About logic

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

As if the killing of a dog wouldn't mean a man were evil. Stalin was right about the murder of one being a tragedy and the murder of millions being a statistic. When we cannot grasp even the death of a single person we love how can we begin to comprehend millions of deaths. It is enough to grasp that with some horrors people are put out of humanity and so cannot be considered even human, and so the notion of evil in regard to them is meaningless.

I did not say that one killing is not evil. But isn't killing millions worse than killing just one or two? You think that the scale does not matter?

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

I did not say that one killing is not evil. But isn't killing millions worse than killing just one or two? You think that the scale does not matter?

Scale is just scale. It is because small, insignificant deaths do not matter that even great numbers do not matter. The meaning is the same in each case, but because that meaning is denied to the poor dead, the individual dead, the woman or child dead, the old dead; that meaning has lost in application to numbers. So is it twice the crime to kill twice the people? Clearly, outrage has its limits. Some numbers of dead are beyond conception. Some crimes are beyond conception. But they remain beyond conception because we allow so much in the way of death on small scale and large that we cannot call one more just and another more evil. We all play a part in it. In the sense that we define violence by speed, or savagery, when in fact, it is a certain intent to not help, but harm, that is violence. Violence is done by us all. We intend good to ourselves and turn away from ill effects. What are those effects? How does the meat appear on our tables? Who has to die in some foreign land for our cars to roar to life? We tolerate death. We tolerate disease. We tolerate war, abuse, misery, and poverty knowing all the time that it breeds monsters. Does it seem right to condemn every criminal in Russia or Germany or Africa when they are so carefully bred and set upon the path of disaster? As a concept, one just cannot be more just than another. If each has passed that threashold then each is just. One cannot be more evil than another, but only more determined in the pursuit of that God.

@Neshama,

Neshama wrote:

What do you think about this quote?

"Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence" ~ Robert Heinlein

_______________________

"All the changes are only in the perceivers." - Baruch Ashlag

What is logical is not always rational

@Velocity99,

Velocity99 wrote:

What is logical is not always rational

You must have one or two examples of what you have in mind. Would you share them with us?

@Neshama,

Neshama wrote:

What do you think about this quote?

"Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence" ~ Robert Heinlein

I think the statement works on less superficial levels than the obvious anecdotal philosophy.

At the ultimate end of logic we reach the supposition of 'truth'. It is entirely logical that the 'truth' is not an absolute replication of reality, so is not entirely/absolutely true. So in a way logic is an organized, coherent way of realizing a false supposition, one which is the ultimate aim of logic.

@Doobah47,

Doobah47 wrote:

I think the statement works on less superficial levels than the obvious anecdotal philosophy.

At the ultimate end of logic we reach the supposition of 'truth'. It is entirely logical that the 'truth' is not an absolute replication of reality, so is not entirely/absolutely true. So in a way logic is an organized, coherent way of realizing a false supposition, one which is the ultimate aim of logic.

Hay!

I agree, put a bit differently, not neccessarily better, logic is a system, it is acknowledge as being a pretty reliable structure for delivering truth, if the rules are properly followed, it is discomforting for it to show a false conclusion -------it shakes ones confidence in reason, at least temporarily.

@boagie,

My feeling is that, while logic regulates the form of an expression, it doesn't (yet) have a way of regulating the content. In other words, logic can ensure that an expression is formally sound, even if most people feel that the expression is downright false. For example, in a proof of the existence of God (like Anselm's), one would have to agree with each of the propositions in order to agree with the proof; and yet one could still disagree with some of the propositions--and hence disagree with the proof as a whole--while neverthess agreeing that the proof is logical.

@saiboimushi,

saiboimushi wrote:

My feeling is that, while logic regulates the form of an expression, it doesn't (yet) have a way of regulating the content. In other words, logic can ensure that an expression is formally sound, even if most people feel that the expression is downright false. For example, in a proof of the existence of God (like Anselm's), one would have to agree with each of the propositions in order to agree with the proof; and yet one could still disagree with some of the propositions--and hence disagree with the proof as a whole--while neverthess agreeing that the proof is logical.

saiboimushi, Smile

:)You speak now of fallibility, there will always be that.

@kennethamy,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neshama
What do you think about this quote?

"Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence" ~ Robert Heinlein

Quote:

Subsequently posted by kennethamy

It is false.

I infer from the above sets of quotes that you think that Heinlein's statement "Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence" is false. By what organized way did you arrive at this conclusion? Are you confident that you have not gone wrong in making this conclusion? Did you use logic?

Is my inference true? By what organized way did you arrive at this conclusion? Are you confident that you have not gone wrong in making this conclusion? Did you use logic?

@longknowledge,

longknowledge;95350 wrote:

I infer from the above sets of quotes that you think that Heinlein's statement "Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence" is false. By what organized way did you arrive at this conclusion? Are you confident that you have not gone wrong in making this conclusion? Did you use logic?

Is my inference true? By what organized way did you arrive at this conclusion? Are you confident that you have not gone wrong in making this conclusion? Did you use logic?

1. Yes
2. What I know about logic. If you have true premises, and if your argument is valid (logical) then it must follow that your conclusion is also true.
3. Yes, absolutely confident.
4. Yes, as you can see, I did.

@Neshama,

Inferences are not true or false. Not sure if that is a category error, but it's close.

@Emil,

Emil;95388 wrote:

Inferences are not true or false. Not sure if that is a category error, but it's close.

You can say an inference is correct or incorrect. And you can say, if someone says, "I infer from the fact that 10 is divisible by 2, that 10 is even", "that's true".

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;95394 wrote:

You can say an inference is correct or incorrect. And you can say, if someone says, "I infer from the fact that 10 is divisible by 2, that 10 is even", "that's true".

Yes I agree that inferences can be called correct/incorrect.

"That" refers to the conclusion I think.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;95394 wrote:

You can say an inference is correct or incorrect. And you can say, if someone says, "I infer from the fact that 10 is divisible by 2, that 10 is even", "that's true".

The best we can get out of logic are inferences that we must try to prove true by other means...

@Fido,

Fido;95982 wrote:

The best we can get out of logic are inferences that we must try to prove true by other means...

As Emil said, inferences are neither true nor false, so inferences cannot be proven true. What we can know, however, is that if we correctly infer B from A, and A is true, then B is true. A false proposition cannot be correctly inferred from a true proposition. Of course, whether A is true, is a separate question.

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