Why still no science of logic?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by Speakpigeon, Jun 19, 2019.

  1. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    If he were a smart woodchuck, he would chuck the reponsibility for chucking wood onto another woodchuck.
     
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  3. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    No. Experience, intuition, IQ don't affect our innate logical capacity. They only affects our performance. This is similar to many of the things we do. People have an innate capability to run and there are effectively formal laws that represent the way normal human beings can run. Yet, we don't all run and we don't all run in the same way because our performance is affected by other things, like our health, whether we still have our legs, whether we received injuries in the past, or indeed the conditions in which you will have to run in particular circumstances etc. So, you need to make the distinction between the innate capability and the actual performance. The innate capability is what would decide of your performance in perfect conditions of test, which never really happens but we can clearly see different levels of performance depending on conditions. Young athletes without any injury nor debilitating genetic condition will run better than most people because most people have injuries, drug problems, a medical condition, that those who don't mostly don't bother to practice regularly and see their body go out of shape. Why expect anything different for logic as for any of our other capabilities. Sight? Hearing, memory? Or are you saying that we don't have innate capabilities for seeing, hearing and remembering? Or that these capability are arbitrary and not dependent on our nature? Last time I checked, my cat can't read a book. Surely, this depends on our respective natures? So for logic.
    EB
     
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  5. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    I don't care.
    I looked for it and couldn't find it.
    I am asking the question. It's up to you to prove me wrong.
    I really don't feel I need to care what you think. I would care if you were to exhibit clear evidence that science is investigating deductive logic.
    Sorry, your question doesn't make sense. Deductive logic is a capability of the human brain and an objective performance of human beings. Isn't that enough to justify that it could be the object of scientific investigation?
    Second, deductive logic is obviously, together with other things, at the foundation of our rationality and there is a massive financial effort going into AI systems. Well, men I would definitely start with a scientific investigation of the deductive capacity of the human brain.
    Derail. Start your own thread if you're interested in that question.
    Apparently, yes, it seems I'm the only one in the whole world to have noticed. I guess at some point, somebody needs to start the ball rolling. Why not me?
    Then produce the evidence. I really don't care what you think. Your ideas are invariably uninteresting. Still, maybe you could find evidence I'm wrong? You won't, though, other people have failed to produce any.
    May be you think "thinking about it" is good evidence?
    Beside, It's clear I've thought about it a lot more than you will ever do.
    EB
     
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  7. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Hugh?
     
  8. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    So therefore nobody else has the right to say they have found something that fills the bill?
    But why should I care about that?
    Why should anyone believe you about the absence of this evidence? I for one, do not.
    Why aren't you on TV? What are you doing here?
     
  9. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    Some people provided links to what they thought was evidence and I explained why it wasn't. But you sure believe whatever you want to believe.
    Sorry, I really don't care what you believe. I would care if you provided evidence or if you could argue your point. You're not capable of either of these two things.
    If I was, you would believe me?!
    LOL.
    It's a public place. I am asking my question to make sure I am really the only one who knows the answer.
    EB
     
  10. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    This is making more sense, now. But, I don't consider logic to necessarily be an ''innate'' capability. Many people don't think logically, so going with your thread premise here, they could stand to use an actual ''model'' that could help to improve using "strict principles of validity" (definition of logic) to become better logicians.

    But, logic isn't like seeing, in my opinion. Seeing, hearing, memory - those are all involuntary functions all things considered) that don't require much effort. To become a logical thinker, requires effort, hence your ''science of logic'' could make sense.
     
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    I figured as much. Looks like you don't really want to discuss the topic; the only thing you really care about is stroking your own ego. Congratulations - you have stroked yourself.
     
  12. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    1,123
    Please note that I took the pain in my first post to define logic as a capability of our brain and a performance of human beings to distinguish the notion I was talking about from logic as a formal system.
    So you have to make the distinction, even if nobody does except me, between our innate logical sense and whatever formal logic we sometimes try. I agree that most people suck at formal logic. No wonder. Most people suck at anything formal. That we have an innate sense of logic, though, is evidenced by our behaviour. In particular, by the fact that people understand each other beyond what is actually said. I already explained that earlier in this thread:
    This proves that people have the ability to infer what the other guy means. This is what I call a logical capability. Most of it is unconscious. The brain decides what is the inference and lets us know the result. We don't have to do any formal logic at all. We don't have to even think about it. We just understand.
    Enthymemes are quite frequent in our conversations but they are barely noticed because we don't normally watch ourselves speaking. And they are just one example. If you see a cat, it's always one particular cat. Yet, you will immediately infer that this particular specimen will have all the characteristics of cats. Cats mew. They purr, they raise their tail to ask for something, they rub against people's legs, etc. Even if you actually don't know that the particular cat you now see does all those things, because that's the first time you see this cat, you will nonetheless infer that it does, and this without even thinking about it. You just think it does without realising that your brain inferred this belief for you. And we do this for just about everything we look at. Without this deductive capability, the world around us would make no sense. We would see a cat as if we had never seen a cat before. We wouldn't understand anything at all.
    So, yes, we suck at formal logic but our brain is really very, very good at making inferences and it is a crucial capability. Hence, a scientific investigation may well produce some real benefits.
    EB
     
    wegs likes this.
  13. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Well, this explanation makes sense, and I think you could be onto something.

    Explained in further detail as you have here, it would seem that there could very well be a ''science of logic.''

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  14. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Which mistake was that? I expect that I've made a number of mistakes, but nevertheless, I think that I've correctly argued that your whole thread is based on a false premise.

    What would your "science of logic" look like? What do you imagine these scientists of logic (logicologists?) would spend their time doing? How do you propose that they go about their investigations?

    Well, human reasoning is an empirical fact and the cognitive psychologists and informal logicians already address that. You got excited by the inclusion of what somebody called "cogent arguments", but it's simply an empirical fact that much/most human reasoning involves induction, abduction, informal estimation of probabilities and likelihoods, and things like that.

    Again, how would one of your logicologists proceed? What kind of scientific investigations would he conduct? (Laboratory experiment might not be all that effective.) Since you're the one proposing this, since you dismiss everything anyone else says as stupid and irrelevant to whatever it is that you have in mind, you must have some idea what this vision of yours is. So... what is it?

    What are you proposing? In enough detail to suggest a research program.

    And aren't the logicians already doing precisely that? Why are the formal models they produce "toylike"? What is toylike about them? What additional qualities would they have to have to be more satisfactory in your eyes?

    The history of logic in the second half of the twentieth century has been to make logic more congruent with natural language reasoning. That's why we saw various sorts of modal logic appear, relevance logic and whatnot. All with their formal deductive models.

    To replicate human intelligence, we would have to accept and admit the "cogent arguments". Real life human intelligence employs all kinds of things like inductive and probabilistic inference, various heuristic strategies, reasoning by analogy and inference to the best explanation.
     
    Beer w/Straw likes this.
  15. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    I experiment with chemical imbalance regularly.

    *hic*

    And I hypothesize that it affects my logic.
     
  16. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks for that response, it's a relief!
    Still, are you sure the details were at all necessary? We all have access to the same basic information. We all have the same kind of brain. The understanding that human beings have a deductive logic capability dates back at least to Aristotle. All the major thinkers in the intervening time have pondered the question, with various perspectives, but they all have spent time on it and written on it. Mathematicians themselves in the 19th started out thinking in the terms I have outlined. The title Boole chose for his book starts with the words "The Laws of Thought". Frege also thought in terms of logic as a performance of human beings. He meant to develop a method of logic adapted for mathematics but one that would be a formalisation of the mathematicians' logical thought, and, presumably, mathematicians have the same basic logical capability as any other human being in good health. So, no, I don't buy that I needed to provide any detail. All the details I provided are public domain and have been available for a long time now.
    It's good you agree that there could be a science of logic but my point wasn't to convince anyone of that. I asked my question thinking it was plain obvious.
    So, you still haven't answered my question: Why still no science of logic?
    Given what I just said on the availability of the "details", why is it nobody is doing it?
    EB
     
  17. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, sorry, I guess it was someone else who argued that logic was fundamental to science and therefore science could not study logic. Can't remember who that was and don't have the time to look for it.
    EB
     
  18. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    I already replied to that.
    Derail.
    I'm asking a question. I never pretended to have "a research program" in mind.
    Mathematicians are not empirical scientists (you yourself argued recently mathematics is not even a science). I am asking for a science of logic. I don't care what mathematicians believe or not about logic. They are incompetent, clueless, they don't have the proper mindset, they don't have the methodology. I already explained all this. Why do I have to repeat myself? Can't you read the stuff?
    Derail. I'm talking about deductive logic, not about "human intelligence".
    And people working on human intelligence are not doing the proper thing. They defer to the mathematicians for any formal logic they may need, instead of doing a proper scientific investigation of it. That's just sloppy work. From the little I read, these guys only have a perfunctory notion of what logic is. Basically, they are looking for formal logic capabilities in subjects. That's idiotic. Any formal logic performance we can demonstrate comes from our logical capability. However, you can't use, as these guys do, that the absence of formal logic capabilities demonstrate the absence of any logical capability. Formal logic is a byproduct of logic. We have formal logic because we have logic to begin with. Without Aristotle, likely we wouldn't have noticed we have formal logic capabilities (as demonstrated by the uniqueness of Aristotle discovery in the world).
    EB
     
  19. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    You want an inertial reference frame for logic, so to say?
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2019
  20. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Well, if it were that simple, this thread wouldn’t have much opposition. Lol Members here are telling you why, but you’re dismissing their answers.

    When you present an idea, you have to be able to step back and realize that not everyone will agree. Einstein had many naysayers but eventually his ideas were accepted. So, what might seem obvious to you, might not be to others. That’s why peer reviews and such are important.
     
  21. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    So, still no science of logic because... naysayers?!
    And I don't mind "opposition" when it is substantive.
    However, most posts on this thread show posters don't have anything of substance to say about the subject except perhaps that they don't understand my question to begin with, which given the simplicity of it, just beggars belief.
    I replied to all of the other posts. I only "dismissed" derails, which are frequent. For the rest, I explained why what was presented as evidence that there is already a science of logic was in fact evidence that there isn't. And I fine if we disagree on that.
    I would nonetheless single out the small crowd of posters here who don't seem to have anything else to do in life than to post irrelevant and usually hostile comments. These people are on all forums. They never have anything to contribute except their spitefulness and the vacuity of their semantics.
    I expected not only that not everyone would agree but that most would disagree. I'm used to it and it's just a fact of life.
    So, OK, we don't know why there is no science of logic 2,500 years after Aristotle revealed to mankind the existence of logic. Nothing unsurprising, you seem to believe. Well, I fine if we disagree on that.
    EB
     
  22. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Aw, how can you say that, though? There are quite a few intelligent people on this forum. Maybe they just disagree.

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    lol I hear you. But, you have explained your original post much better as the thread went on. It was a little hazy in the beginning, but definitely see where you're coming from, now. The existence of logic (being able to define it) and the ''science of logic,'' are two different things, though, don't you think? Not trying to say that Aristotle didn't make in roads, but...
     
  23. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    Yet you go on to say this:

    Empiricism is the idea that our knowledge is somehow based upon or justified by experience. And 'experience' is typically interpreted to mean the traditional five senses.

    So what kind of "empirical" investigations do you propose that your logicologists, your "empirical scientists" of deductive logic, conduct? Can deductive logic be directly observed with the senses? Can laboratory experiments be conducted on it?

    Except that intelligent human (or animal) behavior can be observed. (That's the province of the psychologists.) Problem-solving strategies can be abstracted from the observed physical and (in the case of the humans) verbal behavior. Then those strategies can sometimes be modeled in logical systems or in computer algorithms.

    Which suggests that, contrary to your denial up above, you do have an idea in mind of what you consider the "proper thing" for them to be doing would be.

    So once again, in your view, what is a "proper scientific investigation of it"? What would a logicologist need to do in order to not be "sloppy" and to be proceeding "properly"? What kind of investigations do you imagine them conducting? If it's supposed to be empirical, the logicologists would presumably be observing something with their senses, but what?

    (You've already dismissed cognitive science observing animal and human problem solving behavior.)
     
    Last edited: Jul 13, 2019

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