Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Blog Post #1 - Thiago
Logic and the way it affects us in our day to day interactions is interesting to me. I've been hearing all my life the expressions "its only logical" or "use logic" or "logically, blah blah blah." So what has been occurring to me and what I've been thinking about is whether logic is simply a human ideal and an ingrained in the way our brain reasoning works, or if it is possible that if mankind followed a completely different course through the thousands of years of its existence, and if because of this, we evolved to have an entirely different "logical process," one that everyone agreed and considered "logical" today. Is it possible that maybe a completely illogical set of events that work with each other could sound logical in another way. It's hard to explain simply because all my life, being a "sane" human being, I have understood the logical process of events and how to use logic and reason in my dad to day life. What if chess, a widely known game of logic and using it to defeat your opponent was completely nonsensical in another reality. The way one wins or masters game was completely illogical and made no sense to the common human. But what if, hypothetically, a deemed insane person could function and play that game perfectly with his or her friend in a mental asylum. I may be pushing the last hypothesis a bit too far. But what I question is, why is it that if I say "use logic" and proceed to make assumptions about a certain set of events, my friend could easily follow the assumptions and steps to come to the same conclusion as I have, assuming the friend in question is not in fact insane. Our brains may be programmed to a certain system of logical methods that we deem correct, but another question I asked is what if just because us "logical people" are the majority that we are in fact those who use "logic" and correct. The minority, those who we deem crazy, or mad, are called these because we completely do not understand, but in fact they may have a completely different and opposite logical system that makes it so that we will never understand them or the other way around.
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I agree with you Thiago. Your post made me think, what really is logic? It's denotation is a "reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity." By its definition, the principles we restrict ourselves in are not any specific principles or set principles, however they have to be validated. So how do we validate our principles? That is what I think you were discussing when you talked about the chess game. We compare by standards we make ourselves. So yes, it would make sense that in another world it might not make sense, that in another community with other principles of validity some things can be difference. Thus, it makes sense that logic would be something established by humans, as you mentioned, and different people might act "logically" in different ways.
ReplyDeleteI have often wondered this myself although I have approached it in a different way. My question instead was, what gives us the authority to decide what is logical or not? I agree with this statement, and it actually goes along with what i was arguing in my blog post. I came to the conclusion that it is difficult to know why things are the way they are and most of the time we don't really know why things are that way. Therefore, how can we really consider it knowledge?
ReplyDeleteHere is the link (what I am referring to is more towards the end of the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR8Um_vZ3oM
I agree with you because I don't really think anything is really logical in the way it should be. Logic is defined as reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity. Who and when did people come up with these so called "strict principles of validity?"
Really good questions, Thiago, as well good comments by Bel and Mel. A couple of things I'd say. First, continuing to chase down this question by asking if thinking is correct only within a certain system will take you very far. The "different systems" might be areas of knowledge, cultures, games with different rules. You are taking a really important step toward understanding where this course is going. Fine job. Second, there's interesting research from psychology about researchers pretending to be insane in order to gain access to the patients' perspective in mental institutions. Turns out that they fooled the doctors pretty easily, but they didn't fool the patients, who said things like "what are you doing here? You're not crazy like us." What was it that they copied to fool the doctors but couldn't fake well enough to fool the patients?
ReplyDeleteKeep asking this question, Thiago, in a few months you'll have a better answer.