Philosophy Now Forum

Obvious Leo wrote:The rules of logic cannot be applied to that which is not physically real, for the simple reason that that which is not physically real has no information content. This is a basic principle of philosophy which any philosophy undergraduate would be expected to understand. "Immaterial beings" are abstractions of the human consciousness about which no verifiable truth statements can be made, even in principle, and thus lie beyond the reach of logical deduction.

wasn't it you who asked me about how logic can be applied to "real" things, since it deals with abstracts? and now you say that logic can't deal with abstracts. i'm sure that next you'll be telling me that only non-newtonian "science" can deal with abstracts.

Obvious Leo wrote: You can believe in ghosts if you wish but since no logical syllogism can be applied to them their existence can be neither proven nor dis-proven which means that their existence or non-existence is not a legitimate subject for philosophical enquiry. The same goes for leprechauns, gods and the tooth fairy. If you disagree with this proposition then you'll no doubt find plenty of more suitable forums on the internet where consenting adults of like mind congregate to share their fantasies. You draw a long bow if you seriously expect to find such folk in a philosophy forum.

actually, finding people like you in a philosophy forum surprised me more than finding people who believe in leprechauns.

alpha wrote:i meant actual immaterial beings, not concepts; hence the "not to bore you to tears" comment.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:HAHAHA.

Concepts are the only immaterial things.
The concept of god, spirits, souls. If you think there is ANYTHING more to them than that then PROVE IT!

Deomonstrate the evidence, action, or presence in what every way you can, of an immaterial thing, that is more than just a concept that has ANY effect or results in the slightest hint that such a thing is "real".

What the fuck do you even MEAN, by "ACTUAL IMMATERIAL"

Please ellaborate.

i might not be able to conclusively prove the existence of any of those things (not that i necessarily believe in them), and the lack of solid evidence might make them nothing more than concepts to us, but if any of them do actually exist (the impossibility of which neither you nor anyone else can prove), they would be actual entities, not just abstract concepts like thoughts and memories, which even though you admit their existence, we both agree they're not real entities, and just concepts.

alpha wrote: wasn't it you who asked me about how logic can be applied to "real" things, since it deals with abstracts?

No it wasn't. You've got the story arse-about because it was in fact you who claimed that logic deals with abstracts and it was me who asserted that logic can only be applied to real things. This is in fact a doctrinal position in philosophy so if you wish to claim otherwise then the convention is that the burden of proof lies with you. This was discussed in the thread when you suggested that people had a right to be consulted as to whether they should come into existence or not. Setting aside the sheer absurdity of such a stance how do you reconcile it with your conviction that free will does not exist? Does it in fact exist, but only in the case of people who don't themselves exist?

alpha wrote:wasn't it you who asked me about how logic can be applied to "real" things, since it deals with abstracts?

Obvious Leo wrote: No it wasn't. You've got the story arse-about because it was in fact you who claimed that logic deals with abstracts and it was me who asserted that logic can only be applied to real things. This is in fact a doctrinal position in philosophy so if you wish to claim otherwise then the convention is that the burden of proof lies with you.

i don't know of any such doctrine. by "real" things you mean physical objects, and physical objects don't require direct logic, nor can it be applied to them directly anyway. perhaps arising, or surreptitious can shed some light on the matter.

Obvious Leo wrote:This was discussed in the thread when you suggested that people had a right to be consulted as to whether they should come into existence or not. Setting aside the sheer absurdity of such a stance

you'd be singing a different tune, if you knew what real suffering meant.

Obvious Leo wrote:how do you reconcile it with your conviction that free will does not exist? Does it in fact exist, but only in the case of people who don't themselves exist?

freewill cannot exist, absolutely, but even an unfree refusal to exist is acceptable. an unfree consent might also be ok, if the person isn't suckered into it (and so on).

alpha wrote:

alpha wrote:i meant actual immaterial beings, not concepts; hence the "not to bore you to tears" comment.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:HAHAHA.

Concepts are the only immaterial things.
The concept of god, spirits, souls. If you think there is ANYTHING more to them than that then PROVE IT!

Deomonstrate the evidence, action, or presence in what every way you can, of an immaterial thing, that is more than just a concept that has ANY effect or results in the slightest hint that such a thing is "real".

What the fuck do you even MEAN, by "ACTUAL IMMATERIAL"

Please ellaborate.

i might not be able to conclusively prove the existence of any of those things (not that i necessarily believe in them), and the lack of solid evidence might make them nothing more than concepts to us, but if any of them do actually exist (the impossibility of which neither you nor anyone else can prove), they would be actual entities, not just abstract concepts like thoughts and memories, which even though you admit their existence, we both agree they're not real entities, and just concepts.

Whereof you cannot speak you ought to remain silent. But if you want to keep the existence of unicorns a possibility then that is your decision, there is no need to muddy the discussion here.

Obvious Leo wrote:The rules of logic cannot be applied to that which is not physically real, for the simple reason that that which is not physically real has no information content.

I surprised you are saying this.
Depends on what you mean by real. "LOGIC" is not real; it is wholly conceptual, and thus all rules and applications of logic are also conceptual. They might refer to real things, but they do not need too.

This is a basic principle of philosophy which any philosophy undergraduate would be expected to understand. "Immaterial beings" are abstractions of the human consciousness about which no verifiable truth statements can be made, even in principle, and thus lie beyond the reach of logical deduction.

This is simply not the case.
All bugbaltters and woopers
Blog is a bugballter, therefore blos is also a wooper.
Perfect deduction about things that are not real. Perfect logic; perfectly meaningless.

You can believe in ghosts if you wish but since no logical syllogism can be applied to them their existence can be neither proven nor dis-proven which means that their existence or non-existence is not a legitimate subject for philosophical enquiry.

Caspar is scared of all spirits.
Ghosts are spirits therefore Caspar if scared of ghosts

The same goes for leprechauns, gods and the tooth fairy. If you disagree with this proposition then you'll no doubt find plenty of more suitable forums on the internet where consenting adults of like mind congregate to share their fantasies. You draw a long bow if you seriously expect to find such folk in a philosophy forum.

No again. Christians believe in God. They think a thing called god exists. This is the truth.

Hobbes. These are not syllogisms which are reducible to deductive logic in any meaningful way because the premises cannot be established as true. I agree that the logical form is correct but such statements are no different from saying that if I have two apples in my fruit bowl I can take five apples out of it and thus have -3 apples left. Without a real-world referent a logic process is nothing more than a word game because no real-world statements can be derived from it. Theists use such self-referential circular statements all the time in an effort to "prove" the existence of the supernatural but on close examination you'll always find that the logical conclusion always lies embedded in the unsubstantiated premise. Deducing as a conclusion that which is implicit in the premise is not reasoning but rationalising.

I also meant to explain that this is what I mean when I suggest that logic can only be applied to a particular narrative of reality and on its own logic can make no truth statements about the validity of such a narrative. If the premise is untestable then the logic is just so much navel-gazing. This is the sort of shit that William Lane Craig does all the time and because the converted are generally unschooled in the rules of logic they lap it up by the bucketful, imagining that their simplistic beliefs have been proven. However Aquinas was the real expert at it.

Descartes was no slouch either. If you accept the existence of the soul as an entity separate from the embodied self then you'll finish up in the conceptual wilderness with alpha the dualist, forever trying to find a reason not to slash your wrists because you're a mindless automaton dancing to the tune of the almighty. Pity, rather than contempt, is probably a more humane stance to take towards such existential sufferers.

Obvious Leo wrote:Hobbes. These are not syllogisms which are reducible to deductive logic in any meaningful way because the premises cannot be established as true.

Not relevant. Logic is a process, nothing to do with the empirical values of the premises. Deduction does not rely on real things, never did. "Bachelor", "Mortal" are human values, not empirically valid natural categories. Yet you know the syllogisms.
Logical "discoveries" about God can be valid logically without ever proving the existence of god. You are just trying to say something using the wrong trope. Logic is not the trope you want.

I agree that the logical form is correct but such statements are no different from saying that if I have two apples in my fruit bowl I can take five apples out of it and thus have -3 apples left.

I've never seen your bowl or apples. I don't have to accept they exist, and I will NEVER be able to establish their empirical value. You are shooting yourself in the foot.

Without a real-world referent a logic process is nothing more than a word game because no real-world statements can be derived from it. Theists use such self-referential circular statements all the time in an effort to "prove" the existence of the supernatural but on close examination you'll always find that the logical conclusion always lies embedded in the unsubstantiated premise. Deducing as a conclusion that which is implicit in the premise is not reasoning but rationalising.

You are barking up the logic tree. Consciousness and free will can be discussed and logic used to help describe them. We can perfectly well use logic to uncover the consequences of believing, or not that such concept are useful or meaningful. Their empirical relevance can be examined with logic. I am struggling to understand why you would want to deny logic a role on this thread.

To recap. You said:
The rules of logic cannot be applied to that which is not physically real, for the simple reason that that which is not physically real has no information content
This is bollocks. "Socrates", and "Mortal", and "Human" are not "physically real". I do not have to repeat philosophy's most common syllogism.

Hobbes. You evaded my central point, which had nothing to do with notions of valid or invalid logic. It was to do with what logic can or cannot tell us about the nature of reality. For instance mathematical logic is flawless because it is self-validating i.e. if A=B then B=A. Neverthless mathematical logic can tell us nothing about the nature of physical reality because it first requires a referent narrative to which it is applied and it is the validity of such a narrative which must first be tested for its truth value before any assessment can be made as to whether the mathematics is actually modelling a real-world scenario. "Metaphysics always trumps physics", is the phrase I have often used elsewhere to sum up this point.

Obvious Leo wrote:Hobbes. You evaded my central point, which had nothing to do with notions of valid or invalid logic. {Straw man - never even implied that} It was to do with what logic can or cannot tell us about the nature of reality. For instance mathematical logic is flawless because it is self-validating i.e. if A=B then B=A. Neverthless mathematical logic can tell us nothing about the nature of physical reality because it first requires a referent narrative

... "Deduction tells us nothing"...Obviously. It's a way to organise truth statements.

to which it is applied and it is the validity of such a narrative which must first be tested for its truth value before any assessment can be made as to whether the mathematics is actually modelling a real-world scenario. "Metaphysics always trumps physics", is the phrase I have often used elsewhere to sum up this point.

Stop squirming.
You misspoke.
Let is die, I'm not going to trawl back over the post again.

Obviously in my effort to generalise the specific case I haven't made myself very clear, so I'll refer directly to alpha's argument relating to the OP. The case against the reality of the will rests on the dualist assumption that the self is a different entity from the observer of the self. If this assumption is accepted then alpha's case is made and the notion of the will is illusory. However if this assumption is not accepted then his argument is tautologous by begging its own question. This circularity has nothing to do with the validity of the logic process itself but has to to with the validity of the premise. Since the premise itself contradicts the evidence then the entire argument is flawed.

Obvious Leo wrote:Obviously in my effort to generalise the specific case I haven't made myself very clear, so I'll refer directly to alpha's argument relating to the OP. The case against the reality of the will rests on the dualist assumption that the self is a different entity from the observer of the self. If this assumption is accepted then alpha's case is made and the notion of the will is illusory. However if this assumption is not accepted then his argument is tautologous by begging its own question. This circularity has nothing to do with the validity of the logic process itself but has to to with the validity of the premise. Since the premise itself contradicts the evidence then the entire argument is flawed.

So you are offering a view whereby a logical process is used concerning concepts about which no certain empirical knowledge can be established and thus you are dismissing it using that logical process. But since you have already dismissed the validity of the use of logic upon things not held to be "real", you point, you rejection of the begging question is as invalid as his positing the case in the first place. That leaves us at a complete impasse, as to reject logic you shoot yourself in the foot.

However what we have uncovered with the use of logic IS valid, in that the assertion that there is a WILL logically involves a tautology.

Since we cannot establish a valid dualism, then by Ockham's Razor we might seek to consider a way of answering this question without it.
I see no reason to understand this issue as the will being the conceptual intentions of the agent of causality which is the person. In the way we have no problem with distinguishing the power, fuel and motive force of a motor-car, we ought not have any problem with sundering aspect of the human agent from the whole.
In neurological terms consciousness can be seen as an energy field in the cerebral cortex monitoring the determined causal action of the deeper brain, and acting like a checking algorithm against intentions, inhibiting or disinhibiting actions according to a range of causal mechanisms. The brain is sufficiently complex, alone before you consider other things such as the amounts of sugar and oxygen in the blood, and the multifarious effects of hormones, to make monism, dualism,or any simple "-ism" as explaining anything itself.

I do not think we shall ever understand or be able to explain what we all try to avoid talking about when this subject comes up - and there really is no name for it. Consciousness comes close, but its that "inner eye" that "sense of self" ...

Hobbes' Choice wrote:Whereof you cannot speak you ought to remain silent. But if you want to keep the existence of unicorns a possibility then that is your decision, there is no need to muddy the discussion here.

it is you who's muddying the discussion by insinuating the logical impossibility of god, souls, etc., when their existence is more than possible. unicorns are very possible also.