Today's Lunch Conversation

So, here are a few thoughts on logic.

I have a friend who I eat lunch with and he was complaining about logic. He eventually said "the problem with logic is that it's incomplete, reason is limited."

This kind of thinking gets on my nerves. Now, not only is logic a complete system, it is provably complete. The problem that people have with logic isn't that it's incomplete, it's that they use it wrong.

Now, I really do believe (sadly along with many post-modernists) that there are some subjects that are beyond our ability to reason, but this isn't a deficiency in reason, it's a deficiency in our ability to apply reason to these subjects. Reason is a perfect tool often used imperfectly. I mean, I can construct an argument that is obviously not true but totally valid. I can do this cause validity has nothing to do with truth...validity, strictly speaking, only refers to the correct structure of an argument.

For example. Here is a completely valid argument, using the law of transitivity, that is obviously wrong.

Premise 1 Nothing is better than God.
Premise 2 A ham and cheese sandwich is better than nothing.

Conclusion: A ham and cheese sandwich is better than God.

See? Just cause an argument lines up correctly doesn't mean it's true. What's important is that the premises accurately reflect reality (and that they're not purposefully being misused as I just did.)

So when people complain about logic what they're really complaining about is the limitations of their knowledge/premises. It is always possible to use reason to solve a problem, reason has domain over every aspect of life...the only problem is that in life, often, we don't have enough information to reason correctly. However, this is our limitation.

In my last post I shared a quotation that a friend shared with me as he was reading the book Dune (okay, now you know where it came from). In that quotation it sorta made this point, but in the quotation the emphasis was directed at how we often reason poorly in personal matters. So my question is why is that the case?

My theory is that we reason poorly in personal matters because we're so focused on our own experience, we're so blinded by the intensity of what we feel, that we don't pull out the correct premises to reason from. We're so close to the problem that we misapply the methods of logic and come up with horrible conclusions.

Well that's all I have to say. I just wanted to vent a little after today's conversation.

Hope everyone is doing fabulous.