Laws of Logic are perhaps like the Laws of Physics. We don't create them. We discover them. We discover gravity by watching things "fall". We discover the law of identity by seeing things being exclusively identified.
Im absolutely loving these conversations, keep uploading them! Watched Alex years ago when i started my atheistic journey. And found unsolicited advice only recently, to hear these discussions is absolutely wonderful!
Impossible to conceive of a world where the laws of logic don't apply. Even a completely chaotic world needs to submit to the logical proposition: "this is a completely chaotic world."
I like his point that we use the laws of logic to analyse the laws of logic. This implies there must have been some Nash equilibrium formed in the game between the dynamics of the outer world and the dynamics of the inner world, to get to a 'reasonable logic' out of all the logics that can analyse both itself and the outer world. My opinion this equillibrium is found and based on the pauli exclusion principle, that is something maybe a mix from both our genetic past as bacteria, and our observational past as animal observers, combined. It creates for us the physical concept of law of non contradiction, and from this the other laws followed imo
My intuition is that logical laws are like physical laws in that they're both just descriptions of reality that are sufficiently ubiquitous, in our experience, to seem inviolate. Gauss's Law wasn't prescribed; it's just a description of how magnetic flux seems to work whenever we look at it. Noncontradiction wasn't prescribed; it's just a reflection on the reality that nobody ever sees A and not-A concurrently in the same context.
Logic, like science, isn't about building a perfect answer, but rather about following the evidence and engaging with scrutiny. We are the apex predator of a world built on the suffering and survival of millions of years of life forms, and we have relatively recently developed communication with each other. It's perfectly reasonable to accept the idea that our understanding of logic is incomplete while still endeavoring to expand our understanding of it
I have some specific thoughts regarding this. Specifically, I think it originated from being able to interpret inputs. When an input received a signal, in order to have any kind of perception there must be a change from one point in time and another. At this point, there would be both A and A' (observation at T1) and B and B' (observation at T2). If these is no distinction between A and B, there can be nothing perceived. So given this, in order to have perception, we must have the law of non-contradiction and the law of identity. I think the law of excluded middle is just because when we label things we generally do so in a form of sets. Where A is a subset or identical to B or the inverse, they fit the law of excluded middle. This is where A and B are the labels for some sets.
I am also no Quantum physicist, so this is probably wrong for some reason that would be incredibly obvious to someone who is, but to me it seems that a wave is the definitional opposite of a particle, therefore something in reality cannot both be a particle and simultaneously be a wave ( a not particle), because of the law of noncontradiction. However in reality, it seems that this is the case almost all the time everywhere, where things are behaving both as particles and as waves simultaneously, which seems to violate the law of noncontradiction. I wonder if anyone can help me correct this
In my understanding, wave-particle duality is an observation from classical physics in which things seem to have wave-like properties in one set of circumstances and particle-like properties in another set of circumstances. It wasn't meant to say that the thing _is_ both a wave and a particle, simultaneously. In quantum physics, they talk about "quanta," which are conceptual particles whose existence is statistical in nature and described by a "wave function." I think a lot of confusion comes from the way subject matter experts reuse terms between quantum and classical physics.
In your Batman story, you said the reason that it was valid Was because there was no way that both premises could be true because they are contradictory. Isn't it also the case that because it is a fact of reality that Batman's cape is always black, that there's no way that any two premises ( Whether they happen to be true or false) could lead to the conclusion being false, since it always is true. for example if I were to say: 1. Today is Monday 2. Tomorrow is Tuesday 3. Therefore the Earth is an oblate spheroid. It would seem to me that there's no way, if the premises are true that the conclusion could be false. But likewise: 1. Today is Monday 2. Tomorrow is not Tuesday 3. Therefore the Earth is an oblate spheroid Even with the two premises now in contradiction, it is still true in all circumstances that the Earth is an oblate spheroid. I feel that I must be missing something important.
But it isn't true in all circumstances that Batman's cape is black and the earth is an oblate spheroid. It's perfectly concievebale that Batman could have had a purple cape. It also could be in some possible world that the earth is egg shaped. With logic like this, you need to consider possible worlds and not just how the world really is. Or to think about it another way, if someone had absolutely no knowledge of the Earth, would telling them that today is Monday and tomorrow is Tuesday convince them that the earth is a sphere? Of course not, so it's not a valid argument.
I'm so confused. I would just say the laws of logic are necessary and could not have been otherwise. How exactly does God help explain logic? Can anyone enlighten me?
@keitumetsemodipa3012 Truth is whatever makes you achieve the goal. @keitumetsemodipa3012 Earth is flat when you try to draw a map of your town. Earth is round when you try to draw a map of the world. General Relativity is true when you try to launch a satellite. General relativity is false when you try to figure out what happens inside a black hole.
If quantum mechanics follow different laws of logic then we're used to then why does math still predict it? Might not be articulated well but think about it. Math is just a very quantitative form of logic so it seem like a valid question.
If God is real, then you can also sin, which is a thing God can't do. I think the get around for this is that God can do anything which is logically possible, so even though you have the ability to create such a stone ( which contains no logical contradictions) the idea of God creating such a stone contains contradictions, and therefore is illogical. So it's not that God can do anything you can do, it's God can do anything you can do which is also logical. This isn't a perfect analogy, but I would think about it a little bit like a woman saying to her husband that she can do anything he can do, and him responding with " can you make sperm?" To which she might reasonably reply, it's not logically possible for me to create sperm, I mean I can do anything that is possible for a woman to do that you can also do. I know this isn't a great analogy.
@@sordidknifeparty The redefine God game! A "God" that by definition should be Omnipotent can't do everything? God can't create a stone it can not lift but can create logic it can not violate? And NO we can not "create" a stone or anything else. "Create" is ex nihilo, "out of nothin".
I'm very much in the "we invented logic to describe the reality we witness" camp. When you get into metaphysics I tend to cry BS, for the very reasons outlined by the argument "if logic can be different, then what does one use to argue that it could have been different?" This is sidestepped by sticking to observable and testable reality and one needs to show that anything outside of observable and testable reality is a) different to observable and testable reality, and b) knowable within observable and testable reality. EDIT: I did love the contradiction between God being bound by the laws of logic and God creating the laws of logic!
Why can’t the “laws of logic” just be part of the compression algorithm our brains use to assimilate information? Why do they have to be external? Because they “work”? Lots of algorithms work but we created them; they didn’t exist in any sense other than questioning whether math is invented or discovered.
Seems to me the theist and atheist both view the laws of logic as these brute facts of reality that just are. The theist typically says, not that God creates or defines the laws of logic, but that logic is an aspects or attribute of his nature. God just is that way. To which the atheist can reasonably reply that the universe or some immaterial reality just is that way. I think the more helpful question is: if logic is inextricably linked to reality, is it more likely that ultimate reality is a rational mind or is it more likely that ultimate reality is a random unintelligible soup of mindless chaos?
It sounds to me like you are imagining the chaos soup as being the default fundamental reality and that somehow the rational mind of God acts on it. That's not the theistic view as I understand it. The theistic view is that the orderly rational mind of God is the default (it's the most fundamental reality) and the material universe is sourced from that mind. I agree Ockham's Razor would imply that, given nothing but chaos soup, no God is the simplest explanation. But we don't observe chaos soup. We observe an ordered universe governed by the laws of physics. And we observe math and logic functioning consistently. So are reliable laws of math, logic, and physics more consistent with a mind or with chaos soup?
@@shassett79 I mean plain old reality...like the MOST plain, most basic, fundamental reality. E.g. Molecules are more fundamental than cells. Atoms are more fundamental than molecules. Protons, quarks, and gluons are more fundamental than atoms. Quantum states, the fundamental forces, and the laws of physics are more fundamental still. The most fundamental things in the material universe seem to be energy and information (and maybe the laws of logic are even more fundamental than those). So if the MOST basic reality science has found so far is energy and information (and maybe rationality), is it crazy to think that maybe reality is more like a mind than not-a-mind?
I dont think the universe seems to follow the laws of logic at all, nor that it seems to disrespect them. This is a problem about language. "What if, in this universe, it was possible for both A and ~A be true?" Sure, there are (para)consistent logics where this can happen, but when we say ~A we MEAN that A is false. And when we say that something is false we MEAN that it is not true. So the problem isnt the universe, just the way we describe it. If this seems circular, its because it is. But there is no way around that. Take a dictionary and choose a word. Its description has words, look up those words on the same dictionary etc... . Since there are only finitely many words, you will get a circular definition. We still agree on what words mean a surprising amount of the time, using some kind of "common sense" that we seem to learn by being exposed to the language for long enough. Although we can also get heated discussions of wether cereal is or isnt soup.
logic can never create new information, only transform existing information. logik a result of how our minds work. logic is manifest in our way of thinking, not in reality.
@@DekemaStokesit is. with another type of brain it would be different. but a mind that that cannot identify a contradiction in its own thinking would probably have problems.
Which implies that aliens wouldn't necessarily have the same logic and mathematics as humans do, nor the concept of causality that seems to be hardwired in our brains (which makes it incredibly difficult to communicate with them in a meaningful way).
@@JerehmiaBoaz maybe. Or it could be that every intelligent being by necessity must organise data in so similar ways that the same type of "logic" will apear. or on the other end of the spectrum: that they wont have anything like math or logic at all..
You CAN'T know velocity and position at the same time, in normal life. Velocity is to calculate the time between two positions, thus you necessarily have to spread the position of an object out to even THINK about velocity! For people to believe that this is a special property of Quantum Mechanics tells me that physicists don't know how to think rationally.
