
Example: "That's all very well in theory, but it won't work in practice."
34 When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter question, or tries to change the subject, it is sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without intending to do so.
You have, as it were, reduced your opponent to silence.
You must, therefore, urge the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.
35 Instead of working on an opponent's intellect or the rigor of his arguments, work on his motive.
If you success in making your opponent's opinion, should it prove true, seem distinctly prejudicial to his own interest, he will drop it immediately.
Example: A clergyman is defending some philosophical dogma.
You show him that his proposition contradicts a fundamental doctrine of his church.
He will abandon the argument.
36 You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere bombast.
If your opponent is weak or does not wish to appear as if he has no idea what your are talking about, you can easily impose upon him some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.
37 Should your opponent be in the right but, luckily for you, choose a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position.
This is the way in which bad advocates lose good cases.
If no accurate proof occurs to your opponent, you have won the day.
38 Become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand.

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

I just came across this and thought it might prove entertaining.
[INDENT]:eek: 38 Ways To Win An Argument
by Arthur Schopenhauer
,,,etc.[/INDENT]

Yeah I bookmarked that somewhere. It's not to be taken seriously. :rolleyes:

@Peter phil,

Peter wrote:

As far as I can see, the core principle at the base of logic is the avoidance of contradiction. Every logical deduction gives us a conclusion, the negation of which would be a contradiction. The ultimate test of whether a conclusion is logically valid is that (given the definitions of the terms you have used) its negation would involve a contradiction.

All dogs are mammals.
All poodles are dogs.

Therefore, all poodles are mammals.

The negation of the conclusion, all poodles are dogs is, some poodles are not dogs. But that is not a contradiction.

Perhaps you mean something different-this:

If an argument is deductively valid, then if the conclusion is negated, the set which consists of the premises and what is now the negation of the conclusion, forms an inconsistent set of statements. Is that what you have in mind?

@Aristoddler,

Aristoddler wrote:

Yeah I bookmarked that somewhere. It's not to be taken seriously. :rolleyes:

Aristoddler,

To be taken seriously if one realizes a persons ability with language and concepts can be used in a negative way, to frustrate the honest communication of another.It is basically and profoundly dishonest.Attacking the person instead of the subject is all to common,I wonder though if it really was Schopenhaur who is the source of said material,that I find doubtful as well.It may be something to take note of, in order that you not fall victum too such tactics

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

Aristoddler,

To be taken seriously if one realizes a persons ability with language and concepts can be used in a negative way, to frustrate the honest communication of another.It is basically and profoundly dishonest.Attacking the person instead of the subject is all to common,I wonder though if it really was Schopenhaur who is the source of said material,that I find doubtful as well.It may be something to take note of, in order that you not fall victum too such tactics

Winning an argument has nothing to do with logic. It concerns debating and rhetoric (the art of persuasion). The merit of an argument is no measured by its capacity to persuade, but by its capacity to establish its conclusion.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Winning an argument has nothing to do with logic. It concerns debating and rhetoric (the art of persuasion). The merit of an argument is not measured by its capacity to persuade, but by its capacity to establish its conclusion.

kennethamy, Smile

Excellent point,this material attributed to Schopenhaur, I should say is concerned with deception.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

All dogs are mammals.
All poodles are dogs.

Therefore, all poodles are mammals.

The negation of the conclusion, all poodles are dogs is, some poodles are not dogs. But that is not a contradiction.

Perhaps you mean something different-this:

If an argument is deductively valid, then if the conclusion is negated, the set which consists of the premises and what is now the negation of the conclusion, forms an inconsistent set of statements. Is that what you have in mind?

The conclusion of your syllogism is actually "All poodles are mammals." I am referring to the negation of the whole of that conclusion, which would read: It is not true that all poodles are mammals. Given the premisses you supply this would be a contradiction.

What do you think of my substantive point that logic is essentially elaborations on the Law of Noncontradiction?

Peter

@Peter phil,

Peter wrote:

The conclusion of your syllogism is actually "All poodles are mammals." I am referring to the negation of the whole of that conclusion, which would read: It is not true that all poodles are mammals. Given the premisses you supply this would be a contradiction.

What do you think of my substantive point that logic is essentially elaborations on the Law of Noncontradiction?

Peter

But, all poodles are mammals is not a contradiction.

As I pointed out, the negation of the conclusion, is not consistent with the premises. So, the negation of the conclusion is not a contradiction, but what is a contradiction is the set:

All dogs are mammals.
All poodles are dogs.

Therefore, Some poodles are not mammals. As I pointed out.

To repeat, (1) if an argument is valid, then, the negation of the conclusion, conjoined with the premises, does form an inconsistent or contradictory set.
But it is not true that (2) the negation of the conclusion of a valid argument is a self-contradiction. I think you are confusing (1) and (2).

As to what you call your "substantive point", it is too vague for me to have any opinion about it.

@kennethamy,

I don't which to offend anyone, but identity is essential to logic and syllogism is only an attempt at establishing an identity. Certainly, it has weaknesses, and is easily manipulated; but because it is so easy, it is practiced by every child to a greater or lesser extent, and so the accumulation of identities, definitions, really can begin and continue without any formal training in logic, which is more the processes by which identities are handled to add to knowledge. It is easy to see that children learn through a variety of methods to tell the difference between things, and I think it is easy to to see that syllogism and identity, like information accepted on faith plays a part. What part in ratio I cannot say. I can say that people reach a level of inductive and deductive reasoning with a great deal of formed knowledge.

I don't want to seem as ignorant as this statement may make me seem; but until a few years ago I had no concept of identity or conservation, as two sides of the same fuzz ball, until working it out in public on one of these forums. That does not mean I did not have the concept of identity conservation; I just did not have all the details formally. Children work out identity of objects in reality through syllogism every time they learn to distinguish between cats and dogs, even while each has more in common than not. Once one is presented with a formal idea, whether it is correct or not is unimportant, because then one can prove or disprove it, as one cannot ever do with an unformed concept. Does that make sense?

@Di Wu,

Di Wu wrote:

I think there is some truth in the quote.

Yes Logic can be fallible, but in most cases it is correct.
Hence within Logic one can find the security at least of being able to be right with confidence as much as being wrong with confidence.

Logic can provide the sense of security (emphasis on 'sense') of being surely right or surely wrong.

In every sense logic is incorrect. No matter how often logic proves why what happened did happen, it will never faithfully prove what will happen. Cause and effect are the great bugbears of mankind, and they should never be totally disregarded.

Logic gives a false sense of the truth. It is better at giving a true sense of untruth. Rather, it is better at proving something wrong than proving something right, just as experiments can never exactly prove a theory but can disprove one while adding evidence supporting another theory. Clearly, considering how long and how often human beings have lived with falseness parading as truth, justifying tyranny of some sort or another in their lives and injustice, it is not truth but certainty that people find necessary. The truth may be that we are some pathogen surviving in a drop of cosmic slime, but that will not stop us from seeking a firm foundation for our next enterprise. Truth is optional, and certainty is essential.

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

I don't which to offend anyone, but identity is essential to logic and syllogism is only an attempt at establishing an identity. Certainly, it has weaknesses, and is easily manipulated; but because it is so easy, it is practiced by every child to a greater or lesser extent, and so the accumulation of identities, definitions, really can begin and continue without any formal training in logic, which is more the processes by which identities are handled to add to knowledge. It is easy to see that children learn through a variety of methods to tell the difference between things, and I think it is easy to to see that syllogism and identity, like information accepted on faith plays a part. What part in ratio I cannot say. I can say that people reach a level of inductive and deductive reasoning with a great deal of formed knowledge.

I don't want to seem as ignorant as this statement may make me seem; but until a few years ago I had no concept of identity or conservation, as two sides of the same fuzz ball, until working it out in public on one of these forums. That does not mean I did not have the concept of identity conservation; I just did not have all the details formally. Children work out identity of objects in reality through syllogism every time they learn to distinguish between cats and dogs, even while each has more in common than not. Once one is presented with a formal idea, whether it is correct or not is unimportant, because then one can prove or disprove it, as one cannot ever do with an unformed concept. Does that make sense?

But consider the syllogism:

All snakes are reptiles
All cobras are snakes

Therefore, all cobras are reptiles.

This syllogism is sound because it has all true premises, and is valid (i.e. the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises). Therefore, the syllogism has a true conclusion.

But there is not one identity statement contained in the syllogism. Neither the premises, nor the conclusion assert an identity. So I cannot understand why you say that the syllogism tries to establish an identity.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

But consider the syllogism:

All snakes are reptiles
All cobras are snakes

Therefore, all cobras are reptiles.

This syllogism is sound because it has all true premises, and is valid (i.e. the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises). Therefore, the syllogism has a true conclusion.

But there is not one identity statement contained in the syllogism. Neither the premises, nor the conclusion assert an identity. So I cannot understand why you say that the syllogism tries to establish an identity.

At every step in the process identity is evident: Snakes, Cobras, and reptiles. That is why syllogism was the great fancy of the middle ages; because there desire was to classify... everything. Reptiles is the genus, and snakes are the phylum, and cobras a species. What do they have in common and what sets them apart? Even though syllogism is not an exacting tool as it takes too much for granted it does present a hypothetical identity that can be challenged, so, it is a step.

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

At every step in the process identity is evident: Snakes, Cobras, and reptiles. That is why syllogism was the great fancy of the middle ages; because there desire was to classify... everything. Reptiles is the genus, and snakes are the phylum, and cobras a species. What do they have in common and what sets them apart? Even though syllogism is not an exacting tool as it takes too much for granted it does present a hypothetical identity that can be challenged, so, it is a step.

Identity between what and what? What two things are supposed to be identical. Are you sure you know what "identity" means?

Careful with personal affronts...challenge the idea, not the person please.
~Ari

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Identity between what and what? What two things are supposed to be identical. Are you sure you know what "identity" means?

Careful with personal affronts...challenge the idea, not the person please.
~Ari

Sure I'm sure. A is A is an example of identity. Conservation is another sense of identity. Every word in the dictionary is a sense of identity. The concept is fundamental to logic. Let me give you an example. A 'line' is a concept. If you have a line, and you add four feet and subtract two inches you have lengthened and then shortened the line, but you have in no sense affected the fact that it is a line. When you hear of physical terms like conservation of motion or charge, you may be dealing with different physical properties, but the conserved quality is of a conceptual understanding essential to the thing's identity. In the example of Piaget's work with cognitive development in children, the understanding of conservation on a practical level was thought of as a milestone. When a child learned that water poured into a tall thin glass was not more than before, or in a short fat glass was not less, then the child was ready for greater rational challenges. Does this make sense?

@Di Wu,

Di Wu wrote:

Lol...well I'd say everytime a relgious fanatic tries to prove the existence of God 'because the Bible says so' etc... or the multitude of other reasons they come up with are all examples of fallible logic.

But then again on the other hand, we can't logically DISprove the existence of God.

The only difference is: logical people can ADMIT they can't logically disprove the existence of God whilst illogical people do NOT admit that they can not logically prove the existence of God.

You seem to mean using logic badly. That doesn't mean that logic is fallible any more than it means that arithmetic is fallible if you don't add or subtract correctly.

Its the person who uses logic incorrectly who is fallible, not logic.

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

Sure I'm sure. A is A is an example of identity. Conservation is another sense of identity. Every word in the dictionary is a sense of identity. The concept is fundamental to logic. Let me give you an example. A 'line' is a concept. If you have a line, and you add four feet and subtract two inches you have lengthened and then shortened the line, but you have in no sense affected the fact that it is a line. When you hear of physical terms like conservation of motion or charge, you may be dealing with different physical properties, but the conserved quality is of a conceptual understanding essential to the thing's identity. In the example of Piaget's work with cognitive development in children, the understanding of conservation on a practical level was thought of as a milestone. When a child learned that water poured into a tall thin glass was not more than before, or in a short fat glass was not less, then the child was ready for greater rational challenges. Does this make sense?

But lets stick to what you claimed. I don't want to go all over the place, and I don't understand a lot of what you write, anyway. For instance, I don't think that the sentence, "Every word in the dictionary is a sense of identity" means anything in English. Same with "conservation is an identity" It makes no sense to say of something (or of a word) that it is "an identity". An identity is a dyadic relation between two things. Now, where is the identity statement in the syllogism I gave as an example? None of the three statements state an identity. A statement of identity would be, "Mark Twain is identical with Samuel Clemens", or, "the predecessor of the number, 4, is identical with the successor of the number 2". To say that A and B are identical is to say that A and B are one and the same. None of the statements of the syllogism says anything is identical with anything else. So you seem to be wrong.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

But lets stick to what you claimed. I don't want to go all over the place, and I don't understand a lot of what you write, anyway. For instance, I don't think that the sentence, "Every word in the dictionary is a sense of identity" means anything in English. Same with "conservation is an identity" It makes no sense to say of something (or of a word) that it is "an identity". An identity is a dyadic relation between two things. Now, where is the identity statement in the syllogism I gave as an example? None of the three statements state an identity. A statement of identity would be, "Mark Twain is identical with Samuel Clemens", or, "the predecessor of the number, 4, is identical with the successor of the number 2". To say that A and B are identical is to say that A and B are one and the same. None of the statements of the syllogism says anything is identical with anything else. So you seem to be wrong.

In your original post in reference to snakes as reptiles, each is an identity. If you are talking about snakes, you are not talking about mice. An identity is just that. Saying Mark Twain is identical with Samual Clemens tells us little about either, but it does say something about one person's identity. Certainly there is a relationship between one thing and another. Within that realtionship things, people, ideas, and etc. do not change their identity. Things do not change apart from forces acting upon them. Still; what is the identity of a thing? What is its genus and species? What does it have in common with other things, and in what sense is it different. If you say all pit vipers are snakes, but all snakes are not pit vipers you have refined a relationship, but also defined an identity, which is, in a sense unique. Now, I know Aristotle covered some of this. Are you going to make me quote from some dusty book that will only make me sneeze so you can sit and deny?

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

You seem to mean using logic badly. That doesn't mean that logic is fallible any more than it means that arithmetic is fallible if you don't add or subtract correctly.

Its the person who uses logic incorrectly who is fallible, not logic.

Logic is always and only true within its contexts. We forever reason beyond our ability to prove. We live in a world we cannot prove. We presume a certain logical course of events, of cause and effect, without any firm grasp on a first cause or last effect. Logic is good for disproving what is thought wrong, but proving a theory wrong does not prove another theory right. And we can only push it so far into the future without error. If reason tells us that there is a fifty/fifty chance that a flipped coin will land heads up it tells us nothing about which way the coin will land the next time it is flipped. It has a one hundred percent chance of landing heads or tails up, because the natural force of gravity acts as an immutable law, which is a formulation of behavior. Will gravity always act in this fashion? No one can say with certainty, only that it is logical to expect it to based upon our experience.

Faith is at both ends of logic, and this is okay. As long as people are alive enough to feel, and can check the effects of logic on human beings with their emotions there will be no danger from the tyranny of logic. And, recall; that it is logical people who are most responsible for the curses this humanity endures, and has suffered. It was logical for the Nazis to gas Jews within the context of their ideology. It was logical for Dominicans to burn heritics within the context of their dogma. And it was logical to develop nuclear weapons within the context of physical inquiry. Outside of the paradigms that make particular thoughts logical, and particular actions rational, neither actions nor thoughts may be logical. Humanity knows nothing, so instead of being logical should be careful.

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