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 Post subject: Rationality
PostPosted: Sat Jun 26, 2004 12:17 am 
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I just wanted to start this debate up now, I'll get a bit more deeply involved in it at a later date; basically, the question I'm askign here is, "Does logic have limits, and if so, what are they?" Obviously this question is rather vague to the point of perhaps being meaningless - let me try to elaborate.

1. What exactly is logic/rationality? What is the origin or root of it? Does it ultimately exist as an aspect of the way the universe works, or is it simply a function of the human mind?

2. What is the relationship between what is logical and what is true? Is something which cannot be directly observed "true" (or false) because it is logical (or illogical), or is truth a value which exists independently of logicality?

3. To what spheres of experience should logic be applied? Is it even possible to apply logic to the area of ethics/morality, and if so, in what sense? Should we strive to live our lives rationally all the time, and if not, what situations warrant abandonment of our rationality? (Or, alternatively, what situations require us to use our rationality?)

4.What is the relationship between logic, intuition, instinct, and emotion?

It may seem ludicrous to attempt to try to use reason to debate about rationality itself, but upon further examination, such debate is perfectly - well, reasonable. We're simply working within the bounds of a particular system in order to determine that same system's features, limits, etc.

Anyway, as I said, I'll probably be posting my thoughts on all of this later. For now, what do you all think?


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PostPosted: Sun Jun 27, 2004 3:26 am 
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What exactly is logic/rationality? What is the origin or root of it?


Logic/rationality is the ability to see into the future.

Let me explain: When I walk in the door to my apartment, and flip the lightswitch to illuminate the room. Why do I know this will work? What sort of insane world do we live in where I can do something as innane as to reposition a piece of plastic and expect, as if by magic, the world to light up? Well, I know that flipping the switch will turn on a light because it has in the past, so I assume it will again. I know the basic principles involved in electronics, where completing a circuit will allow electrons to move along a wire and heat up a small bit of metal inside of a glass bulb, causing it to glow brightly, but mostly, it's because it did it before.

This is the guiding principle of logic. No matter what you're arguing, it mostly comes down to: "Well, it's done it before..." when you apply 'logic.'

For example: Abortion is bad because it kills the fetus! (well, how do you know it's gonna kill the fetus? ... because it's done it before?)

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What is the relationship between logic, intuition, instinct, and emotion?


Logic is the application of previous experiences to predict the future of a certain circumstance.

Intuition, in my opinion, is simply logic done on the subconcius level. If you think "I should dodge left when he shoots" when you havn't given it any thought, it's called intuition. If you think "You know, he's holding the gun in his right hand, so the recoil will likely make his torso swing so that the gun is pointed a bit farther right than he expects, as well as causing the gun to point a bit higher. Since he's probably aiming for the center of my torso, that means that, likely, the path of the bullet will be closer to my right shoulder than anything else, so if I dodge left right as he's about to shoot, he should miss me entirely!" Then it's called logic.
The difference is you know why the hell you decided to dodge left.

Instinct is merely the racial memories of cause/effect guiding your actions. For millions of years "boobs = women, women = sex, sex = good, offspring = perpetuation of the species!," so you think "heh, b00bs are sexy!." Why? Because it allows you to have sex with the otherwise misshapen human, which is both fun and perpetuates the species (and your bloodline. Logic, though applied at an even more base level than "intuition."

Emotion is Instinct at an even baser level.

Emotion: RAWR! I'm angry!
Instinct: He's threatening my life! That's a bad thing, get angry, it helps!
Intuition: Crap! He's got a gun! That's bad!
Logic: Well, he's said he's gonna kill me, and he's waving a gun around, so he's probably gonna shoot me and thus end my existence.

All extensions of the same thing, applied at one level of thought or another.

===========

So, in my opinion, you can't do anything without applying logic and rationality to the situation, even if you think you arn't. Even getting angry has it's rational reasons, and it's logical to do so, at least, from your perceptions. Some people use their rationality and logic on a more concious level than others, some at a more sub=concious level, but everyone uses it all the time.

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 27, 2004 11:01 pm 
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Okay... In reverse order.

4. A great deal of the human brain is devoted to detecting and locking in on patterns.

Digital artists know that a light blur can help eliminate compression artifacts or other sharp repeating features. Even though the blur actually adds noise to the image, it breaks up the aliasing pattern and makes the image 'look better'.

For the same reason, a repeating click in on CD is much more annoying than FM radio static.

I'd think of this as a form of intuition rather than logic. You <i>just know</i> what should come next. How much of this psycho-sensory stuff applies to more abstract concepts is debatable, but most of the time we have some expectation of what should happen next. That's what I'd call intuition.

Intuition often precedes logic (by which I mean if-then predicate logic). We intuitively know something about a pattern of behavior, and we attempt to find a rule that explains it. If our starting assumptions are correct and complete, then logic will lead us to a correct rule. Informed intuition is generally faster and can be applied in the face of incomplete data. However, intuition may not always be correct.


3. [Skipped]


2. Truth is independent of provability or observation. Incidentally, I think that truth and falsehood alone are not a very complete set for describing the universe. Soft or probabilistic decisions are a much more powerful framework for description.


1. Logic comes in part from causality. We say "If this happens, then that must happen as a result". It's easy to imagine the theorems and corollaries of a logical proof springing into existence as implications of the initial postulates take effect and spawn implications of their own.

A logical statement is part of an abstract framework used to explain a part of the universe. There are often other paths of logic to reach the same explanation, or multiple possible explanations that fit the observation and available facts, so it might be said that logic exists only in the mind of the logician. However, the truths drawn from the logic are applicable universally and so exist independently as intangible parts of the universe.

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 27, 2004 11:27 pm 
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Thinman-

4. How is that 'intuition'? If thats 'intuition' then the entire basis of scientific/logical thought is completely intuition, at its base. Logical if-than statements arise from patterns that we have become confident will repeat given the same circumstances. IE, I drop heavy ball x, it falls to the ground. Before I know about gravity, this is just something random that happens - but it happens so often that I recognize the pattern and accept that it will happen.

Rather than this being seperate from logic I think it is the basis from which all logical thought springs from.

2. This doesn't make too much sense, if taken literally. In that case, anyone can claim anything, with that same defense. I think you shoudl either elaborate or reveal yourself as a creationist.

1. See 4.

-MiB


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PostPosted: Mon Jun 28, 2004 12:40 am 
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Okay, perhaps I should have qualified this a bit more.

4. Intuition is an informed guess. In my thought processes, I find myself intuiting an answer first and then backtracking to find the logic to support or explode that answer. My intuition is the result of patterns of behavior I have learned and knowledge I've incorporated. There's no formalized process to intuition, I just look at a problem and do what comes naturally. On the other hand, logic requires that each component of the solution be supported by evidence or a prior, similarly supported, statement. (or an assumptive postulate)


2. Truth is ... er ... provably distinct from provability. At a simplistic level there's the impossibility of proving a negative (except by exhaustion) and at a higher level there's our friend Godel and his theorems about the completeness of logical systems.

So yes. Anyone can claim that their invisible, intangible, purple-monkey-dishwash god is right there in the room with them and there is nothing you can do to prove or disprove the existence of something that produces no physical effects. Of course you are free to claim the opposite, and since ONE of you must be right, then one of you has the true answer (which cannot be proved).


1. Here's another example, since I'm not sure what I'm supposed to refer to in 4.

There are literally hundreds of unique ways to prove the Pythagorean theorem (a^2 + b^2 = c^2). Define 'logic' as the ordered set of statements and consequences we must move through in order to follow one of these proofs. Now, whether I hold one or all of these statements in my mind makes no difference to the universe. Right triangles will always behave in the manner described by the Pythagoreans.

So the logic is essentially an algorithmic program that our mind follows. The conclusions we draw from logic describe the behavior of real objects; numbers, triangles, free bodies in space. These objects will continue to obey the laws of nature regardless of how we choose to explain them.

That is what I meant by differentiating logic and the truths drawn from it. A true conclusion is always true under the conditions of its proof. The proof of that conclusion is only an method of thought that enforces certain standards of evidence.

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PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2004 8:02 pm 
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Before I start explaining my ideas concerning logic, let me clarify something. I adressed this in my first post, but I might as well elaborate upon it, because often this is the biggest problem many people have with my ideas. Particularly in debates with objectivists, (<3 @ Kuh, TGS, MiB, et al.), I am often accused of trying to use logic to "disprove logic". This is absurd. I doubt there's anyone out there who believes that logic is totally useless. Most philosophers who are accused of being "against" logic simply believe that logic and rationality have limits - that they are tools, and like any other tool, they have things they're suited for and things they're not suited for. Reason alone cannot be used to lift a rock, for example. So it's rather obvious reason has limits of some kind. The question is what exactly these limits are. The difference between Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche isn't that one "likes" rationality and the other "doesn't". Rather, it's that one believes that logic and rationality can work by itself, and can be applied to almost every facet of one's life, and the other believes that it's simply impossible for logic to do this without the support of other things. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

What is logic? Logic is simply the way of relating ideas together to produce new ideas which are useful. Depending upon the context, the usefulness can be expressed in terms of (among other things) correspondence to reality, prediction of future outcome, or discovery of the best method to achieve a desired outcome.

Logic relies upon assumptions. There's no getting around this. Trying to use logic without having assumptions to operate upon is like trying to build a building without any material. The initial assumptions that logic uses cannot be logically proven, because a logical proof of these assumptions must either be based upon those same assumptions, or based upon other assumptions, in which case those assumptions must be proven. Thus, any attempt to ground the assumptions themselves in logic must involve either circular reasoning or infinite regression. Logical assumptions are "alogical", i.e. outside the provability of logic (as opposed to being "illogical", in which case they would be directly contradictory to the what logic would prove).

What this means is that if logic operates upon two different sets of assumptions, it can achieve two different, and perhaps even contradictory, results, and both results would be equally "logical".

In the context of descriptive judgments (i.e. judgments concerning what things exist and how those things exist), our logical assumptions are basically taken from our intuitions. True, we have other assumptions. For example, in elementary-school science we were all taught about atoms; however, at the time we had to basically accept the existence of atoms without really understanding (except in a very vague way) why it makes sense to believe this. However, in these cases we can find out why it makes sense to believe in the existence of atoms. So, in the case of the individual, they're assumptions, but in the case of the entire logical system by which society in general (and the institution of science in particular) operates, they are not. The only assumptions on this scale are, as I've said, human intuitions.

So what are these intuitions? It would be very hard to really catalogue and adequately describe all of them, and even if one could, they would probably seem to be tautologies. For example, one of our intuitions is that we can trust our senses. Not trusting our senses would not be illogical, as some people might believe. There are two reasons one would have for believing distrust of the senses to be illogical: 1) As a direct contradiction to one of our fundamental assumptions, it would seem "wrong". 2) Assuming distrust of the senses would lead to a logical system with conclusions drastically different than the conclusions of the system that is based upon our assumptions.

Any attempt to prove that trusting the senses is more "logical" than not trusting the senses would either a) assume trust of the senses in the proof(*1), or b) Involve deeper assumptions whose denial would cause the exact same problem. I doubt option b is even possible, as I believe that trust of the senses is one of the fundamental assumptions. However, neither case would really solve the problem.

As for applying logic to ethics, things get a bit dicier. Ethics is based upon prescription (what one should do) rather than description (what is). However, there is no way to derive prescription from description, and therefore in the case of ethics our assumptions are composed of not only the intuitions but also the desires. One desire cannot be more logical than another; however, one method of achieving a particular set of desires can certainly be more logical than another. (For a more in-depth explanation of this please consult this thread.)

How do logical descriptions and predictions relate to reality? We cannot know. The problem is, one of our inuitions/assumptions is that our logical desription of the universe is directly correspondent to the state of the universe itself. In fact, the division between objective and subjective reality itself is an intuition/assumption. Any attempt to "logically"(*2) determine whether logic is "objectively" embedded in the universe would itself involve the assumption that this is the case. So the only reason we would have for believing that the universe operates via logical laws is that one of our fundamental assumptions is that it does. Believing otherwise would not necessarily be illogical, if said belief was part of a logical system that did not involve the aforementioned assumption.

(*1) People who argue that not trusting the senses leads to trouble are missing the fact that such "trouble" is only trouble if we're already under the assumption that the senses are accurate. Trusting that the picture of reality presented us by the senses is "correct" is only more practical than not doing so if we base our judgments of practicality on the results of actions which we are observing through our senses.

(*2) "Logically" here meaning using the commonly-accepted logical system - i.e. the one which uses out intuitions as its assumptions.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 02, 2004 11:38 pm 
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...and OMG Icy killed another thread.

Dammit, this would never happen if Yevaud and WI were still here.

*wanders off, mubling something about "uppity young'uns" and "back in my day"*


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2004 8:07 am 
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Yes, but thats only because WI and Yevaud are not incredibly boring.

-MiB

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