Why still no science of logic?

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

  1. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Logic is self-supporting. What do you want to prove? That a thing is a thing and not another thing?
     
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    IMO, logic is a universal function of information processing. It is an abstract universal potential and functions completely objectively, Mathematics is founded on Logic .

    However, I do agree that Logic can also be a functional aspect of the human brain, but would still be based on the laws of logic.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_logic
    (italics mine)
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2019
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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    I think this topic is most likely a dead end waste of time, but I'll give it one more try. The reason I think it's a dead end is that Speakpigeon has been unable to explain his original post. Instead, he is merely repeating it. It helps if you know in advance what you want to talk about before starting a thread.

    You mean these people are reasoning along lines that go something like this:
    1. All politicians are liars.
    2. Obama is a politician.
    3. Therefore Obama is a liar.

    The only empirical fact that is immediately in play is the Obama is a politician. The assumption is that premise 1 is true, for whatever reason. Why that premise is accepted as true is what is not being said.

    But there's no unusual logic going on here. The argument, as set out, follows the usual syllogistic construction, and it is assumed that the conclusion cannot be false if the premises are true. No new science of logic is needed to explain what is happening here.

    Argument by feigned incredulity doesn't really work, Speakpigeon. Try harder.

    Or any other empirical fact. Yes, you got it. That's exactly what I meant.

    Saying "manifest capability and objective performance" is just fancy words for saying that human beings are capable of constructing and interpreting logical arguments. I have nowhere disagreed with that thesis.

    In other words, you want firstly to look at how humans reason in practice. That's a valid project, and one in which a lot of science is already being done. Secondly, you talk about trying to develop a formal model of logic - i.e. a meta-description of logic itself. Again, not necessarily a bad thing to try. Let me know how you go with that. As for "accurate and operational", I don't know what you mean by those terms in this context.

    To be fair to you, you haven't explained what models you're thinking of, or what flaws you perceive in them. Maybe you'll do that at some future point in the thread.

    Apart from the slur against mathematicians, I have agreed with you on that from the start.

    No. It works fine because mathematics is a formal system, and logic is a formal system. Mathematics and logic go very nicely together. No empiricism is involved.

    It's your thread. The onus is on you to explain yourself clearly enough so that even a dummy like me can understand what you're getting at. So far, you're not doing a very good job. Not my fault.
     
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  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Pinocchio says, "My nose will grow now." What happens? Validate scientifically.
     
  8. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    If 'science' means something like 'body of knowledge', or 'organized study of something', then the subject of logic itself would seem to be what you are seeking. All the logicians out there and their work product embody it: formal logic, philosophical logic and so on.

    That sounds a lot like cognitive psychology. The study of how reasoning and cognition actually take place in various sorts of situations, and then trying to formalize what works into algorithms (or perhaps pragmatic 'rules-of'thumb', heuristic problem-solving strategies) that could perhaps be taught to people or that AIs could emulate.

    I'm not convinced that logic is neglected.

    Do you have some vision of what logic is (or should be) that isn't being addressed by what logicians or cognitive psychologists are doing? If so, you need to better describe what it is that you are seeking.
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2019
  9. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    Perhaps in much the same way that the 'laws of physics' are.

    Is the physical world somehow prior to logic, math and physics, with the latter simply highly abstract descriptions of how we perceive that world to operate?

    Or... do logic, math and physical law have some kind of transcendant reality of their own as Platonic-style forms? Would logical or mathematical relationships still hold true even in the absence of any physical world, just abstractly? Can 'something-from-nothing' theorists like Krauss still appeal to the principles of theoretical physics to explain the origin of all of physical reality?

    Do mathematics, logic and physical law merely describe how this physical universe that we perceive around us seems to us to behave (which might suggest that the universe is always free to violate logic, math or physics if those are just our descriptions of and abstractions from what we have seen).

    Or... are they stronger than that, normative somehow, constraining the scope of possibility in in this and conceivably in all possible universes?

    Physicists seem to me to unthinkingly vacillate between those two sorts of views, depending on their mood.

    I certainly don't know the answer. I don't think that anyone knows what logic, math and physical law are and precisely how each one is related to physical reality.
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2019
  10. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    IMO, it is not that complicated.
    There can be only one way things work in accordance with mathematical physical permissions and restrictions. The inherent potentials (relative values) of physical things.

    Physical values interacting through mathematical functions, based on the abstract logic of (specific) Cause and (specific) Effect.

    And we know basically how that works. That's why we were able to codify physics, mathematics and logic as separate (but connected) fields of universal potentials.

    https://byjus.com/physics/physics-symbols/
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_operators_and_symbols_in_Unicode
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_logic_symbols
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2019
  11. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    "Mathematical physical permissions and restrictions"?

    Your version is certainly one of the metaphysical options. (Perhaps the most popular one throughout the history of philosophy.) But how do you know that it's the correct one?

    There seems to me to be a leap of faith there.
     
  12. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Let's see, does 0=1?
     
  13. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    A prescribed system of reasoning or a guidebook for managed thinking is not something non-artificial found underneath a rock. Certainly science does study human creations (not just non-artificial affairs), including science studying itself (metascience). But don't expect the natural world to issue a god-like final decree of "that's the way _X_ is supposed to be" anymore than it issues such about the proper way to have sex.

    So what's wrong with metalogic? Not enough statisticians are flitting about in that yet, in contrast to metascience?

    In a sense, logic is just another category of invented games with rules (a governing "form" for carrying out its operation). Today's versions can have abstract placeholders that more specific or concrete items can be plugged into to analyze what they already entail/contain or to explore what broader understandings/conclusions can be inferred from them (which may be potentially "new", but not necessarily tell you anything about the world).

    If Nature did endorse anything about the invented "game" (i.e., you're entertaining the idea that there's an objective standard in it for a science to seize upon), then it might be consistency, at best. A strict maintenance of the preset identities of things and principles throughout the process to avoid contradictions, bait and switch, faulty judgements, etc. But even that's arguable in terms of it having been extracted from the empirical world -- the latter surely seemed more contingent and mutable to ancient civilizations than it does now, despite any thinkers of its day believing there were immutable universals behind the phenomenal jungle of events.
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2019
  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    I agree and IMO that is sufficient under the logical function of "necessity and sufficiency".

    Consistency is a neccessary aspect of "order"

    That's why we have identified and separated certain "immutable" universals from certain "relative" universals. Seems to be a perfect fundamental metaphysical template for a dynamical physical universe.
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2019
  15. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    "Empirical" means "derived from experiment and observation. In that sense, the laws of physics are certainly empirical. As for the rules of logic, I can see how you could make an argument that those rules are empirical too, to a large extent, because they seem to reflect how things operate in the observed world. For example, it is an observed regularity of nature that if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates almost invariably turns out to be mortal, and stuff like that.

    On the other hand, all scientific "laws" and "rules" are human constructs. They are descriptive of regularities that we observe in nature. They are no proscriptive. The "science" of how the rules and laws are formulated is a science of human beings, because it is the human beings who compose and write down the laws.

    I guess what I'm saying is that the map is not the territory when it comes to empiricism.

    I think it would be fair to say that's my opinion.

    That's a difficult one. Being the empiricist that I am, I'm philosophically ambivalent about the idea of any kind of transcendent reality. We might have some thoughts about what an ideal circle would look like, for example, but I don't think I'm with Plato in saying that ideal circles exist out there in a transcendent realm in the absence of human beings to think about them.

    On the other hand, there is the "problem" of the often unexpected beauty and power of mathematics. Mathematicians do research into fields of mathematics and in the process discover lots of unexpected results. There is also the mystery of why mathematics applies so usefully and insightfully to the empirical world.

    In most of science, there is a constant interplay between theory and experiment/observation. Sometimes the theory leads the experiments; at other times it goes the other way.

    If there were no thinkers to conisder logical or mathematical relationships, would there be any point to their holding true?

    As for Krauss, I'm not sure that he was trying to explain the origin of all of physical reality, necessarily. He was merely (!) trying to explain our universe. Presumably if there is some kind of multiverse full of island universes then that multiverse will follow its own set of laws of some kind. Whether there's any way for us to work out anything about that multiverse - if it exists - is a current topic of research and speculation.

    That is more or less my view, apart from the part about freedom to violate logic, maths and physics at any time. If the laws of physics permit violations, then I'd say there's something wrong with the laws: they aren't describing the universe as well as they should. The solution is to work on improving and refining the laws until there are no "violations".

    What I would say to that is that there's no way to know (yet). There's insufficient evidence available regarding all possible universes.

    Possibly it depends on how you frame the question.

    I'm not saying that all physicists share my views. There is a range of opinions among physicists. Individuals don't vacillate that much, though, in my experience.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    What begins, rests, and ends, on the word "if", is not necessarily empirical.
    In many languages - including English until a few years ago - there is a separate tense for even speaking about such things. The subjunctive, in English.
    A few years ago one could write: "If that were the case - - - ", and one could write "If that was the case - - - - ", and reliably mean two different things.

    Wondering if the loss of the subjunctive in English is not, somehow, connected with the increasingly common loss of distinction between physical reality and its various descriptions or analytical modelings.

    The common logics, being rules of argument and inference, take leave of physical reality in some respects. The physical world is not entirely argument, and only some of its constituents draw inferences.
    Logics usually, commonly, also differ from physical reality in their enforced structural incorporation of definite and mutually exclusive categorizations - yes/no, true/false, is/isn't, etc - where physical reality presents probabilities and approximations and gradations of identity or role. This can lead beyond inadequacies to direct conflicts, direct oppositions of logical and physical inference.

    It simply isn't so, for example, in physical reality, that many examples of nonred things being nonMartian support the inference that all Martian things are red. The opposite inference, the negation, has at least as much if not more claim to physical "truth" or "validity": in physical reality the harder it is to be a red thing, the less common red things are in general, the less likely it is that all Martian things are red. (The split begins in the logical division of things into Martian/nonMartian - in the physical world nonMartin things are somewhat, in some ways, partially, depending on what questions are asked, in the same category as Martian things for the purpose of inference about "things".)

    The human mind emerged from three billion years of evolution in the empirical world - the greater surprise would be finding it poorly aligned or adjusted, its highest powers so hard won and expensively maintained a disconnected and useless menage of vain meanderings.
     
  17. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Try placing a square peg in a round hole. Can't do it. It is mathematically forbidden. OTOH placing a round peg in a square hole is mathematically permitted. It is one of the children's toys that teaches the recognition of physical (measurable) limitations and permissions which are translatable into mathematical language.
    Because nature can only perform correctly (it has no will to do otherwise) and our geometrics are derived from observation of natural processing of values and functions.

    How do we know that the identified phenomena we have named 'constants" are correct? Is E = mc^2 correct?
    Geometrics is a metaphysical discipline.
    When I speak of mathematics I am talking about the natural logical laws of processing values which was the template for our mathematical symbolisms and calculus to begin with. If they work accurately why would we need to assume the natural mathematical principles are incorrect? We have falsified most all of our mathematics, and the few remaining mathematical mysteries are constantly being analyzed and refined, often after the theoretical models prove the maths involved correct or false. Cosmologists speak of "discovering" mathematics which were already present before we were aware of their existence.

    Light bends (follows a curved path) in a gravitational field. Mathematically it should do that but it took some twenty years to prove it when cosmic conditions allowed for measurements to be taken.

    (A horse can only pull a cart if it is in front of the cart. Can't place the cart before the horse.)

    Take away human mathematics, nature will still function in the mathematical fashion it has always operated and if we were to rebuild a new model of the mathematical processes, we'd end up with exactly the same mathematics as we have today. It is one of the few areas in the science of natural phenomena which we have refined to a very high degree of understanding and functionality on earth, and now for purposes of space travel.

    We have derived our constants from these fundamental metaphysical laws of behavior.

    One may call natural interactive phenomena as physical interaction but it is the rules governing these interactions which are codifiable as mathematical values and functions.
     
  18. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    Mathematicians are not empirical scientists. If did a thread on that here and elsewhere and most people agreed it's not an empirical science. And this is definitely the general view. And mathematicians themselves have insisted for at least the last 200 years that they should not think of mathematics as being true or false of the physical world.
    EB
     
  19. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    As if you knew shit about what ideas I have.
    I never said logic was a physical thing. Is our mind a physical thing? Who knows?
    The fact is that we can make empirical observations about our logical performances and capacity. Aristotle certainly didn't pick up his syllogistic out of thin air. Mathematicians themselves make half-assed attempts at it. So, once again you display your total ignorance of the topic and yet insist on commenting on it. You should know to abstain or at least refrain from your vacuous assertions.
    EB
     
  20. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    Just read the bloody topic:
    By science of logic, I mean a scientific investigation of logic as objective performance and manifest capability of human beings, investigation that would try to develop a formal model of logic which would be accurate and operational.
    What is it you don't understand in there?!
    EB
     
  21. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    Again you didn't understand what I said.
    Read again my post and perhaps try to understand what I say. The point isn't about whether Obama being a politician is an empirical fact or not.
    So, I'll repeat and highlight the bit you didn't understand too good:
    Example... Suppose some folks are talking about Obama and after a while one of them say, "Well, anyway, politicians are all liars". And that's it. And it is an empirical fact that the people present, even idiots, will understand the subtext of that, without even having to think about it. They will understand something that has not been said. Without even realising they are making a syllogistic inference from partial premises, i.e. an enthymeme.
    And that's an objective fact.
    So, yes, logic is an empirical fact. But I suddenly realise you didn't even understand what you commented on
    .

    But I suddenly realise you didn't even understand what you commented on.
    Yeah, indeed. I guess I could explain again and again without any improvement. Try to focus, man!
    EB
     
  22. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Then your thread is simply attempting to troll.
     
  23. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    Mathematical logic is that. Logic is a performance of human being and a capacity of the human brain.
    The point isn't about whether logic itself is somehow "extracted" from the empirical world. There's no doubt that it is. Logic is a capacity of the human brain and the human brain surely is entirely a natural thing.
    The point is whether there is currently any empirical science of deductive logic. The cognitive sciences for now at least have nothing to say on any formal model of deductive logic. There have been studies on the deductive performance of human subjects, but apparently no attempt yet at producing a formal model. From what I've seen on that, the cognitive sciences defer to mathematical logic for any formal logic they might need in relation to their research.
    EB
     

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