Thread: Life is impossible, how then are we here?

Well, I thought I made a fairly heavy-handed attempt to restrict the domain of discourse to "real-life" situations. One could reasonably respond that dreams occur as a component of our "real lives," so I should make more clear that I'm concerned with waking life and non-hypothetical realities. I'll point out here that this is an entirely reasonable restriction for my purposes given that the criterion I proposed was that we ought to choose between logics based on their utility, and it's far from clear that we get much utility from constructing an exotic logical system to attempt to capture the logic of dream narratives. Even if it is the case that there exists a deviant system that adequately captures dream logic -- which, I'll point out, is an assertion which could benefit from some substantiation -- this wouldn't change the fact that, overall, there is great practical utility to be derived from generally applying traditional logical reasoning in our lives and limited utility associated with logically capturing dream and hypothetical realities. Since I take the pragmatic view that we should use the logical system that is most beneficial for us, I will tend to rely on traditional logical reasoning. However, if I ever end up discovering or constructing a coherent dream logic, I would tend to reason according to that system when I found myself in a lucid dream. I hardly think that this pragmatic reasoning qualifies me as being locked in a rigid logical framework.

I have some small familiarity with Zen Koans, but I'm not totally clear on how their existence represents a breakdown of traditional logic. Simply speaking a paradoxical statement aloud (or reading one or meditating on one) does not constitute a hole in logic, it merely reflects the fact that, well, people can construct paradoxical statements.

Intuition is definitely interesting to ponder. In fact, it's one of my favorite things to ponder . There is certainly a wealth of convergent evidence to suggest that, while our conscious, explicit, largely frontally-mediated cognition operates according to principles which bear a crude sort of resemblance to formal logical reasoning (sequential, slow, effortful manipulation of symbolic representations), our more implicit, intuitive cognition operates according to fundamentally different principles (parallel, fast, effortless detection of statistical associations in the environment). It's fascinating stuff, but again, I don't see how this constitutes a breakdown of logic; the point is simply that a large part of how people cognitively interface with the world does not resemble formal logic. (Even the part that sort of does is pretty far off from it...) However, cognitive scientists can and do profitably describe those operations in standard logical terms. Indeed, I just did above, albeit very briefly.

Xei: Thank you for your clarification. It looks clean

Originally Posted by Xei

Malac: you're not thinking very hard about what I'm saying. You're finding contradictions where there aren't any.

If I'm asserting that the human brain does not notice the effect, but the effect does exist, then it obviously follows that the effect can only be noticed in exotic conditions; and not that I am being contradictory.

I don't want to be that guy, but on the contrary, your conclusion just doesn't follow from it's premises; and is contradicting to your first premise. If the effect does exist, but the human brain does not notice it, then, from these two premises, the [effect] doesn't necessitate to only being noticed in exotic conditions. This doesn't mean your conclusion is false, however it doesn't mean its deductively valid also. Also, if the effect can only be noticed in exotic conditions, then, regardless of how it is noticed by us, it has still been noticed ultimately by the human brain. Thus, your conclusion contradicts your first premise, and your first statement is false.

In this case the exotic conditions are the technical scientific experiments which have been performed to confirm General Relativity.

This statement is not needed, as it doesn't affirm your premises. Intending to do so would be affirming the consequent, a common fallacy. It instead supports my counterexample that your first premise is false, because it affirms the possibility of noticing the effect.

I will make my axiom more precise for you: if you have a line, and a point not on that line, there is one and only one line which passes through the point and is parallel to the line.

Now just apply what I said above and hopefully you will see what I mean. If this is self-evident, and acceptable to be used as an axiom, then you must realise that the notion of self-evident of axioms is flawed, and is indeed just another a posteriori inductive argument, because in the universe we live in, this axiom is not true.

This axiom is not true because it is self-refuting, as you suggested. However, you know this to be false, because of the understanding of an axiom that such a statement refutes itself. Even so, when you stated that the notion of [all] self-evident axioms are flawed, you were inconsistent with your view, as it required you to assume some of these notions as true to state that they were flawed. Also, this axiom wouldn't be deemed as a posteriori inductive argument, but instead as an a priori self-contradictory rule.

I understand your underlying point, and agree with it. For now, you're not expressing it very well, so I'll nit-pick until you do (Eh..I likely won't). Here is the link of a debate that is relevant to what we're talking about: Debate.org | The laws of logic are self-evident.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Well, without being able to actually perform this feet, I will assert that it is possible to create an entirely different logical set that is not a deviate or derivative of traditional logic starting from the bottom up. Because it is so highly evolved, human logic seems to many people to be part of the fundamental stuff of reality, instead of a reasoning tool that has evolved along with us and all of our other intellectual faculties. This may not be important to you because your life is grounded in the fruits of traditional logic, but for me it is of the utmost importance to realize that when I create a mental model of the world using my characteristically human logic, what I am perceiving is indeed only a model and not the Truth of reality. In fact, what this realization really makes me confront is that the reality that I am capable of being aware of is actually this model that I have a part in creating. Being aware that reality is actually something created in the mind by the evolution of the logical model is to me an extremely important development in our awareness.

The concept of abstracting. Interesting huh.