Question about logic.

RegressLess

Logic has little or nothing to do with language. Animals with less developed brains do not cooperate, although it is logical because it benefits survival. However, intelligent animals such as crows and apes do cooperate.

disregardthat

"Logic has little or nothing to do with language."

"it is logical because it benefits survival."

You have no idea what logic is. Read a definition of logic, and you will see that logic has nothing to do with any of that which you are suggesting.

Logic is valid reasoning. It has everything to do with language.

RegressLess

Let me correct myself. Language has nothing to do with the origin of logic. If anything, language is born from logic. The crow reasons that if he drops a nut on a busy road, cars will break it open for him.

Is it not true that cooperation is logical? Does cooperation not benefit survival? I fail to see how I am so wrong.

Maui

I agree. And because we don't(and probably won't?) adequately understand anything about the world, 'logic' is probably just a myth and wishful thinking when applied to all aspects of reality. Our mode of thinking(the way we arrive at conclusions) could be faulty or applicable only to specific scales where causality plays an essential role.

Maui

So is valid reasoning an innate biological part of our brains or a defining trait of reality(and its general comprehensibility)? If this will help better illustrate my question - is logic out there(dependencies and correlations waiting to be discovered and understood) or inside us?

I wouldn't agree that valid reasoning is part of language but i could be misunderstanding your point.

disregardthat

We must analyze what logical reasoning is. Inductive reasoning is not logical reasoning. Logical reasoning is, in essence, operations on propositions of language. As such they are part of language and does not transcend it.

The crucial point is that it does not make sense to doubt a logical argument. Logic is determined by the correct usage of logical connectives, such as "and", "or", "not", etc...

Logic is simply the way we treat propositions.

I don't mean that, say, inductive reasoning is wrong, but I do mean that it is not logical.

Maui

No way. Logic is also a part of reality to which you compare to find out if your reasing is faulty or valid. It's reality that decides what reasoning is valid and what is wishful thinking(otherwise we must grant the same status to the Bible as the TOE because they are both expressed in the same language terms).





I don't think i have any idea what you mean to say. 2+2=4 is something you can verify against reality, so it's a valid and logical conclusion(you can do the math with apples or stones and there is no "and", "not" or "or" anywhere in it). I think you may be confusing 'logic 'and language and they are not the same thing(or did you mean to say something else?)

apeiron

I too have not been able to understand the grounds of your objections. Can you provide references in case you are expressing a particular school of thought here?

It seems now you are constrasting induction with deduction.

But just talking about deduction is too narrow a definition of "logic" to answer the OP, which is about how logic arose in human history - was it more found or invented?

At its broadest, saying things are logical is saying they are orderly and with pattern. The world seems to operate a certain way, and our minds are shaped to appreciate that - either by evolution, or learning, or most likely a combination/refinement of both.

Induction does seem to be the main way that brains naturally learn - generalisation from experience. Bayseian inference.

Deduction does seem to be a new level of thinking that depends on the human ability to handle syntactic structure. And so logic in this sense piggyback's on a capacity for grammar and would be exclusively human.

So there may be no essential dispute here, just a difference of terminology. You want to have a tight definition of logic, and I take a much looser one (because I'm more interested in the general issues rather than the specific applications).

RegressLess

It's difficult to understand how one can have a logical thought without language since our thoughts are comprised of words, but language had to start somewhere and it is absurd to think it would come from minds incapable of logic. Without the ability to reason, language is pointless. That was the reason I mentioned animals capable of rational thought. They do it without language.

apeiron

I have a whole bookcase of books that debate just this one issue.

My own view in fact is that what we call reason followed our invention of language. Which is why I just said there is a broad truth in the idea that while animals are capable of induction, only humans employ deductive reasoing.

Though yes, animals are capable of limited reasoning - when placed in the kind of experimental set-up that demands this of them, and so essentially scaffolds their mental response in the same way that language continually scaffolds our own thinking.

And as I say, there is a huge literature that argues this both ways. So regardless of which side you want to argue, there is plenty of source material to call upon.

RegressLess

Orangutans and chimps have been known to hunt with spears. Crows attract large predators in the direction of prey so that they can get the leftovers. All of these animals have learned the benefit of tribalism. These are all examples of reason in natural environments, not some experimental set-up.

apeiron

But is this displaying inductive reasoning or deductive reasoning?

As a Peircean, I would also want to bring in abductive reasoning here - the kind of creative leaps of the imagination which do seem part of our naturally evolved cognition, which means that even animals have more than inductive reasoning, even if they still have less than deductive reasoning.

So yes, I know of the evidence for animals being smart, being co-operative. But that is precisely why it demands great care to account for how humans are actually different.

RegressLess

I don't know how we could tell by which means they come up with these rational concepts. I'd love to see some research on that. However, I'm fairly convinced that the human ego is the only significant difference between us and the rest of the great apes.

apeiron

I agree this is a cool fact ...



But also, it is credited to mimicry - so inductive rather than deductive reasoning really. Even if it is still a remarkable thing.

.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz1f9YUfgDX

RegressLess

Well, you got me there, but what about this: Chimps spearing bush babies

apeiron

Again, that is impressive, but inductive. It is a natural extension of an existing behaviour. Poking and smashing are ways to make things happen. Grabbing a rock or a stick are easy habits to learn from experience and observation.

But note that crediting animals with powers of inference is actually something here. For a long time, the null hypothesis championed by the Behaviourists was that learning was purely associative.

So the claim was that animals essentially did random things and accidentally discovered the way to make things happen through reinforcement feedback. The world shaped up their behaviour to look clever. But there was no "leap of insight" - despite what the rival Gestalt school of psychology was arguing at the time, based on its own observations of primate problem solving.

So yes, the modern view is now much more willing to grant animals the ability for sudden insight - to be able to think this kind of thing has worked in the past and could be applied right now to achieve my goal.

Yet then there is the lack of syntax, and consequently a lack of "strong deduction" in animal reasoning. So there are the similarities, but also the critical differences.

A grammar-handling brain is able to do something different. All higher animals could be said to reason, to be in some way logical thinkers. But it comes in flashes of intuition and goal-oriented experimentation. It is not structured and guided by conscious abstractions.

RegressLess

These two ideas sound similar...

If their minds work in such a different way, how do you explain Koko, the gorilla who speaks with sign language? Sure, it's an extraordinary circumstance, being that she interacts with humans daily, but could the type of mind you ascribe to these "lesser" creatures do that?