Challenging Tabula Rasa: Logic

[gib]

The major premise is a general statement.

What's the ratio of the total number of general statements imaginable to the total number of specific statements one can imagine?

Pretty low, right?

I would imagine so. You take a general statement like "All Xs are Ys," and if there are 1000 Xs, then you can make 1000 specific statements. So yes, I would agree the ratio is usually low.

The minor premise you speak of is a specific statement which, in practice, most commonly represents a belief based on observation or a belief derived from the combination of axiomatic beliefs and beliefs grounded in observations.

So what is the point you're making? That if we start with strictly axiomatic statements, we can draw more conclusions than the number of premises we start out with?

Just a general note: most people fail to understand that logic is a convergence tool, not a divergence tool. It is a tool for taking a number of propositions (premises) and converging them into one (or fewer) propositions (conclusions). Logic is a tool for answering the question: what do all these things mean when taken together? Logical conclusions are typically one sentence summaries of the premises, however many, that you start with.

You really think that's what happened to him?

Yeah.

Do you base this just on his age or do you have other reasons?

Looking at his profile, it says his last visit here was Jan 6th, 2018 (HA! I was still doing drugs at the time). That's more than a year ago. His last post was on Jan 5th: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=181309&p=2689982#p2689982

I agree with KT, he was a smart dude, but a little off the deep end IMO. I think he was a genius mathematician, which explains his affinity to rationalism, and he tried to carry that over to science and philosophy. He also talked about his artistic skills (which he never flaunted here) so he was a man of many talents. I think if it wasn't for his ego, his genius would have flourished in everything he put his math smarts into. But he did have an ego complex, and not a healthy one. It was the kind of ego that bruised unbearably at the slightest friction. One minor disagreement, or hint of skepticism over the things he'd say, and he'd rip into you with the harshest criticism of your character. And I'm a bit of a provocateur when it comes to discussions and debates, so you can guess how that never went down well in my encounters with James.

KT's remark about the rationalist types who think they can figure out the whole universe just by thinking reminded me of James because that's exactly what he was--in fact, his entire philosophical campaign was explicitly to make that point (he wasn't the type to deny it but to own up to it with pride). RM:AO (Rational Metaphysics : Affectance Ontology) was just that. RM was the method (rationalism) and AO was the product (a universe of pure affectance). He genuinely believed he had figured out all of physics just by defining affectance in a self-evidence, axiomatic, or tautological way (a way that couldn't be disputed in any case) and drawing logical inferences and conclusions from that, the first of which is that existence, if anything, must be affectance. Starting with that, he gains entrance into ontology, warranting the assertion that affectance is not just an idea but a reality, and therefore all subsequent implications from that are about reality. He was careful not to disagree with the data reported from actual scientific experiments (on the other hand, he was exceptionally apt to reject any data that didn't agree with his worldview, bordering on paranoid delusions revolving around conspiracies and lies), but he wildly fought against the mainstream in terms of the standard interpretations most scientists bring to bear on the data, arguing relentlessly that AO was the better, more rational (and absolutely necessary at the end of the day), interpretation.

Naturally, such an approach to science and philosophy will typically run you up against a lot of opposition, and I think this caused him to grow bitter over the years (I imagine an ambitious young James having high hopes of gaining notoriety for his contributions to science and philosophy but after years of constant rejection, and having to resort to posting his thoughts at such an awful venue like ILP (*shudder*), he learned to be a bit of a misanthrope). But he did leave behind (if he is indeed dead) a huge legacy if only in the form of his numerous posts here and his (Matrix-like) videos and simulations of RM:AO (this would be my advice to young aspiring intellectuals who want to make their mark on the world: it isn't always about notoriety, but leaving behind your thoughts--as long as you record your thoughts in some persistent manner, you leave something for posterity, and that is a contribution, even if you never become famous for it). As bitter as James was in the end, I don't think he was a bad guy. I think he kept a good heart at his core, and much of his writing attests to the hope he had, however faint, that man's state could improve, and that moral right is a virtue.

And if you are alive, James, there's a glimpse at your future eulogy. Criticisms welome.

[Magnus Anderson]

So what is the point you're making? That if we start with strictly axiomatic statements, we can draw more conclusions than the number of premises we start out with?

Precisely.

As you said, if we start with "All Xs are Ys" then we can easily deduce any number of "This X is Y" statements from it.

But this does not mean that within a single person the ratio of the number of axiomatic beliefs to the number of deduced beliefs cannot be anything but low. It is, of course, quite possible for one's beliefs to be mostly axiomatic / hypothetical.

What's of interest to me is the extent to which this trait varies within present day human population.

How many people are almost completely deductive (as in 95% deduced beliefs and 5% axiomatic beliefs), how many are almost completely axiomatic (as in 95% axiomatic beliefs and 5% deduced beliefs) and how many people fall somewhere in between?

My impression is that most people are predominantly deductive (>50% deduced beliefs), a lot of those have their logical ability compromised (with some of them mistakenly believing most of their beliefs are axiomatic) and very few, if any at all, are largely axiomatic.

Just a general note: most people fail to understand that logic is a convergence tool, not a divergence tool. It is a tool for taking a number of propositions (premises) and converging them into one (or fewer) propositions (conclusions).

Yes, logic is a convergence tool but I don't have the impression that most people fail to understand that.

[Meno_]

This is why I use the guerrilla logic of valuing-based arguments and you end up with a kind of geometry, mapping the terrains and substances in terms of the self-conscious premise.

In absence of being a creator-God who can scope out the whole deal in one glance, I need to anchor myself somewheres and deep in it enough that it doesn't matter what substance it is;
whatever the substance, whatever the meaning, and whatever the logic, my premises are equipped at least to compare to nature's premises, even if identity logic has a hard time reading through the camouflage. But then there is always Darwin.

Fixed Cross wrote,


"This is why I use the guerrilla logic of valuing-based arguments and you end up with a kind of geometry, mapping the terrains and substances in terms of the self-conscious premise."

That is a question which begs the prioritization of the beginning entrance with the final exit. The ground of self consciouness may be certainly be synthetic, and yet it may very well have an a-priori synthetic value.

That this difficulty in an axiomatic terrain, can not be determined either way, Darwin respective or irrespective, certainly exposes the problem with self conscious and conscious states of determinants.

When does an ape become conscious of how his actions affect his family, of traits descriptive of patterned behaviors as they somehow become indigenous at a certain general stage of development? Or, as traits go, demonstrated by the alpha of the pack leading the way, even pertaining to the earliest sign of developing logical systems ?

The negation implicit in a denial of aggressive behavior sets the stage of modular inception of conditioning effects of restraint, for instance, when the sizing up of relative strengths set the rules to ascertain whether to aggressively attack or withdraw from a foe.

The modality becomes a descriptive and representative mode to build or deconstruct the reality in context - of attacking , or withdrawing.

[gib]

As you said, if we start with "All Xs are Ys" then we can easily deduce any number of "This X is Y" statements from it.

How do you derive "This X is Y" just from "All Xs are Ys"? Don't you need the minor premise "This is an X"? Yes, it's an empirical statement, or maybe derived from other axiomatic terms, but where are those other axiomatic terms?

How many people are almost completely deductive (as in 95% deduced beliefs and 5% axiomatic beliefs), how many are almost completely axiomatic (as in 95% axiomatic beliefs and 5% deduced beliefs) and how many people fall somewhere in between?

When you talk about axiomatic beliefs and deduced beliefs, are you speaking strictly in the formal sense of the terms? Because I think very few people use formal logical deduction. People are a lot more sloppy in their thinking than computers (or how we imagine computers calculating logic) so I wouldn't necessarily regard the manner by which they draw their conclusions as "deduction". As for axioms, what is an axiom to you? To me it just means a foundational assumption for a system of thought (typically irreducible, otherwise why not reduce it further and get even more fundamental axioms). When you brought up the point about the minor premise in the syllogism being derived from empirical experience or other axioms, that seemed to imply you think axioms are underived--that is, self-evidently or tautologically true (i.e. their truth is manifest in their content). If this is what you mean by axiom, again I think there are very few people who think axiomatically (though there might be plenty who think their core assumptions are true simply because they're self-evident, but again I think this is just due to sloppy thinking).

My impression is that most people are predominantly deductive (>50% deduced beliefs), a lot of those have their logical ability compromised (with some of them mistakenly believing most of their beliefs are axiomatic) and very few, if any at all, are largely axiomatic.

You mean beliefs derived from other beliefs? I have no idea what the ratio is between these kinds of beliefs and other kinds, but we forget the sources of the bulk of our beliefs and therefore say things like "I don't know, that's just what I believe," making it seem axiomatic. Again, this all depends on what you mean by "deduction" and "axiom".

Yes, logic is a convergence tool but I don't have the impression that most people fail to understand that.

I do. When I talk to people about this, I get the impression they think of logic as something that can take you in many different directions from a single proposition. Not sure why. I think it's because when you speak about logic as a method of getting from premises to conclusions, it conjures the image of a path (getting from point A to point B). You start on a path from a single starting point, and along the way there is the possibility of forks in the road, many possible directions from which to choose, and so I think many people assume a single proposition can lead to many conclusions (not saying this can't happen but it's not by virtue of the nature of logic alone). The picture of starting from the beginning of several paths and arriving at a point where they all converge is not as readily conjured by this understanding of logic.

But come to think of it, there are actually a few rules of logic which allow you to draw potentially infinite conclusions from even a single premise. For example, if you start with a proposition P, then you can conclude P or Q (for any Q). For that matter, you can conclude P or Q or R or S or T ... Another obvious example is that starting with premise P, you can conclude P and not-not-P. But these are trivial cases that apply to any set of premises. Not very interesting or useful. The point is to derive something interesting or useful, and in regards to that, logic is more likely to reduce the number of propositions than to increase them.

[Magnus Anderson]

How do you derive "This X is Y" just from "All Xs are Ys"? Don't you need the minor premise "This is an X"? Yes, it's an empirical statement, or maybe derived from other axiomatic terms, but where are those other axiomatic terms?

You do need the minor premise, of course, but the minor premise itself need not be axiomatic. It can be, for example, derived from other premises or it can be grounded in one's observations.

Here's an example:

Major premise: All men are black.
Minor premise #1: John is a man.
Minor premise #2: Patrick is a man.
Minor premise #3: Sebastian is a man.
etc.

Conclusion #1: John is black.
Conclusion #2: Patrick is black.
Conclusion #3: Sebastian is black.
etc.

When you talk about axiomatic beliefs and deduced beliefs, are you speaking strictly in the formal sense of the terms? Because I think very few people use formal logical deduction. People are a lot more sloppy in their thinking than computers (or how we imagine computers calculating logic) so I wouldn't necessarily regard the manner by which they draw their conclusions as "deduction".

Not sure what you mean by "formal logical deduction" but I'd say that if people are sloppy thinkers, that does not necessarily mean they are not doing deduction, it can, for example, mean they are doing it in a sloppy way (which is not a good thing.)

Note that one's thinking process need not be conscious in order to be categorized as a type of logical deduction. At least not by me.

As for axioms, what is an axiom to you? To me it just means a foundational assumption for a system of thought (typically irreducible, otherwise why not reduce it further and get even more fundamental axioms). When you brought up the point about the minor premise in the syllogism being derived from empirical experience or other axioms, that seemed to imply you think axioms are underived--that is, self-evidently or tautologically true (i.e. their truth is manifest in their content). If this is what you mean by axiom, again I think there are very few people who think axiomatically (though there might be plenty who think their core assumptions are true simply because they're self-evident, but again I think this is just due to sloppy thinking).

I've introduced three types of beliefs in this thread:

1) Axioms: these are what I assume you mean when you speak of "pre-logical beliefs" which is beliefs that are literally made up, not grounded in anything. This may not be how the word "axiom" is used officially but that's not really important. I needed to pick the closest term I can in order to express my thoughts and "axiom" looked like a good fit. Axioms look fishy because they are literally blind (or random) guesses but consider that they may have proven themselves through natural selection (literally, by surviving the long natural process of weeding out organisms with unsuitable random guesses) and that at least some of them can be in theory falsified. It's possible that axioms have become fixed, or at least near-completely unchangeable, in humans. "The principle of the uniformity of nature" that underlies inductive reasoning and probabilistic reasoning is an example of an axiom. (EDIT: Made a quick correction: axioms can be tested.)

2) Empirical or observation-based beliefs: these are beliefs grounded in observation e.g. "I saw him wearing a white coat". These are reliable to the extent that one's memory is reliable. Like axioms, they can't be tested.

3) Logic-based or deduced beliefs: these are beliefs derived from existing beliefs using logical deduction. These can be tested.

[gib]

You do need the minor premise, of course, but the minor premise itself need not be axiomatic. It can be, for example, derived from other premises or it can be grounded in one's observations.

Here's an example:

Major premise: All men are black.
Minor premise #1: John is a man.
Minor premise #2: Patrick is a man.
Minor premise #3: Sebastian is a man.
etc.

Conclusion #1: John is black.
Conclusion #2: Patrick is black.
Conclusion #3: Sebastian is black.
etc.

Right, so the major premise needs the help of additional premises--observations, assumptions, axioms, whatever--but you can't do anything with it alone (short of concluding "All men are black" as per Aristotle's law of identity).

Not sure what you mean by "formal logical deduction" but I'd say that if people are sloppy thinkers, that does not necessarily mean they are not doing deduction, it can, for example, mean they are doing it in a sloppy way (which is not a good thing.)

In formal logic, deduction refs to a pattern of reasoning whereby one starts with a set of premises and arrives at a set of conclusions with strict unwaivering logic--that is, without room for error or doubt. If the premises are true, the conclusions must be true. It's not enough to just start with premises and stumble your way to a conclusion, the method has to be absolutely rigorous. It's more than just a continuity of thought between premises and conclusions, it's a continuity that thoroughly meets the criteria of logic.

Deduction is typically contrasted with induction, which is the method by which we draw conclusions from premises that requires a bit of a leap (or a generalization). For example, every morning I wake up, the sun rises. Therefore, the sun always rises in the morning. This is reasonable, but strictly speaking not logical. Logically speaking, it is possible that the sun won't rise tomorrow (it might explode or something). Induction is essentially the tendency of thought to jump to conclusions when it feels like it has enough evidence or reasoning, but not necessarily all the evidence or reasoning it could possibly have.

Technically, this means if someone is doing deductive thinking in a sloppy way, they aren't doing deduction at all.

Note that one's thinking process need not be conscious in order to be categorized as a type of logical deduction. At least not by me.

I could believe that, but when we bring up the unconscious, we're at the mercy of speculation. What seems like gaps in the logic of one's thinking might really be unconscious steps in the thinking... but maybe not. Sometimes the unconscious forces that drive our thinking aren't hidden logical steps, but motives other than being logical or seeking truth (for example, a clergyman arguing for the existence of God isn't necessarily motivated by showing others the truth, but helping his religion to gain power). When it comes to the unconscious, anything can be proposed. Also, keep in mind that speculation on the unconscious content or motives of another's mind might just as easily be unconscious content or motives of your own mind being projected onto the other.

1) Axioms: these are what I assume you mean when you speak of "pre-logical beliefs" Yes which is beliefs that are literally made up, not grounded in anything. Well, be careful what you mean by "made up"--our brains make up everything they experience--it's not always made up in the same way one makes up a story or a poem. This may not be how the word "axiom" is used officially but that's not really important. I needed to pick the closest term I can in order to express my thoughts and "axiom" looked like a good fit. Fair enough. Axioms look fishy because they are literally blind (or random) guesses but consider that they may have proven themselves through natural selection (literally, by surviving the long natural process of weeding out organisms with unsuitable random guesses) and that at least some of them can be in theory falsified. It's possible that axioms have become fixed, or at least near-completely unchangeable, in humans. "The principle of the uniformity of nature" <-- Yes! that underlies inductive reasoning and probabilistic reasoning is an example of an axiom. (EDIT: Made a quick correction: axioms can be tested.)

A couple points:

1) I'm not a logician, but what I gather is that an axiom is not just a baseless or underived assumption, but an assumption that can't be doubted (or is very difficult to doubt). In Euclid's geometry, two parallel lines will never meet. How could it be otherwise? <-- That's an example of an axiom. They are ungrounded because they don't need to be. They are self-evidently self-sufficient. Compare that with the belief in God. Such a belief is questioned all the time and there is no reason to suppose it couldn't be another way. (There is Einsteinian geometry which will tell you that two parallel lines can meet--just picture them on the surface of a sphere--but I question whether these really count as "lines".)

2) We're on the same page when it comes to certain axioms being locked into the human brain as a result of natural selection, but then are they really "made up"? In a sense they are--the brain is "making them up"--but from our inner subjective point of view, we're not making them up, we're simply cognizant of them. We experience them as truths which we somehow know (like uniformity of nature, or the principle of sufficient reason). This experience can be contrasted with that of being creative with our imaginations, which we very consciously know we're making up. Furthermore, there's also a difference between axioms that seem self-evident only because our brains won't let us think otherwise (or at least makes it very difficult), and axioms that are self-evident because they really are necessary. Uniformity in nature and the principle of sufficient reason are good examples of the former, and David Hume demonstrated this 300 years ago by sharply contrasting what we have a right to say based on strict logic and what we have a habit of saying simply because it seems intuitive to us. Euclid's geometry, on the other hand, is, as far as I'm concerned, a good example of the latter (probably because geometry is purely an abstract conceptual construct).

2) Empirical or observation-based beliefs: these are beliefs grounded in observation e.g. "I saw him wearing a white coat". These are reliable to the extent that one's memory is reliable. Like axioms, they can't be tested.

What do you mean, they can't be tested? I would think if anything can be tested, it's empirical claims. But I suppose you mean that the test you would use to verify it is already the basis upon which you derived the belief, and there is no further test to verify the belief.

3) Logic-based or deduced beliefs: these are beliefs derived from existing beliefs using logical deduction. These can be tested.

And should.

[Magnus Anderson]

In formal logic, deduction refs to a pattern of reasoning whereby one starts with a set of premises and arrives at a set of conclusions with strict unwaivering logic--that is, without room for error or doubt. If the premises are true, the conclusions must be true. It's not enough to just start with premises and stumble your way to a conclusion, the method has to be absolutely rigorous. It's more than just a continuity of thought between premises and conclusions, it's a continuity that thoroughly meets the criteria of logic.

That's deduction, yes.

Deduction is typically contrasted with induction, which is the method by which we draw conclusions from premises that requires a bit of a leap (or a generalization). For example, every morning I wake up, the sun rises. Therefore, the sun always rises in the morning. This is reasonable, but strictly speaking not logical. Logically speaking, it is possible that the sun won't rise tomorrow (it might explode or something). Induction is essentially the tendency of thought to jump to conclusions when it feels like it has enough evidence or reasoning, but not necessarily all the evidence or reasoning it could possibly have.

And an interesting obsevation is that every inductive argument has an equivalent deductive argument. All one has to do is to discover the hidden assumptions and make them explicit.

Technically, this means if someone is doing deductive thinking in a sloppy way, they aren't doing deduction at all.

The question is what they are trying to do, not whether the result can be called deduction.

Well, be careful what you mean by "made up"--our brains make up everything they experience--it's not always made up in the same way one makes up a story or a poem.

"Made up" as in not derived from observations or previous beliefs. You can also say "imagined". "Made up" as in freely invented by human mind.

I'm not a logician, but what I gather is that an axiom is not just a baseless or underived assumption, but an assumption that can't be doubted (or is very difficult to doubt). In Euclid's geometry, two parallel lines will never meet.

Again, what I mean by the word is not necessarily what is meant by the world in general. Indeed, "Two parallel lines will never meet" is most definitely not an axiom in the way that I'm using the word here. That would be a classic belief deduced from definitions.

They are self-evidently self-sufficient.

The axioms I speak of need not be self-evident and/or hard to doubt.

What do you mean, they can't be tested? I would think if anything can be tested, it's empirical claims. But I suppose you mean that the test you would use to verify it is already the basis upon which you derived the belief, and there is no further test to verify the belief.

You can test a hypothesis (by making observations) but you cannot test an observation.

[Fixed Cross]

You can test a hypothesis (by making observations) but you cannot test an observation.

You can test it for a marginal variety of properties.

[Fixed Cross]

I do. When I talk to people about this, I get the impression they think of logic as something that can take you in many different directions from a single proposition. Not sure why. I think it's because when you speak about logic as a method of getting from premises to conclusions, it conjures the image of a path (getting from point A to point B). You start on a path from a single starting point, and along the way there is the possibility of forks in the road, many possible directions from which to choose, and so I think many people assume a single proposition can lead to many conclusions (not saying this can't happen but it's not by virtue of the nature of logic alone). The picture of starting from the beginning of several paths and arriving at a point where they all converge is not as readily conjured by this understanding of logic.

But come to think of it, there are actually a few rules of logic which allow you to draw potentially infinite conclusions from even a single premise. For example, if you start with a proposition P, then you can conclude P or Q (for any Q). For that matter, you can conclude P or Q or R or S or T ... Another obvious example is that starting with premise P, you can conclude P and not-not-P. But these are trivial cases that apply to any set of premises. Not very interesting or useful. The point is to derive something interesting or useful, and in regards to that, logic is more likely to reduce the number of propositions than to increase them.

In Aristotles time it was considered self-evident that a single premise can not contain logical substance. There must always be several premises to generate some form of thought process, such as an argument.

I agree with your general approach, gib -
my personal addition is that logic forces our observed world into distinct premises so as to be able to process this world.
So a highly logical mind would be most unnatural, in that it always forcefully extracts quasi isolated premises from the flux of the world which is what I refer to as nature.
As you see Ive now extracted two concepts from nature; logic and nature. Ive created a distinction so as to be able to share a viewpoint.

I don't think James died by the way. I think he's been here with at least 2 peusdonyms after he left as James. Ill do him the courtesy of not revealing them but their style was rather unmistakable, especially of one name. It was like James figuring out how to be meaningfully incognito, hearkening back to his days as a serviceman.

[Fixed Cross]

I wonder, given our inability to even reach a consensus over what logic is, if logic is not a thing every logician has to figure out a way into from his personal set of premises deliberately.

Like it could be that its not given, that its "essence" is somehow hidden from explicity because... well maybe because it isnt logical for it to be able to fully explicated;
what if logic leads to increasingly alternate world-views because it is not really a method of correspondence, but of something else?

I mean again to curve a bend toward the value concept, which is curled by proximity to the unfathomable necessities that really drive things.

Previously, psychonauts recognized this kind of weirdness wired into the world as "different dimensions". That's not entirely nonsensical; value could be said to include all recognized dimensions and propagate in such powerful ways that it may be that it has several dimensions rolled up in it.

[Magnus Anderson]

I suggest that you break the ice by explaining what you mean when you use the word (:

The word "logic" has multiple meanings but I'd say that in many cases it refers to deductive reasoning. I am sure that most people know what deduction is.

[Fixed Cross]

Well...

Logic is drawing consequences.

Deduction is a safe and sure way, but not productive of much. Science is inductive, requires observations and context-pool constructions.

Induction selectively integrates contingencies. Deduction eliminates them.

Inductive logic is creative of new knowledge by creating "slots" for new information to fall into and become significant, deductive logic can only arrive at the meaning of its premises.

Aristotle is the paragon of deductive logic.
Archimedes is the originator of inductive logic. His lineage includes Galileo-Newton-Einstein, pure inductive logicians. The most radically inductive logician of fame who often crosses the bounds into the nonlogical is Freud.

As Francis Bacon first observed, logic of deduction isnt really worth much as far as creating consequences is concerned.

So deductive logic only discerns consequences which are already implicit in held knowledge, inductive logic produces consequences which were not yet given and does so by discovering correspondences between different paradigms of meaning.

When you produce an algorithm capable of induction you have an actual intelligence. Computer hardware is deductive machinery.

Deduction is heavy on postulations and aims for truth, inductive logic is heavy on hypotheses and aims for knowledge. Deduction is metaphysical, induction is physical.
The existence of induction and its possibility form an initially non-conceptual hypothesis, called "genius" or "intuition" or "creative intelligence" or "god" until Philosophy has arrived at the formulation of this hypothesis through the German idealists in the concept of "will".

Metaphors
Deduction is will-less, it is like water, flows down and produces downward pressure and stays equal to itself. Induction is active, like wood, it assimilates elements into upward pressure and grows with respect to itself. To extend the metaphor: the tree draws water upward, and does this by using an inner law of water, which is cohesion.

Truth corresponds, Nature coheres. Spinoza's God is meant to synthesize induction and deduction completely, aiming for a synthetic absolute. This however defeats the purpose of induction, as no new hypothesis are possible inside this system. The Germans then took the phenomenon of synthesis (nature) as a universal and took down the standing absolute, proving deduction and synthesis to be in part at odds. Hence, subjectivism, and the universe of value ontology (;

[Karpel Tunnel]

Yes, inductive logic also.
Both deductiion and induction depending on premises.
And both also, since humans use them and are in situ, in language (the premises), which entails being culture, being a time-bound enhanced primate with THOSE sensory systems and a motor cortex we have ended up using for abstract thought,

both types of intuition will involve using intuition to determine if the words are correct, have the right scope, if the premises are correct, if one has checked carefully enough one's assumptions and paradigmatic biases and so on.

There are of course other types of logic, but I would guess most people mean one or both of those two.

Which is all fine. Both deduction and induction have worked wonders for us. Extremely effective tools in the right hands.

if we go back to the OP

Tab, you said in a thread I read this morning that you are driven mostly by logic. Loose paraphrase.

My objection is that everyone thinks this of themselves.

We see the source of the discusion, which has to do with self-evaluation...

My contention is that no one has logically derived that s/he is driven by logic, ....

Which I think is correct, because in self-evaulation, rather than say, trying to logically decide of corn yields more nutrition per acre than wheat, the internal pressure (read biases, such as confirmation bias) are even stronger and the need not to notice ego-dystonic phenonmena is even greater. IOW the intuition is going to be influenced by emotional and psychological needs with incredible power. People's self-evaluations need to be taken with a hefty grain of salt.

But further--

or mostly lives by logic, or mostly follows logic in arriving at conclusions and at actions, reactions and life-stratagems.

I also agree with. It would be a waste of incredible time to analyze all our decisions and conclusions in this manner. It would be a suppression of the complexity of the mind brain soul (depending on your paradigm). There's a reason we have a variety of ways of reaching conclusions. And when we do apply logic, we often apply logic to eradicate critiques of positions we already hold or to justify positions we already hold.

Regarding all of these 'ways of reaching conclusions' including the logical approaches and those not usually considered logical approaches, individuals will have a range of skills. Some being good at one or all, to varying degrees. Some being not so good at one or all, to varying degrees.

Even a person who turns to logic vastly more than others may be poor at it. For all sorts of reasons. Poor at language, poor at logic, poor at introspection (can't notice or won't their own biases, or have a low tolerance for cognitive dissonance so challenging potential truths cannot be noticed), poor intuition and so on.

[Karpel Tunnel]

Yes, inductive logic also.
Both deductiion and induction depending on premises.
And both also, since humans use them and are in situ, in language (the premises), which entails being culture, being a time-bound enhanced primate with THOSE sensory systems and a motor cortex we have ended up using for abstract thought,

both types of intuition will involve using intuition to determine if the words are correct, have the right scope, if the premises are correct, if one has checked carefully enough one's assumptions and paradigmatic biases and so on.

There are of course other types of logic, but I would guess most people mean one or both of those two.

Which is all fine. Both deduction and induction have worked wonders for us. Extremely effective tools in the right hands.

if we go back to the OP

Tab, you said in a thread I read this morning that you are driven mostly by logic. Loose paraphrase.

My objection is that everyone thinks this of themselves.

We see the source of the discusion, which has to do with self-evaluation...

My contention is that no one has logically derived that s/he is driven by logic, ....

Which I think is correct, because in self-evaulation, rather than say, trying to logically decide of corn yields more nutrition per acre than wheat, the internal pressure (read biases, such as confirmation bias) are even stronger and the need not to notice ego-dystonic phenonmena is even greater. IOW the intuition is going to be influenced by emotional and psychological needs with incredible power. People's self-evaluations need to be taken with a hefty grain of salt.

But further--

or mostly lives by logic, or mostly follows logic in arriving at conclusions and at actions, reactions and life-stratagems.

I also agree with. It would be a waste of incredible time to analyze all our decisions and conclusions in this manner. It would be a suppression of the complexity of the mind brain soul (depending on your paradigm). There's a reason we have a variety of ways of reaching conclusions. And when we do apply logic, we often apply logic to eradicate critiques of positions we already hold or to justify positions we already hold.

Regarding all of these 'ways of reaching conclusions' including the logical approaches and those not usually considered logical approaches, individuals will have a range of skills. Some being good at one or all, to varying degrees. Some being not so good at one or all, to varying degrees.

Even a person who turns to logic vastly more than others may be poor at it. For all sorts of reasons. Poor at language, poor at logic, poor at introspection (can't notice or won't their own biases, or have a low tolerance for cognitive dissonance so challenging potential truths cannot be noticed), poor intuition and so on.

I think often there is a kind of normative drive in epistemology. If everyone can use it to arrive at the same conclusions, then it is a good method. If not everyone can use it to arrive at the same conclusions, then it is a bad method. So Logic, Science, Reasoning (as utterly vague as that last term is) are considered good, especially by moderns in the West and any other method is considered bad. There are three problems I see with this right off: 1) even those supposedly good methods can be misused or be used by people with poor skills, 2) People vary in skills. So a method that does not give everyone the right result can be a wonderful tool in the hands of a skilled user. Intuition varies. 3) When people refer to logic, Science and reasoning they are often referring to a set of beliefs, also, and these have paradigmatic blind spots.

[Magnus Anderson]

Well...

Logic is drawing consequences.

Deduction is a safe and sure way, but not productive of much. Science is inductive, requires observations and context-pool constructions.

Induction selectively integrates contingencies. Deduction eliminates them.

Inductive logic is creative of new knowledge by creating "slots" for new information to fall into and become significant, deductive logic can only arrive at the meaning of its premises.

Logic is about drawing consequences, I agree. Put another way, logic is about drawing conclusions from a set of premises. You can't draw conclusions unless there are premises, right?

You say that science (being inductive) requires observations. Well, deductive logic does not but its premises can be grounded in observations.

In deductive logic, premises can either be definitions or truth assertions. If they are truth assertions, they can be grounded in observations or they can be mere assumptions (grounded in imagination.)

What I want to argue here is that it might be possible to take any inductive argument and translate it into a deductive argument. This would mean that induction and deduction aren't two different ways of arriving at conclusions but two different ways of describing how one arrives at conclusions (in the same way that "2 + 2" and "4" are not two different numbers but two different ways of describing one and the same number.)

Given a sequence of numbers \(1\) \(1\) \(1\) \(1\) \(1\), what's the next number in the sequence?

We all have the same answer, right? We'll all say its \(1\). But we'd find it difficult to explain why. Hence, we can only present an inductive argument. But if we were aware of the underlying assumptions, we'd have been capable of presenting a deductive argument.

I'd say the key distinction between inductive and deductive arguments is that inductive arguments are opaque (they don't explain every step of the process which leads to what people call "leaps") whereas deductive arguments are transparent (every step of the process is explained.)

The point of an argument, after all, is to explain why one believes what one believes i.e. to explain how one arrived at one's beliefs. And there are many different ways to do so. You can use inductive logic, abductive logic, deductive logic and so on. I think the reason people put deductive logic above all else is probably the fact that it explicitly states one's assumptions about the world which reduces the possibility of misunderstanding.

Deduction is heavy on postulations and aims for truth, inductive logic is heavy on hypotheses and aims for knowledge.

Hmm, I think that they both aim for truth. And neither produces infallible conclusions (deduction produces infallible conclusions but only under the condition that the premises are true.)

Deduction is will-less, it is like water, flows down and produces downward pressure and stays equal to itself. Induction is active, like wood, it assimilates elements into upward pressure and grows with respect to itself. To extend the metaphor: the tree draws water upward, and does this by using an inner law of water, which is cohesion.

I'd say that every process of forming beliefs is will-less. Will is something separate.

First, you form your beliefs about the world: what is, what was, what will be; in every case, under certain conditions, never.

You use that to figure out what choices you have and for each choice the set of consequence that will follow.

This is when your will steps in. You assign a preference value to each one of the projected paths and choose the most preferable one. You then look back to see which choices lead to it and then you make those choices.

[Meno_]

I think will is blended into a overlapping process of ascension , from prelogocal geometric type linear reductionism . As more consciously manifested choices are acknowledged and put into place, in a matrix of delimited possibilities, the re presentation of the will occurs as possible applied tool to reconfigure the automatic behavior into more self conscious processes.

What becomes more preferable is what has become consciously more successfully goal oriented.

[Fixed Cross]

"Logic is about drawing consequences, I agree. Put another way, logic is about drawing conclusions from a set of premises. You can't draw conclusions unless there are premises, right?"

Ah but I never said it was about drawing conclusions from premises.
I chose to keep it more open. Drawing consequences doesn't require premises. It just requires a situation.

There are many subtle differences in our thoughts. Naturally the expose I gave yesterday hasn't been exhausted. Give it some more attention and see if you can follow my logic as I move from one though to the next.

I do not consider logic to revolve around arguments. Arguments are indeed what Aristotle was most interested in.
Nor has it been the case since the Enlightenment that people are most interested in deduction.

I highly recommend you read Francis Bacon. You'll have to get it in print it seems, his texts where he trashes deductive logic aren't online for some reason. Get his collected works.

[Fixed Cross]

Its a VAST subject, namely all of German Idealism and the kernel of the enlightenment before it. How can we undo the mind-sickness of Aristotle.
How do we formulate a premise that isnt arbitrary and purely contextual?

This is what "will" means to these Germans. The solid premise. A premise which doesn't end up contradicting itself.

People don't tend to understand this. They think the German philosophers "Will" concept is about humans wanting stuff. Its about epistemology, a cure for it; Aristotelean epistemology is a paralysis of the mind. It lasted nearly 1500 years in which there was literally no progress at all in human thinking.

[Magnus Anderson]

Ah but I never said it was about drawing conclusions from premises.
I chose to keep it more open. Drawing consequences doesn't require premises. It just requires a situation.

Hmm.. When you said "logic" I thought you meant "deductive reasoning". If that's the case, I can't think of an instance of deductive reasoning where one is drawing conclusions (I assume that's what you mean by "consequences") but without drawing them from premises. But as I said, maybe you weren't speaking of deductive reasoning.

I certainly understand the process of forming beliefs (or arriving at conclusions) without logically deducing them (or deriving them) from prior beliefs (premises.) And I have no doubt that some of our beliefs are of that kind i.e. not deduced / derived from other beliefs. As I said earlier, there are beliefs that are grounded in observations and beliefs that are grounded in imagination. You read that post of mine, you know, the one where I spoke of three types of beliefs (:

What I wanted to say in the previous post is that deductive logic can start with premises that are grounded in observations (in the same way that induction can) as well as premises that are grounded in imagination. It's not like only induction can (and it's not like induction can't start with premises grounded in imagination.) The other part of that post is the claim that induction and deduction are merely two different ways of describing how we form beliefs and not two different ways of forming beliefs. Every inductive argument has an equivalent deductive argument but not vice versa. The second part of that statement implies that deduction is more expressive (the number of thought processes it can describe is greater.)

I do not consider logic to revolve around arguments. Arguments are indeed what Aristotle was most interested in.
Nor has it been the case since the Enlightenment that people are most interested in deduction.

I highly recommend you read Francis Bacon. You'll have to get it in print it seems, his texts where he trashes deductive logic aren't online for some reason. Get his collected works.

Noted.

[Fixed Cross]

The other part of that post is the claim that induction and deduction are merely two different ways of describing how we form beliefs and not two different ways of forming beliefs.

I question that.

Inductive logic includes the faculties that produce deductive logic, as inductive logic is like nature.
It doesn't have premises, but givens and prospects; it uses resources, not propositions. And it doesn't form arguments, but produces actions.

It exists.


Deductive logic as such wouldn't exist if not for Aristoteles, thus Plato, and is entirely ludicrous, because as you say, it relies on premises and premises are always observations or imaginations and hardly ever absolute. To you it may seem silly but for well over a thousand years people reasoned purely from the notion that there are known given absolute facts from which all knowledge could be derived. Discovery was literally discarded as an option. This was Aristotle, what he did, how ugly Plato is for having caused this bleakest Aeon ever probably.

A bottom line here is that in actual thought, which is power, words are just gimmicks. You have to most of all be sure to not use them against yourself entirely. You're always going to be having to deal with it that there is no direct way to express an inductive thought; you report the prior situation and the result, but the logic is in between, the reason for its connection is alive.

This is really quite sense, I would recommend you realize, compared to what philosophers usually propose; it is the fruit of what Kant opened up and Schopenhauer embraced and which Nietzsche then finalized into an epistemology of contextual dominance, a relativity theory of knowledge, which finally eliminated Aristotle's stronghold entirely. Not because it convinced anyone but because it took hold, because what is left when you drop the categorizations and correspondences, is power vs the absence of power.
Truth is only a form of power.
A lie had less power than a truth and derives all its power from the truth which it replaces. A lie gets its power from the fact that there is also a truth.
Otherwise it is a statement of no meaning rather than a lie. Aristotle produced a world consisting entirely of meaningless statements, which were neither lie nor truth.

to Nietzscheans there is no question as to what this value thought amounts to - a system which can match Plato and defeat him where he lives. Logic is beauty, and the late Greeks were infatuated, and perversely made it their own; Machiavelli was the one to break that murky spell but he was only a political mind. The mastery of value-attribution and creation is another level of humanity entirely. It comes somewhat in the proximity of allowing us to become a superior species.
There isnt much left of the west as an intellectual entity, so it makes sense that its philosophical masters are just "trolls" .... everything is moving. "There is no guard now" - the creator of the Wire

truth is not at all organized, and language truly only an excuse for that and a sterile distraction, and quite dreadful in that sense unless it willingly and knowingly and so-stating sets out to impose a specific order, which is only efficient because it can then be confronted.

Results.

[Magnus Anderson]

The way I understand it, what Greeks wanted to do is to understand each other's thought process (not merely what people believe but also why people believe what they believe) in an effort to resolve conflicts in a more effecient way.

Thus the birth of arguments.

An argument is no more than an explanation of why one believes what one believes. There is any number of ways one can construct such an explanation but for one reason or another the Athenians settled for deduction (I believe it's because deductive arguments are far more transparent than other types.)

In order to present an argument, one must acquire a sufficient degree of self-consciousness. It's not enough to know what your beliefs are, you must also know how you formed those beliefs. This is no easy task especially if you're tasked to present a deductive argument. If you ask me, this was the beginning of the next stage in social development of humans, but for one reason or another, it never really took off.

As you hinted by mentioning Sir Francis Bacon, subsequent centuries abandoned deduction in favor of easier but less transparent arguments such as those of induction. Nowadays, people use a mix of those and the word "argument" implies a heated and an angry debate.

[gib]

And an interesting obsevation is that every inductive argument has an equivalent deductive argument. All one has to do is to discover the hidden assumptions and make them explicit.

I suppose so. If every dog I've ever seen has four legs, and I conclude that ALL dogs have four legs, the hidden assumption is that all the dogs I've seen are perfectly representative of all dogs.

The question is what they are trying to do, not whether the result can be called deduction.

Yes, people will often try to be deductive even if, in the end, they are not. I'll admit, that I'm not 100% sure I've got the definitions of deduction and induction right. I remember my social studies high school teacher explaining the difference as starting from generalities to specifics vs starting from specifics to generalities. So reasoning that starts with "All Xs are Ys" is starting with a generality, and from that you derive the specific "This is a Y" (with the aid of the minor premise "This is an X"). We call that deduction. Reasoning that starts with "This is a Y", "So is that", "Oh, and this too", is starting with specifics, and from that you derive the generality "All such things must be Y". We call that induction. Put this way, however, it seems the definitions aren't really based on the thoroughness of the logical rigor, but on the direction of the reasoning (generalities to specifics vs specifics to generalities). By this definition, you *might* be able to say a person arguing from generalities to specifics is using decution regardless of how sloppy the reasoning is. I just assume deduction involves rigorous logic because induction necessarily doesn't. Induction necessarily makes a leap--it amasses enough examples of some claim, and then stops. It stops before amassing all available examples, and insteads jumps to the conclusion that the claim in question applies to all such cases. But there is no logical rule that says "If some Xs are Ys, then all Xs are Ys," so induction is necessarily illogical. But there is a logical rule that says "If all Xs are Ys, then this X is a Y"--it's called modus ponens--which is the form deduction takes. So I assumed that means deduction is necessarily logical. But if it's just the direction that counts, then you could have an argument that looked like modus ponens (or started with generalities and arrived at specifics) but had a few logical flaws in it, and it would still count as deduction. And come to think of it, you could have an argument that started with specifics, and covered all such cases (imagine you were somehow able to look at every single dog in the world and see that they all have four legs), and concluded from that a necessarily true generality, and that would count as induction.

I don't know. I'm pretty sure I'm right that deduction is conventionally defined as logically necessary reasoning and induction as involving leaps, but maybe I've misunderstood the definitions all these years.

"Made up" as in not derived from observations or previous beliefs. You can also say "imagined". "Made up" as in freely invented by human mind.

Well, here's the thing. If these axioms come from wirings in the brain that have evolved over thousands of years such that they force us to believe the axioms, they are not "freely invented". We can't help but to believe them. We experience them as self-evident truths that are just "given". On the other hand, we could say that our brains invent them, but this would be a kind of "invention" that isn't experienced as invention (like saying we invent insulin because our bodies invent it; we don't do it intentionally, and most of us don't even know we do it). I say the same thing about other kinds of experiences that no one says we invent. For example, we see that the sky is blue. We don't say that we invented the blue of the sky, but I say that our brains do. The blue of the sky isn't really there in the sky; instead, there are specific frequencies of light which eminate from the sky and enter our eyes. Those light photons stimulate the blue cones in the retina, and those send signals to the visual cortex in the brain. The neurons that fire in the cortex in response to that give rise to the visual perception of blue. These neurons are "inventing" these perceptions. They invent blue.

Indeed, "Two parallel lines will never meet" is most definitely not an axiom in the way that I'm using the word here. That would be a classic belief deduced from definitions.

It can be deduced, but it depends on what you start with. I wouldn't say that an axiom can't be deduced by other propositions, just that it's self-evident truth means it doesn't need to be. I would say parallel lines never meeting is pretty self-evident and therefore doesn't need to be deduced. But you could start with a definition of "parallel" as two lines such that the shortest distance between them is always the same for any point on one of the lines. Given this definition, it certainly follows that the two lines will never meet. But you could also consider that line of reasonsing to be a single statement: in saying "two parallel lines will never meet", you allow that the word parallel can be replaced by its definition, and therefore you get: "two lines such that the shortest distance between them is always the same for any point on one of the lines will never meet" <-- you've converted a deduction into an axiomatic statement. The only case in which I wouldn't call it axiomatic is when the deduction is so complex that the conclusion isn't immediately obvious from the premises, and therefore must be deduced to become known.

The axioms I speak of need not be self-evident and/or hard to doubt.

You mean because you define axioms simply as starting points without reasoning or evidence to back them up?

You can test a hypothesis (by making observations) but you cannot test an observation.

Right, because the observation is the test.

[Fixed Cross]

That is Socrates you speak of. Philosophy in Greece occurred before and next to him.

Socrates created a notion of truth about social life - the Kosmopolis.

Philosophy was born with a handful of secular ontologies formed around the eastern Mediterranean, all independent of each other and all self-sufficient as a grounds for systems of synthetic logic.

Deductive logic is too easy, nature doesn't employ it because it is too traceable and nature is hunter.

[gib]

In Aristotles time it was considered self-evident that a single premise can not contain logical substance. There must always be several premises to generate some form of thought process, such as an argument.

It all depends on how you want to divide up thoughts and proposition, what you want to count as the "units". The Greeks didn't think you could start from a single premise, Kant thought you could. He called it analytical thinking, meaning to take apart a single thought into its more basic components. For example, the concept bachelor, when analyzed, means an unmarried man. Therefore, you can logically deduce that a bachelor is an unmarried man. Later philosophers recognized this as simply truth by definition, but the way Kant thought of this (and I agree) is that a single thought contains within it the seeds of its own implications which, when followed, yeild other thoughts.

my personal addition is that logic forces our observed world into distinct premises so as to be able to process this world.
So a highly logical mind would be most unnatural, in that it always forcefully extracts quasi isolated premises from the flux of the world which is what I refer to as nature.
As you see Ive now extracted two concepts from nature; logic and nature. Ive created a distinction so as to be able to share a viewpoint.

Indeed, I think you're right. We're engineers. We always need to craft descrete components to serve as the building blocks of logical structures in our minds. Those then become the models we use to guide ourselves through the world and to communicate to others. (I've always found it interesting that in order to be able to make our way through the world, to survive, we need necessarily to distort reality in the way we process it.)

I don't think James died by the way. I think he's been here with at least 2 peusdonyms after he left as James. Ill do him the courtesy of not revealing them but their style was rather unmistakable, especially of one name. It was like James figuring out how to be meaningfully incognito, hearkening back to his days as a serviceman.

That's creepy.

I wonder, given our inability to even reach a consensus over what logic is, if logic is not a thing every logician has to figure out a way into from his personal set of premises deliberately.

Like it could be that its not given, that its "essence" is somehow hidden from explicity because... well maybe because it isnt logical for it to be able to fully explicated;
what if logic leads to increasingly alternate world-views because it is not really a method of correspondence, but of something else?

Are you thinking something similar to what I wrote above? About how children learn logic by stumbling on fallacies and learning how they fail to accurately predict? I think it's highly likely that we each approach logic with different thinking styles, but I think logic must be something we converge upon. I think of logic as the rules of thought required in order to accurately predict the world. It's how one must think in order to mimic reality. It couldn't be that reality turns out one way for one person but a different way for another person. But certainly people can start out thinking differently at a young age (I think when it comes down to it, we all start by thinking in terms of associations only, and over time we learn what association NOT to make).

I mean again to curve a bend toward the value concept, which is curled by proximity to the unfathomable necessities that really drive things.

Previously, psychonauts recognized this kind of weirdness wired into the world as "different dimensions". That's not entirely nonsensical; value could be said to include all recognized dimensions and propagate in such powerful ways that it may be that it has several dimensions rolled up in it.

When it comes to the forces which drive reality (what you're calling value, I think), we're going beyond logic. I'm not convinced that reality is bound by the rules of logic. Rather, it's the other way around, the rules of logic are bound by it... which means reality isn't under any obligation to be logical, but we are under an obligation to adapt our logic to match reality. We draw our facts and truths from reality, and only then do we apply the rules of logic to it in an attempt to predict its future states. If reality ends up defying our predictions, we need to adjust our thinking (either rethink our truths and facts, or reflect on our logic and adjust if necessary).

[Meno_]

And in order to adjust our thinking, it depends on our conscious will to do so. Unless it is a purely determined compressive viable act, which can account for it, ex post facto.
If that were indeed the case then we may never inquire into the quality of change which detoured reason.

Reversely, its nearly impossible to do so, because of the blockages to see an evolving set of resulting conclusions from premises hypereilized, inducing anything but inferences drawn from the most general of premises.