| Subject: of intuition |
Author:
Damoclese
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Date Posted: 05/ 4/04 10:51am
In reply to:
Wade A. Tisthammer
's message, "Of logic." on 05/ 2/04 3:11pm
>
>There's also the evidence in the universe at the
>present moment. We are right now not outside time.
>That seems obvious.
But of course, there is nothing that says the past has to follow the example of now, or the future. That's the realm of induction, not logic.
>
>It does imply that the universe would have to traverse
>all the time of the past to get to the present.
I don't think it implies the universe necessarily has to do anything, rather like light looks to have traveled a bit longer than it probably actually has, because the universe was probably once a singularity.
The start of the universe evidently breaks and bends all the rules, why wouldn't time be among them?
>
>Are you abandoning logic because of this belief of
>yours?
I abandon logic each and everyday, and so do you because logic at its core, contains intuition which is logically impossible to validate. The trick of course is to minimize how large of a role intuition must play. I think in this argument, you've made a seriously large role for intuition, and you haven't really made it clear that reality would need to respect these intuitions, and you won't be able to because they are untestable premises and assumptions.
>
>Depends on what you mean by "define it." Obviously
>merely declaring the world to be flat won't make it
>true, but some things are logically necessary truths.
>No matter how long we look, we'll never find a round
>square for instance, since such a thing cannot
>possibly exist.
But that's because we've defined a square to have four sides to begin with. Perhaps some alien culture has defined a square as that which is rounded. Which of us has the logical necessary truth?
>
>Except that's an incorrect application of logic. The
>fault is not in mathematics itself. One apple falling
>aside another, having a total of two apples, is a
>correct application. If however one of the apples
>were blasted into bits when it hit the ground, we
>can't say that 1 + 1 = 2 is a mathematically correct
>description here.
In what way was my example an incorrect application of logic? If you have one cell and one other cell and they fuse together haven't you grounds for saying "Here is an example where logic isn't quite good enough?" Just because logic doesn't yield the right answer doesn't mean it's an incorrect application. It just means logic has shortcomings, and this is one of them.
>
>How so? Whether or not trinitarian monotheism is
>correct, it is at least logically consistent and does
>not violate any mathematical or logical laws.
One person being distinctly three personalities and even three separate states of being is not illogical? That's rather like saying a square is a circle and a triangle all at once although it has the appearance of being a square. Would you accept that? Would your mathematics teacher accept that?
>
>
>
>
>Get correct information.
And how exactly do you propose to do that for this particular argument?
>No mystical yardstick, just logical thinking.
Logical thinking on its own isn't going to show us whether or not one of these premises is true or not. For that we're going to need something testable, which this argument doesn't seem to have.
>If it is logically impossible it cannot be true in
>reality. To be otherwise would be, well, illogical.
Things that are logically impossible happen all the time in reality, and are quite illogical occurences. Why is it that people "feel"? Is there a logical reason for that? Neurology? Brains? Is there a logical reason then, for THAT? God? Evolution? Is there a logical reason for those? Eventually, one simply has to stop and accept that there aren't logical reasons for the way things are in reality. They just are, and that, for lack of better words, is illogical.
>
>
>Except that you're once again misapplying logic. The
>law of excluded middle does not say or imply
>that something has to be a particle or wave. Rather,
>the law of excluded middle says that for any
>proposition p, p and ~p exhaust
>all possibilities. (As long as you use a valid
>proposition and apply this rule correctly.)
If you have lived in Newton's time up till the the early 20th century, you would have said the only possibilities for light are either particle or wave, and you'd have been right. Those were all the possibilities for light that also explained the data observed. Did all those physicists including Newton misapply the law of noncontradiction, or was it really the case that the law of noncontradiction simply failed in this example? It DID fail, because there were unrealized possibilities that no one had thought of, the least being that light was BOTH. Why is it not possible that the past can be both finite and infinite? What sorts of unrealized possibilities do you think there are concerning time? Are you supposing we have all the information that can ever be had already?
>>
>>It begs it when it is applied to time.
>
>How so?
See above.
>
>If the past is infinite it must at least fit the
>definition of infinite. That's all I was saying here.
You are assuming again that reality has to follow definitions. Definitions change in accordance with what reality reveals. I have no doubt that if a new variety of infinity were discovered tomorrow the definition would change in accordance with that new infinity and maybe that new definition would allow the past new and slightly different connotations.
>
>
>I'm not putting forth any particular model of physics
>here. I'm just saying what necessarily results from
>the definition of "infintie age." If the universe had
>an infinite past and yet was not infinitely old, then
>the past wouldn't be infinite in the first place.
And I'm saying that this argument rests on very rickety definitions subject to change when the state of knowledge about time changes.(Time has already undergone one significant change making this whole conversation irrelevant in the first place, what is infinite in time from one perspective isn't from another; that is already known to science, but I digress)
>
>
>I did, for one. I pointed out that this is not a
>valid proposition. It is neither true nor false.
I'm sorry, but I'm not quite ready to admit Wade as the solver of the problem of self-referentiality. Got any others?
So
>what is your point here? What "problem" does the
>self-referential statement have anyway?
Well, for one it shows that there are places where logic breaks down and doesn't work as it should.(which you'll recall I said in response to your statement that logic never breaks down)
The problem that the particular example I used of "This sentence is false" is that you can't logically determine whether or not the sentence is actually true or false using logic alone. The English equivalent would be "Everything I just said is true, but I'm a pathological liar." How does one go about evaluating such a statement logically?
>
>Yes so. Allow me to demonstrate. (Note: the first
>premise is true by definition.)
>
>
>- (S => (T & V)) & ((T & V) => S)
>
>============
>
>- ~S & V (conditional proof assumption)
> - ~S (2, simplification)
> - (T & V) => S (1, simplification)
> - ~(T & V) (3, 4 modus tollens)
> - ~T or ~V (5, DeMorgan's laws)
> - V (2, simplification)
> - ~~V (7, double negation)
> - ~T (8, 6 disjunctive syllogism)
> - (~S & V) => ~T (2, 9 conditional proof)
>
>
>So if a deductively Valid argument is not
>Sound, then at least one premise is not
>True. Hence my question of which premise is
>false and why.
I'm not denying that that proof is relevant to arguments that can be tested. This one can't, and as such, is kicked to the curb way ahead of time, although it might be of interest as something to toy with now and then, but never to consider seriously.
>
>
>>It can fail the test of reality
>
>But then if the deductively valid argument does not
>produce a true conclusion in reality, then a premise
>must still be false.
But we'll never know because this argument is untestable in reality. Here's a parable:
A man makes a symbolical argument painstakingly showing that the universe rests on the back of a turtle. Definitionally he assumed that the universe is defined as all things, and that a turtle is a part of a universe. Then he reasoned that since a turtle is a part of the universe there was no good reason why it couldn't be the part that stabilized the universe. After all, any piece is as likely as any other to be that which supports the universe because nothing special is known about how the universe is supported. The strongest part of the turtle is its shell, so if a turtle were to support the universe, it would have to be with its shell. Hence, the fellow reasoned the universe must rest on the back of a turtle shell.
No one believed him although it was logically coherent. The poor fellow had made an untestable argument, and demanded people accept it without any way of testing it in reality.
He finally began to become jaded and showed decidely that the universe could not rest on a turtle shell and rest on a turtle shell simultaneously, and yet, the people still didn't buy his prior line of reasoning although it seemed perfectally clear to him.
The true paradox however, was the way he had set up his argument. He had demanded people who live in reality and test things empirically every day of their lives to accept something that wasn't even vaguely testable. He had based his definitions on a less than perfect understanding of the universe and what being a piece of the universe actually meant.
Just the same, he demanded someone reject his carefully refined premises as the only way his argument could fail. That was how he came to be the only ardent believer of his own carefully laid logic, and also the only real victim of his untestable snare.
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