You can certainly classify causation in the realm of metaphysics, but that doesn’t mean it’s a black-or-white issue. Causation holds its essence in logic, for how can you address an action without finding the reason for its cause? Seems to me you’ve effectively categorized philosophy. Are you one of the people who, if robbed by a man in a ski mask, maintain that any consequential heuristic that someone might make regarding men in ski masks would be wrong since one should only see them as individuals?
In other words, are you really going to limit your imagination to prescribed systems of philosophy, neglecting to view it outside the established box? I’d like to think you would have more creativity, but I don’t know.
You logically come to the conclusion that “we are left with (a) an uncaused first cause(s) or (b) an eternal universe. There simply are no other alternatives. The universe cannot pull itself into existence by its bootstraps” when, in fact, you don’t know if these are the only two alternatives. Logically speaking, yes, those are the only plausible realities…but again, that’s only within the confines of logic. You failed to answer the question, as I predicted. Simply because you can only conceive of two possibilities doesn’t necessarily mean those are the only two.
Congratulations, you have denoted the exact limit to logic of which I spoke. That’s my entire point.
That merely denotes the limits (imperfections) of knowledge – not the limit of the logic applied to it. Are you suggesting that only the omniscient can be logical?
That isn’t an ad hominem attack, it’s just an argument with a missing premise; the premise that conservative arguments are wrong in themselves. Obviously it wouldn’t be hard to attack what their saying, but it isn’t ad hom.
An ad hominem attack is a personal attack which attempts to discredit any argument. An example would be:
Are you implying that I believe only an omniscient individuals would be capable of logic? I can’t tell if your question is rhetorical rather than straight forward. If you’re assuming this, you’re incorrect. Imperfections in knowledge could include perfectly functioning logic. Look at the reasoning by others above. They successfully limited the only two logical possibilities concerning the original cause and what could have possibly been before. Either there was an uncaused cause or it’s endless.
What I’m saying is that your reasoning is logical, and therefore it is limited. Logic is a catalyst…not the destination. I keep saying this and nobody seems to be grasping it.
I’m talking about thinking outside the box; thinking outside of logic. Don’t tell me we aren’t capable of it; we certainly are. People intuitively know things all the time. Simply because you can’t qualify or quantify something doesn’t mean it ceases to exist. Just because we can’t communicate something doesn’t mean we can’t feel it. You’re stuck looking at logic and only thinking logically. Think outside of it.
This seems to be a matter of semantics (definitions), as usual. There’s no right or wrong way of defining these therms, but the way I see them, (1) all reasoning is logical (by definition: one could not reason without applying logic), and (2) intuition and logic are not necessarily exclusive. Yes, I could have an intuition (feeling) about something but I couldn’t think outside of (without) logic. Disentagling word confusions is sometimes fun but this one, in particular, hasn’t yielded any profit for me so far.
If you keep an active mind, you will discover (assuming that you started with common-sense rationality) that every challenge you examine will strengthen your convictions, that the conscious, reasoned rejection of false theories will help you to clarify and amplify the true ones, that your ideological enemies will make you invulnerable by providing countless demonstrations of their own impotence.
And then it is followed by:
You will not have to keep your mind eternally open to the task of examining every new variant of the same old falsehoods. You will discover that they are variants of attacks on certain philosophical essentials – and that the entire, gigantic battle of philosophy (and of human history) revolves around the upholding or the destruction of these essentials. You will learn to recognize at a glance a given theory’s stand on these essentials, and to reject the attacks without lengthy consideration – because you will know (and will be able to prove) in what way any given attack, old or new, is made of contradictions and ‘stolen concepts’.
Ever since I discovered libertarianism, I have found this to be more and more true with every person I talk to.
I think you’re confusing logic, which operates on premises, with the premises themselves. Strictly speaking, logic isn’t bound to reality. There’s no logical reason why “Everything that exists has a cause” must be held as a premise.
Here I’d say that MrSchnapps is correct. You’re not talking about logic here, you’re talking about metaphysics. While metaphysics uses logic (or should use it, IMO), it’s hardly the same thing as logic.
Again, I don’t see how causation is bound to logic at all. Logic says nothing about the nature of the universe except that it must be non-contradictory - that is, it must be consistent. What stymies us in discussions about ultimate causation is that the universe is still, for all intents and purposes, not a closed system. That is, we don’t have an exhaustive list of premises about the universe which we can logically evaluate.
I’ll go one further with you and say that, by some definitions of “existence”, you don’t exist. By those definitions, saying that you don’t exist is the same as saying there is no “you” that exists - there’s nothing fundamentally built into the universe which refers to you. The implication here is that only the fundamental particles of the universe can be said to actually exist.
Logic most certainly is limited with respect to knowledge. As you correctly point out, the two are in no way one and the same thing. But while people tend to use very much the same definitions for the word “logic”, there are wildly disparate definitions used for the word “knowledge”.
The reason logic is limited in this way is because logic doesn’t dictate any premises, except for one - the Law of Non-Contradiction. At the risk of sounding Randian, take that premise away and the entire edifice of logic is without foundation.
Where do you think intuition comes from? If you think it comes from the subconscious part of the mind, then let me ask you this: what makes you think that the subconscious is necessarily illogical?
When you talk about “thinking outside of logic”, I translate that as “foregoing the Law of Non-Contradiction”. Unfortunately, doing that leads to not thinking at all. If you assume that A = A and A != A (again, not trying to sound Randian), then you must treat everything as the same as everything else, and also the same as nothing. Thankfully, our minds seem to instinctively rebel against this notion - that is, we seem to have a non-contradictory instinct. That’s why the Law of Non-Contradiction seems self-evident - because of the non-contradictory instinct, it makes intuitive sense to us.
Well, I agree with Auto in spirit about A = A, but I again want to suggest that the Misesian-Mengerian way of phrasing it is more elucidating: that it simply inheres in the approach we take to thinking about A that it is inconceivable (nonsense, meaningless) to write or say “A != A” as a claimed truth. No one ever really believes something that could be accurately described as a contradiction in that sense, because it is impossible to think or believe.
Sure, it is possible to think the words “A and not-A,” but there is no experience that corresponds to those words. Those words don’t refer to anything. They don’t communicate anything that the speaker is experiencing or has ever experienced, hence they are gibberish in the plainest sense.
Therefore, since we know for absolute certain that if someone claims something of the form “A != A” the words must be a miscommunication, I say why not call it a miscommunication rather than say they broke a law? That way they can explain what they did mean, or else they just might realize that they were just spinning meaningless words that didn’t mean anything, even to them (this is actually extremely common). The case for this is elaborated here.
If by propagandic you mean filled with politically motivated bullshit, then I probably agree, but I would include a lot of pure science in there as well. The only academic field that I haven’t noticed any corruption in is engineering (but that could just be because I’m not familiar with it).
I’m going to have to agree with AJ here. It depends on what you mean by “pure science”. There are aspects of economics and geology that are “pure science”. It’s not called the “law of supply and demand” for nothing. There is no political content in that statement of economics. Just because it’s a social science and not a “hard science” doesn’t mean it’s not science.
I don’t think intuition comes from the subconscious. I suppose it could, because we don’t know the details of it, but I’m not making that claim anyhow. Intuition is something, quite frankly, whose source we will likely never know–or so I predict. Nevertheless, it exists.
One could possibly make the argument that instinct is also outside of logic. For instance, instinct makes mother cobras leave their nests immediately after their babies hatch. There is no logic to it; however, if she didn’t leave, she would (also) instinctively eat her babies since cobras are primarily cannibalistic. She certainly doesn’t think, “I should leave now because otherwise I would have an unsatiable urge to eat my own children.”
Take a reaction to someone jumping out to scare you. That’s not a logical action. You jump out of instinct, and just as babies are easily startled, so are we. It’s something, in fact, we likely cannot control. When someone jumps out and scares you, you don’t take the information in, think about it and logically conclude to scream like a little girl while running away.
Getting back to intuition, all I know is that it exists. I feel certain things, and there’s no logic involved.
I’m not maintaining that logic is bound to reality. Who made that claim? Also, I’m not claiming that causation = logic. That’s silly. However, to assume that causation does not operate by means of logic is also silly. Every action has a cause, right? One must find the reason for the cause. In other words, we must logically conclude that all actions have a cause. Does that make more sense?
Again, if you and Mr. Schnapps insist on secularizing philosophy, you will continue to only see things that exist within your little box. I know causation is primarily a metaphysical concept, but to ignore its logical property is short sighted. For example, a square can be a rectangle, but a rectangle cannot be a square. To ignore the fact that a square can be a rectangle because a rectangle is a different shape altogether and then claim that since the two are different, they are not at all related is short sighted.
In response to, “By some definitions of ‘existence’, you don’t exist. By those definitions, saying that you don’t exist is the same as saying there is no ‘you’ that exists - there’s nothing fundamentally built into the universe which refers to you. The implication here is that only the fundamental particles of the universe can be said to actually exist,” I would say this means very little in reference to our discussion. It seems as though you’re swaying it to adhere more to metaphysics as a system, which wasn’t my intention at all. Nevertheless, I’ll note your stance that, “The implication here is that only the fundamental particles of the universe can be said to actually exist,” even though I really don’t know why you mentioned it.
As for the law of non-contradiction, it’s absolutely correct in the world of logic. However, there are plenty of contradictions in our lives. Emotionally, it is possible to both hate and love somebody at the same time. For instance, if a child blows $50k his parents meant for college, the father may actually hate him for doing so yet love him at the same time. Logically speaking, you could say, “Well, the hate is a reaction to the love as the premise,” yet you would be ignoring the emotional system altogether. Emotionally, the father is actually hating and loving his child at the same time.
The law of non-contradiction can’t explain that because it’s dealing with an emotional scenario. Yet again, the limits of logic are prevalent.
Where else do you think intuition could come from, besides the subconscious? I didn’t think you were making any claim about where it comes from, nor was I trying to state otherwise. But since you brought up the notion of “intuition”, I thought it would be prudent to ask you what you mean by it. As a start, I asked you where you think it comes from. I figured that how you answer that question will say a lot about how you define “intuition”.
You seem to be implicitly defining “logic” such that it’s necessarily a conscious reasoning process. Am I correct? If so, then I suspect your definition of “logic” is at odds with that (or those) of the other participants in this thread. However, using your apparent definition of “logic” arguendo*,* instinctive behaviors are indeed outside of logic, for the reason that you state - there’s no conscious reasoning (valid or invalid) involved.
On the other hand, can instinct and intuition contain truth? First off, that depends on how you define the word. Second, while IMO it may certainly be true that you feel a certain thing at a certain point in time, I don’t see how it can be judged as either correct or incorrect. So I’m not sure what kind of knowledge, if any, can be provided by instinct or intuition.
You wrote earlier that “[logic] is confined to things that already exist.” That’s certainly not true.
I didn’t claim that you were claiming otherwise. I was addressing the claim that you did make, which was that causation is bound to logic. Certainly you’ll agree that that isn’t the same as saying that causation is equal to logic.
Your point here about “causation” depends on a particular definition for that word, one which implies its universality. Does every action have a cause? Not necessarily! Only if you first presume that every action must have a cause do you run into paradoxes - paradoxes which can’t be resolved because of what I wrote earlier. “Every action must have a cause” certainly isn’t a deductive conclusion in this context - it’s either a premise or an inductive conclusion. In the latter case, however, it’s only a tentative conclusion, because it inductive reasoning by definition allows for the possibility that its conclusions are false.
I’m not sure what you mean by “secularizing philosophy”. Can you please explain?
Regarding rectangles and squares, I think you meant to say that all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Certainly some rectangles can indeed also be squares, since the converse is true (“a square can be a rectangle”, in your words).
My point was simply to illustrate that there’s no “proper” or “correct” definition for the word “existence”.
Honestly, I think the conclusions you draw from the scenario you present are highly disputable. That is, I seriously doubt that saying “the father is actually hating and loving his child at the same time” is an accurate description of the situation.
EDIT: I fixed the inaccuracy in the quote at the beginning of the post.
On the one hand, I think it seems (or feels, pace Brutus) inconceivable because of the non-contradictory instinct I wrote about. It seems to me that our minds instinctively (try to) avoid contradictions. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s literally impossible to think or believe things that are (or seem like) contradictions, but the mind may go through incredible contortions in trying to reconcile them. Victims of systematic abuse are a blatant example of this phenomenon.
This brings up the issue (also brought up in the “Animal Liberation” thread) of whether one can experience things like math.
Oh, I agree that, if one’s goal is to help someone else understand his mistakes in logic, he shouldn’t act all authoritarian and/or intimidating towards that other person. So I agree in calling it simply a miscommunication or a mistake. The idea is to make sure the other person knows you’re not trying to make him “look bad” in pointing out his errors.
As for victims of abuse, I think they do things like develop split personalities, repress things, etc. So they may vacillate between love and hate or whatever, but it doesn’t even make sense to talk about someone both feeling love (whatever sensations that entails) and not feeling love at the same moment. And I am certain that whatever other example we look at it will be the same.
Bottom line, there are a lot of things that are hard enough to describe in words that fall back into calling them contradictions, but they are really things like vacillating between two states, having some characteristics of one state and some characteristics of another, etc.
As to why we know to avoid contradictions (in words), it is part of the praxeology of communication. It certainly feels on the level of an instinct because language use is deeply ingrained, but it’s just the fact that we know that if we say something that sounds contradictory (a type of nonsense) to another person, there will be bad consequences, and we do indeed instinctively try to avoid bad consequences.
