>The MS Weapon thread has raised some important questions around the
>role of logic. Is it "just" a tool? What is its scope and limits?
>Do we need means outside of logic to determine when it is appropriate
>to use it? Can a logical argument say anything about reality, or is
>it (as one contributor put it recently) just "smoke and mirrors"?
>I have a few ideas, but I'd like to hear from others first.
Throwing blood to the sharks:
Might it help to view this from the position that "logic" is a
derivative of "logos?" This would have similarities to what Tani Jantsang
and Phil Marsh have written regarding Platonic forms -- that a baseball does
not participate in the form "baseball," but rather in the forms "pi,"
"sphere," etc. "Logos" stands in this way as a framework, much the same as
quantum theory, etc. stand as frameworks, i.e., as a Platonic form. This
form consists of the way that memes relate to each other in an ideosphere,
and the various refinements of logical procedures (e.g., the transition from
symbolic logic to predicate logic) are refinements based on observations of
memetic behavior, much like relativity is a refinement of Newtonian physics.
As such, logic's scope is the same as that of mathematics or of any
scientific discipline: the realm of phenomena that it accurately describes
and predicts (making it indeterminate). Logic makes statements about reality
insofar as it derives from reality, and only functions as "smoke and
mirrors" if reality is "smoke and mirrors."
SGK
Editor, The Stygian Forge -- http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/5380 or
http://www.netforward.com/DeathsDoor/?argos
Member: Order of the Jarls of Baelder @ http://www.student.hk-r.se/~tb96der/
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