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Is Logic Logical?
In a recent post, a reader named Gnomely accused B.F. Skinner’s logic around Behaviorism to be a logical fallacy, reductio ad absurdum, to be precise.
The topic of logical fallacies is an interesting one. In our efforts to be rational, we tend to try to dissect one another’s arguments and determine the validity of them. To do that, we resort to logic, which is a system of mental processes designed to evaluate arguments. When something violates the rules of logic, we say that it is a logical fallacy and classify it according to the characteristics of traditional fallacies.
But the thing which we do not often consider is the traditional nature of logical thinking. What do I mean by that? I mean that the methodology which we call “logic” is a tool set which has been developed over time within specific historical, social and cultural contexts. As a product of those contexts, it very likely contains implicit values peculiar to those contexts but which may be invisible to us due to our over-familiarity with them.
When we say that something is not logical, what are we really saying? We are saying - very simply - that the thing in question does not fit within the confines of a particular social, historical and cultural tradition: the tradition called logic. It would be sort of like if you were trying to create a historically accurate diorama of caveman life and you depicted him playing an electric guitar. It wouldn’t make sense for that particular traditional context. It wouldn’t be logical. But that’s not to say it’s impossible or untrue, cause hey - who knows?
The purpose of calling something a fallacy could be looked at another way. Logic is meant to be a very adaptive system - and it is. Very useful too. I’m not arguing that it’s not. It is meant to flex to fit almost any situation. In that adaptibility though is a problem: it doesn’t recognize it’s own limits. Or rather, it does recognize them, but won’t allow you to go past it’s limits. If you are using the traditional system known as logic and you encounter a stopping point - ie, a logical fallacy - you aren’t encouraged to trudge onward and explore past the stopping point. The label of “fallacy” serves to snap you back into the system. “Oh, that’s not logical!” and therefore you go no further. But the logical status of an argument is not necessarily consonant with the truthfulness of that argument. Saying something is “logical” or not is merely saying whether or not something makes sense within a particular historical, social and cultural context - like the caveman playing an electric guitar.
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July 28th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
Oh, I am not the biggest fan of logic (for I like being stream of conscious). Life is not 100% logical -it is humans who try to make life conform to a logical will. So I agree with what you say. I am for pointing out its limitations especially when it seeks to deny the mystical or intuition, which Skinner did.
It is that behaviorism itself was a negative force operated as something that was pure reason and logic. And the logic behaviorism used reduced human beings to easily manipulated machines. Can you see the illogical fallacy in the previous statement?
And of course Skinner insulted Thoreau by calling his book Walden ll.
In the present age the mass of men who lead lives of quiet desperation are becoming more robotic. So it is a problem, because human beings are creative life forms, we have souls, we are multidimensional. We can dance, create, sing and experience many forms of beauty.
Mystics, poets, artists, folklorists, resist a life of logic having absolute dominance. So you can’t have a system like behaviorism and all it implies to repress the right side of the brain or imprision the spirit without challenging it. I hate all materialist philosophies positivism, marxism etc.
God is not logical Life is parodoxical! we have the freedom to uncondition ourselves through yoga, meditation, drugs, surrealism.
The horizental intellect is amazing but imagination is superior because it is vertical it goes deeper.
Logic is a form of fascism- but using logic to criticize logic is reasonable intuitition. I know behaviorism is bull shit. Live in the heart and you live life. The mystery of being can not be measured by science, nor personal meaning by science. And they seek to deny the inner experience.
For everything science can measure it is only the tip of an iceburg surrounded by vast, inexplicable mystery, wonder and energy. And that’s what science and behaviorism can not understand- that faith is more than a belief system, faith is direct communion with the mystical.
July 28th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
I see logic as a powerful tool. Behaviorism is also an incredibly potent tool: while belief can cause action, action can also re-write belief. And considering that mentation and emotion are essentially behaviors, they can be modified by someone who’s Clear! to their benefit–or this modification can exploit someone. C.f. Ahriman.
That said, I remain a complete anti-rationalist. You can have the logic and the fundie materialism and I’ll take the half-ounce of mushrooms and the Lightbringer any day, fool.
Rather than respond with a direct answer, I’ll resonate: Whenever someone makes an error or mistake at work, I have never heard those words uttered. Instead, I just hear, “that’s weird” or “that’s strange”. No, it’s not, it’s an error–what might this mean in relation to our belief in a “Logical,” ordered world?
July 28th, 2006 at 10:25 pm
Dude, that’s so meta.
July 29th, 2006 at 5:00 am
FYI - This is probably my favourite blog -Humbugonline - as it deals with fallacies in thinking, giving many real examples. But it’s not too scholarly; quite humorous.
Now, on to your post. You said:
If you are using the traditional system known as logic and you encounter a stopping point - ie, a logical fallacy - you aren’t encouraged to trudge onward and explore past the stopping point. The label of “fallacy” serves to snap you back into the system. “Oh, that’s not logical!” and therefore you go no further. But the logical status of an argument is not necessarily consonant with the truthfulness of that argument.
An argument is giving a reason for a belief or position. If an argument is illogical, by definition it is wrong. Why would you go further? To do so would be irrational.
An argument against rationalism (is that what you are doing?) cannot be maintained. If you argue rationally against rationalism, you end up upholding the rationalism you are trying to defeat. Ie. it is self defeating. And as I stated above, an irrational argument against rationalism is wrong by definition.
Your caveman analogy is a good example. Yes, it could be true, but there is no good reason to believe a caveman could have a guitar of any type, let alone an electric guitar. If someone truly held that belief (rather than playing the Devil’s Advocate, as you are), they would be irrational (unless they could provide genuine evidence to support their position).
To all the other commentators, you seem to misunderstand the place for “logic”, though the term “rational” is a better one, as logic in its strict sense it based on tautological a priori premise and conclusion.
To be rational is to give a reasoned an plausible explanation for a belief and/or phenomenon. To be clear, I’m not saying all beliefs, feelings etc need to be rational. If I like strawberry ice-cream more than chocolate, I do not need to forward a rational argument to justify this choice. But in any discussion in which one wants to convince another of the “truth” of one’s belief, one needs to forward a reason. And if the argument is to be convincing, the reason needs to be error free (unless one is in conversation with someone who is irrational).
There may be “mystical” things out there, but if they exist in the physical world then they are measurable and therefore in the realm of science. But this is not to say science will ever be able to adequately explain the feeling I had when my child was born (for example). One day we will be able to map the entire electro-chemical processes in the brain that are our experience of happiness, love, anger, etc. But measuring it will not make it feel less real. The actual experience of consciousness will always remain ineffable - and the closest anyone will get to capturing it is in art and music.
But if you don’t believe in rationalism and science as the only way of understanding the physical world then what are you doing using a computer - a product of rationalism and science?
An understanding of fallacies in thinking would free people from dogmatic belief and irrational behaviour, to question others, and end up making the world a better place.
Humbugonline, the blog I linked to, helped clarify much of the ideas of mine above. Highly recommended.
July 29th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Interesting discussion. Logic, as Tim states, is merely a tool. As a set of mental processes, it often gets confused with *the* mental processes, resulting in the assumption that whatever is rational must also be logical. This is tricky. You catch people confusing truth values continuously, especially in online discussions.
There is an alternative system for judging truth values, one which I believe is quite novel and extremely useful. It integrates the irrational aspect of human thought, giving the value of ‘mystery’ equal status to those of ‘true’ and ‘false’. The consequences are far reaching. You kind of have to look past the presentation and get to the meat of it, but you won’t regret it. It is an unbeatable system:
http://www.highintelligence.com/OS%20012%20basic.html
July 29th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
“If you are using the traditional system known as logic and you encounter a stopping point - ie, a logical fallacy - you aren’t encouraged to trudge onward and explore past the stopping point.”
If you haven’t read Godel Escher Bach, Tim, I think you’d really enjoy it.
A lot of math and science, at least those relating to computers, is tied up in what can and can’t be proven logically, and what that means for the value of logical systems in general. Keywords for some fun research: incompleteness, computability, halting problem, Turing-complete, and Entscheidungsproblem.
Also, Tim, regarding all this cool info about the Technocrats you’ve been unearthing…I’m curious what you think about the Fabian Society.
July 29th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
This might be missing the point entirely, but reductio ad absurdum is not widely understood to be a logical fallacy at all. It is a kind of argument in which you start with a premise, arrive at a contradiction, and conclude from this that the original premise was false. A reductio ad absurdum argument, if sound, is supposed to be a knock-down argument that proves something completely false.
As the wikipedia article states, the form of reductio ad absurdum assumes that a statement cannot be both true and false. Which raises further questions. And there are non-Aristotelean logics out there–for instance, in Buddhist philosophy–that reject binary logic. Like this article.
July 31st, 2006 at 9:24 am
the rejection of binary logic……….that`s kinda what nature does outside the science lab.
logic is great stuff for mental health in that it helps people to think critically in emotional situations. where the neurotic may add elements to situation and therefore draw a false conclusion, through logic and critical thinking some reduction of anxiety may be attained.
July 31st, 2006 at 9:46 am
google ‘paraconsistent logics’
July 31st, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Right, that’s exactly what I’m saying.
Right, ans that’s exactly what I meant about how strong and effective systems are strong and effective because they create “flex points” at their boundaries which eliminate the need for you to go outside those boundaries!
Hey hey hey! Who said I didn’t believe in something? But I think you make a fine connection inadvertently by linking “belief” and “rationalism”, because you need a belief in rationalism in order to be able to use it. And unlike what most people see as beliefs nowadays, you typically don’t sit down and decide to believe something. It does not operate at a conscious level. It underlies your thought processes and makes you very uncomfortable and defensive if you try to root it out.
Haha. Now this I don’t believe! Just knowing that I’m doing something irrational doesn’t automatically enable me to stop. It would be awesome if it did, but it would also be essentially inhuman. But this is an awesome quote, because I think you have completely and perfectly encapsulated the line of thinking I have been trying to articulate lately with posts like these two below:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/07/28/the-freedom-of-materialism/
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/07/26/the-illuminati-enlightenment/
This has been a really fruitful and valuable conversation for me. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
July 31st, 2006 at 4:36 pm
I don’t know much about them, but they keep coming up! Does anybody have some good links and intro info on them for me?
Hm, awesome. Reading that also made me think back to people like Socrates and the philosophical skeptics, perhaps even moreso. They didn’t seek to arrive at the answer. They sought to arrive at a state of peace of mind.
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005...ilosophical-vs-scientific-skepticism/
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006...osophical-skepticism-the-double-bind/
July 31st, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Logic is like math: you use the basics to arrive at certain conclusions. 2+2=4 and all that. If you somehow get 2+2=5, you have done your math wrong… EXTREMELY wrong.
Same with logic: you start off with the basics. Is the premise sound? If not, out the window, baby & bath water combined.
But only when you are equipped to go beyond the limits (in math that would be akin to going from Alegbra and Geometry to Trig and Calculus) can you even consider breaking the boundaries. Somewhere down the line you might get equations that resemble 2+2=5 because they go up against everything you’ve learned thus far.
Math has its own Theory of Limits, which is absurd on the surface: you can never get from point A to point B because you are constantly dividing the line between the points halfway, ad infinitum, until you realize that there is no end to the halve-splitting.
Only when one has mastered logic– or just doesn’t care about its rigidity — can one start exploring the limits of logic.
It’s all about ‘pataphysics, man…
July 31st, 2006 at 5:45 pm
First, what do you all mean by “binary logic?”
Second, I have believed for a while that logic is a system which, although developed under certain cultural and historical whatchamacallits, is still about as empirically valid as one can say anything is on a website devoted to the postmodern paranormal. Kinda like fire or something, or maybe the wheel.
Actually I think of it more like fire in terms of being a discovery of how s**t works, but if you want to go call it an invention, I think the point still stands. Just ’cause the wheel was invented by a caveman named Oog in the specific cultural milieu of the Ungabunga tribe doesn’t mean that wheel don’t roll as well for people of other tribes.
I know I’m not gonna get anywhere on this site talking about the dreaded “Truth with a capital T”, but what can I say? Not being mean, just putting in my logical two cents.
I am interested, however, in the idea of logic systems developed outside the Western Greek influence, such as Buddhist logic. I’ll have to look into that.
July 31st, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Oh, by the way–
Gnomely Says:
Well, Gnomely, I’m not sure if one can prove whether life is 100% logical or not. I guess you could say the human experience is not. The thing is, I don’t think I believe in intuition. I know I don’t seem to have any. I have a bunch of animal drives that compell me this way and that, but nothing that can be called intuition in the sense of not just leading me into trouble if I ignore logic and reason for its sake. As far as mysticism goes, I don’t disbelieve in that — why would I be here if I didn’t want to be a mystic? But even there, I think one is on thin ice if one uses the proverbial direct knowledge provided by mysticism to override reason.
See, it’s one thing if mysticism leads you to say just at the point where people say, “I know that character actor Hugh Laurie is my personal savior because I feel it in my soul.” This person may or may not really know anything of the sort, but it’s harmless either way. It’s bit more serious when they say, “I feel it in my soul that Hugh Laurie is also your personal savior.” Then, it’s even more serious when they say, “I know deep in my heart of hearts that Hugh Laurie wants me to drive a goddamn plane into the Wayne County Courthouse.”
“My intuition’s telling me to father a child in all fifty states.” Wait a second, that’s not my intution, that’s my schlong!
July 31st, 2006 at 6:25 pm
But that direct knowledge doesn’t flout reason. It is the ultimate fulfillment of it and of all knowledge. It is synthesis.