Copied:

For example: classical logic, epistemic logic, paraconsistent logic, intuitionistic logic...

Assuming that logical pluralism is true. (that there are multiple correct ways you can infer a conclusion based on some premises (= that there are different possible inference rules.))

A common thing I often hear is that every logic has its own application area. For example: classical logic seems to be useful in math and computing, but not for reasoning in our world because, for example, of its material implication. A sentence like "if I died yesterday, i would be alive today' is true in classical logic because any Implication A -> B is always true if A is false. (that is just how implication is defined) but it is not true in our world because if I would have died yesterday I would still be dead today.

My question specifically is how we know what "works" in what application area?

It seems like the choice isn't made logically if logic itself is multiple ways to infer conclusions from premises (although logic is often seen as the cornerstone of philosophical argumentation). So it's just intuitions then? Our emotions/values?

And what, then, is the role of formal logic in philosophical argumentation?

“The universe is irrational.” This delusion is the basis of all bad philosophy.

“The universe has a Logical Nature.” This is the basis of all good philosophy.

How one proceeds toward the knowledge of the Logical Nature of reality is where bad philosophy is created.

Logic is either the product of human imagination or it is what we discover, and if it is what we discover then human imagination is accountable to it.

It is precisely what happens between the recognition, “reality has a Logical Nature,” and the process of explaining that nature that makes for bad philosophy.

For example, Hegel would affirm that “reality has a Logical Nature,” but he then goes onto distort this nature with his imagination. He doesn’t know how to recognize nature and proceed from its fact to more fact. As it is written, “the wise live from fact to fact, from the determinate to the determinate.” So it is precisely Hegel’s philosophical mediation that is the problem, that is, it is the way he manufactures a philosophical narrative against the Logical Nature of reality. It is the same with all bad philosophy.

I’ve been thinking about what I see as a false dichotomy in some discussions about rationality: the assumption that something must be either rational or irrational.
Søren Kierkegaard is an interesting example. He was a highly sophisticated philosophical thinker, but also a fierce critic of Hegel’s philosophical system. One of his central concerns was that understanding human existence through a rational system is not the same as actually existing, choosing and living.
Kierkegaard also used literary methods — irony, pseudonyms, narratives and indirect communication — as philosophical tools. Not simply to illustrate arguments, but to communicate forms of understanding that are difficult to acquire through abstract reasoning alone.
This reminds me of Frank Jackson’s famous thought experiment about Mary, the colour scientist, and Daniel Dennett’s criticism of it.
Mary knows everything about the physics and neuroscience of colour vision, but has never experienced colour herself. When she finally sees a red tomato, does she learn something new?
I find Dennett’s objection convincing. We cannot really imagine what complete knowledge of colour vision would entail. Suppose Mary also had access to technologies we don’t possess, allowing her to manipulate her own neural processes and reproduce the experience of seeing red. Would she then learn anything new when she actually saw the tomato?
My point is not that experience is somehow beyond physical explanation. Rather, our actual methods of acquiring knowledge are limited. We cannot simply read our way to every kind of understanding. Some things we need to experience, practise or live through.
This seems to me primarily an epistemological and methodological issue, not an ontological one.
And this brings me back to Kierkegaard. His literary methods can be understood as ways of helping readers acquire forms of understanding that cannot easily be communicated through systematic argument alone.
Recognising the limitations of rational analysis does not mean rejecting rationality. Nor does it require believing in some non-physical realm of knowledge.
Perhaps rationality itself requires recognising that rational analysis is not the only way we acquire understanding.
What do you think? Are we sometimes confusing the limits of a particular method of acquiring knowledge with the limits of rationality itself?

If you want to know the truth why don’t you pursue it?

If you want to know the truth how do you pursue it?

How do you know that the way you’re pursuing truth is the right or most intelligent way to pursue it?

In the 11th century, the philosopher Al-Ghazali, while searching for certain truth, argued that he couldn’t be sure his senses were reliable, because we can be dreaming without realizing it. Reasoning led him to this conclusion, but it also led to a spiritual and intellectual crisis: his reasoning could not justify why reason itself should be trusted. After months of crisis, he had a mystical experience in which, according to him, God showed him the truth. He concluded that there is a higher realm of judgment, inaccessible to us in ordinary life, which can judge reason.

Centuries later, Descartes began a similar search. He set out to rebuild his understanding of the world from the ground up, rejecting any belief that could possibly be doubted. His method led him to discard even mathematics. He ended up with the conclusion that because he thinks, he must exist. This became his foundation: his own existence is the one truth that cannot be doubted.

Both philosophers start by doubting what we normally trust, but they end in different places: Descartes in a certainty he sees at once, Al-Ghazali in a mystical experience. 

In public life, including science, law, and universities, we accept beliefs that can be checked by argument or evidence, and we distrust ‘my intuition told me’ . One could argue reason-based epistemic framework has brought scientific progress. But there are issues arising from this framework. Nowadays, if someone asks how you know a fact and you answer “my intuition told me,” people won’t take you seriously. My point is: reason cannot justify everything, so sometimes intuition or direct experience may be a better source of justification.

Imagine someone presents you with a structured, step-by-step argument for why we should physically hurt people for fun. The premises look reasonable and the logic seems valid, but you are far more certain that the conclusion is wrong. You reject the argument, and rightly so. You don’t reject it because you found a flaw. You reject it because you are more sure the conclusion is wrong than that every premise is right. In this case, intuition is the better judge. So, refusing to acknowledge intuition as a valid mode of knowing leaves us vulnerable to hyper-rationalized absurdities, where any well-packaged argument must be accepted simply because we cannot immediately spot its logical trick or give a stronger counterargument.

However, moral intuition is the easy case. Mystical experience is the harder and more controversial one. Simply calling it “intuition” makes it too abstract. William James describes mystical experience as having a “noetic” quality: it feels like knowing, not just feeling. People who have them often report that they were deeply and lastingly changed. If an experience feels like knowledge to the person and transforms their life, it is hard to say they have no justification at all.

Perhaps mystical knowledge is problematic for social epistemology: when I ask others to accept a claim, they have no way to check it, challenge it, or hold me accountable if it comes from a private experience. This is a fair limit on what society can use as a basis for shared decisions. But that is a question about what can be publicly verified, not about whether a belief can be justified for the person who has it. Some scientific discoveries arrive as a sudden, complete insight, and scientists then write them up as “I assumed this, tested that, got this result” because that is the form others accept. The discovery was written backwards. Eureka insights become public knowledge once they are proven. If a mystical insight can be stated in a form others can test, it can follow the same path. Those that can’t be tested remain private convictions, which is the limit William James admits.

So here is my question: Can a person sometimes know something through an experience they can’t explain or prove to anyone else?

The universe either has a Logical Nature, or it doesn’t.

If it does, then we must explain what this Logical Nature is. (And this nature is something that exists independently of us and can therefore be studied objectively).

If it does not, then how is anything determinate? How is anything what it is, rather than something else? And from where, then, does Logic arise?

Logic is not some metaphysical ideal to which reality must conform. Reality does not obey Logic as though Logic existed before it. Logic arises from reality itself, because reality is determinate.

Logic is possible because things are what they are; because there is something rather than nothing, something definite rather than an utter absence of determination.

Consider the act of denying that reality has a Logical Nature. To make such a denial is already to distinguish what is being asserted from what is being denied. It is to make a claim rather than its opposite, it is to presuppose determinacy in the very act of questioning it. It is to posit reality as determinate while trying to deny that it has this nature.

The modern philosopher would have us believe that Logic is merely a construct of human imagination, a contrived system imposed upon an otherwise indifferent universe. But what makes it possible for us to distinguish anything at all? What standards does the philosopher use to construct his logic?

The mind does not create the determinacy that makes thought possible. Nor does Logic stand outside reality and dictate its terms. Reality is the ground of Logic because determinacy is intrinsic to it. Man did not create the universe and its nature, he was simply born into it.

To deny reality's Logical Nature is therefore to confront a fundamental question: how can anything be denied, asserted, distinguished, or even thought without presupposing the very determinacy from which Logic arises? And why are we forced to operate this way within the universe?

Nietzsche had important existential insights because they were emancipated from superstition. He’s absolutely an important and powerful thinker. But he was also a rhetorician (and that’s the problem). Many of his claims do not stand up to scrutiny (but here I am referring to his claims about truth and logic). Here he absolutely fails.

It’s unfortunate that Nietzsche was deluded by skepticism in terms of truth, because this doesn’t actually assist in his important cultural project. Nietzsche’s approach to culture is enhanced by truth, not hindered by it. In fact, it absolutely requires it.

At least Nietzsche was consistent with his perspectivalism, thus leaping to a will to power. But he was not consistent with his will to power.

Civilization was born at the point when man began to resist error with truth (A=A). This emancipated him from his own subjectivity and the subjectivity of others. He could now say, “that is false, that way is incorrect or unintelligent, here is a better way and this is why.” He could then begin to protect himself from his own delusions and the delusions of others.

Without (A=A) there can be no civilization, there can be no civility. (A=A) is the axiom of civilization.

Hi all,

I am new to philosophy so please forgive me if I make any errors here. My question is pretty much as above. My personal favorite reading on this is definitely Dr Rachel Fraser's "Epistemic FOMO" in The Cambridge Humanities Review, she starts with Descartes and then breaks down the argument of Cassim Quassam in "Conspiracy Theories" and Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum in "A Lot of People are Saying". Personally, I find myself agreeing more with Muirhead and Rosenblum, I feel their arguments are more applicable to the modern world (they were also just fun to read and listen to on Ideas Podcast "Conspiracy theories are more dangerous than ever" episode). I'm going to focus on Muirhead and Rosenblum's argument here. They argue that the new era of conspiracy theories aims basically to disorient and confuse the general public as well as to attack the basis of political parties (to question their beliefs and legitimacy). I find that news outlets often do this and that this is definitely the case in the US right now (my mind is going to midterms advertisements, especially in swing states, I'm from one of the more volatile counties PA). So are modern conspiracies leading to indifference? In a way does it behave like a political tool? To disorient us as American citizens so much that it leads to that apathy? Is this true across the world? This is where I think that thinking slightly (not too much because the point of the meditations is to completely break down the way you think and I personally found that a bit heavy-handed) like Descartes would be very useful, in breaking down each thing we are exposed to. Or even thinking like Spinoza, taking everything as true until you have reasonable evidence to believe otherwise (I do think there are good conspiracy theories).

I posted this on r/askphilosophy but wanted to ask here too! I hope that is ok.

The statement, “a man cannot nourish his body with stones,” is absolutely true. One has to play sophist games to try and make it false.

It is a fact, for example, absolutely true and certain, that you are reading these words as much as I am typing them.

Trying to attack truth only seems easy because one is using it to do the attacking, and one is ignorant of this fact. It’s like the man who breathes air so that he can argue that oxygen doesn’t exist.

But why does this truth exist? What makes truth true?

Search as you will, but you will always end at the same place (if you know how to search correctly): it is the Logical nature of the universe that makes truth true. It is true when we say ‘a mountain is not a river’ because, in reality, the identity of a mountain is not the same as a river, and this is a Logical fact of the universe.

As with our words, they are created from the truth of this identity, otherwise they couldn’t exist at all, and because of this, because they rise up from the determinate nature of reality, because they contain this determinate nature themselves, they have the power to identify what is determinate, because they are determinate.

Hi everyone!.
I’m interested in learning more about philosophy,where should i start? What online free resources would you recommend for a beginner?

I am an Atheist, so what, I am also a Logical Realist, so are you. I am not here to debate this. I am here to reduce modern philosophy to its consistent absurdity.

The whole world is full of men who deny that truth is real. The whole world is full of philosophers, and men poisoned by philosophers, who confess that all logic is a mere human construct. But it requires a Christian or a Rationalist (not a philosopher!) to trace this premise to its inevitable conclusion of subjective despair.

If all logic is constructed then there is no such thing as validity or soundness, because validity and soundness are then constructs of a constructed logic. Whose construct?! Why should a man prefer the construct he is condemned by over the one he creates to justify himself?

(This Logic is too high for the modern philosopher, he cannot comprehend it because the relativism of his modern philosophy has left him rationally incompetent).

As soon as the modern philosopher claims that truth is the invention of man’s imagination, he has locked himself within his own solipsistic matrix.

The defenders of Reason are failing in their reductio ad absurdum toward modern philosophy. All those who love Reason must do better.

As an Atheist, I argue for the right and supremacy of the Christian worldview, when it is contrasted with the epistemological relativism of modern philosophy. Indeed, how can the modern philosopher even object? For he cannot claim that Christianity is “false,” if he does not have the truth.

One cannot gain an advantage if one shares the same unconscious, normative delusions as others. It is necessary to transcend delusions, but not to reveal this fact to those who are still bound by delusions.

—-

For those reading this, thinking these are my positive thoughts towards knowledge. That assumption would be false. In general, I do not endorse that which might be considered “unholy” in terms of virtue. I only endorse it in terms of that which kicks against the tyranny of moralism. Unholy passages are passages I would consider to be written by malevolent demons, if they existed.

The lies that are the truths of the world command human conscience, therefore one should learn to be a master of lies.

—-

For those reading this, thinking these are my positive thoughts towards knowledge. That assumption would be false. In general, I do not endorse that which might be considered “unholy” in terms of virtue. I only endorse it in terms of that which kicks against the tyranny of moralism. Unholy passages are passages I would consider to be written by malevolent demons, if they existed.

Nietzsche is confusing classification (grouping different things together based on similarities) with identity (the fact that all things are their determinate selves).

Classifying a million different oak leaves under the concept "leaf” in no way refutes the fact of identity. In fact, Nietzsche can’t even make his point without logic, because in order to even be able to say that “these two leaves are not identical,” requires identity (A=A).

We cannot even speak of 'differences' unless the things being compared possess determinate identities. Difference requires two distinct things, each of which must be itself (A and B) to differ from one another. To deny identity is to make difference itself unthinkable.

Logic does not require that "there are identical cases" in the sense of two separate events or objects being clones of one another. Logic simply states that every thing is what it is, and not another thing.

To say A=A is not to say "there are two identical things called A." It is to say that whatever is, is itself. A thing cannot simultaneously possess a property and lack that exact same property in the same way and at the same time. (Fire is not ice).

When Nietzsche writes that "Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases," he is using a distinction to make a truth claim. He is implying that his statement is true, and the alternative is false. The moment he distinguishes his insight from "false" logic, he is relying on the Law of Non-Contradiction.

Logic isn't a human fiction imposed on a chaotic world; it's the determinate nature of the reality we were born into.

“Believe what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

The reduction of rational discourse to raw power.

Let me be clear, the objective refutation of fundamentalist Christianity isn’t equivalent to the psychological death of Christianity.

The death of fundamentalist Christianity is simple: the Bible is not the Word of God, it’s a compilation of different books that were written by men as they were influenced by the cultures in which they lived and emerged from.

Once the authority of the Bible as the “Word of God” is destroyed, fundamentalist Christianity falls with it (at least at the fundamental level of inquiry and justification).

This doesn’t mean there won’t still be fundamentalist believers. It will simply mean that the power of the narrative that “the Bible is the Word of God,” will have been objectively exposed and refuted. This has already happened through Rational Biblical Scholarship (Bart Ehrman and others doing work like him).

For example, the assumption that the Bible is one book that contains one unified theology, is false. But this systematic presupposition is vital to fundamentalist Christianity.

All fundamentalism hinges on one premise: the Bible is the Word of God. If this is exposed and refuted to be false, no matter how much fundamentalist Christianity tries to posture, it will exist as defeated at its fundamental level.

In contrast to this, I maintain that the life of faith is immune to these critiques, not in a rational sense, but in an experiential and psychological sense. (And) the relativism of modern philosophy, epistemology, formal logic, speculations in physics, have paved the way for the legitimacy of the life of faith.

(I would also note that fundamentalism does not reflect the life of faith. The life of faith is something far deeper are more manifestly profound than fundamentalism. To take up fundamentalism through fideism would not constitute the life of faith. Christianity doesn’t have anything higher to offer than the life of faith, and it can only be known to have taken place because of how fundamentally it transforms those who have experienced it and now live it. This transformation can be characterized as an irrational love toward God and man. It will appear irrational to all those who see it, but it will not be offensive because it is an authentic love that really loves with an irrational intensity of loving activity).

I don’t know of anything more radical and existentially transcendent than Christianity. It is a command to give up this life and live in service for another, which means to live in Christian love. There is no one who is a real Christian and also a hater, there are only real Christians who suffer for the love of Christ and the Kingdom of God.

The highest concept is Logic. Of course, Logic is first and foremost a fact. However, this doesn’t change the fact that Logic is also the highest concept because it is the standard used to construct and order all concepts.

What is interesting is that man, through his imagination, can attempt to think of a higher concept in the being of a God.

This is not a claim that God exists, it is simply an observation about what man can attempt to rationally do through his imagination.

But what I find so fascinating is the attempt of imagination to try to legitimately construct a greater and higher concept than Logic. Here, merely asserting theological of philosophical premises that claim they are higher or more primitive than Logic, doesn’t, and cannot, count as a legitimate proof that the claim itself transcends the ontological status of Logic, because the claim still presupposed a Logic more fundamental than itself.