Relationships between thinking, logic and deductive reasoning

[Langbein]

Relationships between thinking, logic and deductive reasoning ..

I have to admit that philosophy is normally not "my thing" and that the reason that I found this wonderfull forum was that I was searching for something about physics and technology.

My idea was/is to collect some central questions related to philosophy and try to make pair of questions/answers in such a way that it all will fit together in some more or less resonable way. The idea was then to post the collection of qustions answers on a website for further discussion and clarification.

I try to figure out and relate a few term to each other ..

Thinking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking
Reasoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasoning
Logic and formal logic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic
Deductive reasoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning
Inductive reasoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning
Convergent thinking: http://soc.enotes.com/gale-psychology-encyclopedia/convergent-thinking
Divergent thinking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_thinking

How does all these terms fit together as a whole .. What is the general terms - what is the more spesialized terms - and how does the "under terms" realate to each other.

 

[Smurf]

I think further explanation may be required.

 

[honestrosewater]

Hm, I might try something if I can add one more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign" . You can loosely think of a sign as linking form with meaning, which are the sign's two parts: signifier (form) and signified (meaning).

So a little brainstorming...

Thinking is what happens when you use sign systems. Reasoning is using sign systems with some special rules. These rules are called a logic. These logics can be ordered by how strict their inferences are. Deductive logics are the most strict, and inductive logics are all of the other, less strict logics. Formal logic is manipulating only the signifiers of the signs.

I'm not sure about convergent and divergent thinking. I don't know much about them yet, except that we used to have brainstorming (divergent thinking) sessions regularly in gifted when I was little kid, but we never did it in other classes. The articles didn't help me much, and I'm more attracted to explanations like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_%28computer_science%29" .

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Robot, why do you think that inductive reasoning is less strict than deductive reasoning?

 

[honestrosewater]

Robot, why do you think that inductive reasoning is less strict than deductive reasoning?

Hah, I actually considered saying "strong" rather than "strict", but neither are really what I wanted.

I haven't studied inductive logic much at all and have only met it in passing, but my thinking was something like this: I presume that you can look at any logic, whether deductive or inductive, as simply an implication relation, with the premises as the first argument and the conclusion as the second argument. (This works with deductive, and I see no problems for inductive. Are there?) The difference between deductive and inductive can then be represented by something else, a function perhaps on the implication relations (or however you want to break it up), whose value can be thought of as a measure of the strength of the implication, i.e., how strongly or certainly the premises guarantee the conclusion, or however you want to think of it. Does that make sense?

I'm curious about your original objection. Did you have one?

Again, I was just brainstorming. :tongue2:

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

well i don't think there's such a thing as inductive logic.
obviously every logic needs a rule of inference, induction in science and maths is an extra logical scheme, you cannot say that induction is something else from deductive logic, cause how would you differentiate between the two, induction principle isn't logical both in maths and in science, in maths we have models which satisfies them, but for example we don't have induction in the reals, a logical scheme should apply to everything.
this is why iwas curious how you define inductive logic.

sorry for the late response, being busy. (-:

 

[wuliheron]

The single largest relationship between thinking, logic, and deductive reasoning, that I can think of, is their stress on context. This can be seen clearly in both loop quantum gravity's and your own assertion. By definition, thinking is an orderly process rather than utterly random mumbo jumbo. You could even take LQG's argument to an extreem and declare that thought is impossible without some kind of logical foundation.

Of course, I would take it a step further yet and declare that thought is impossible without an emotional context as well. Reasoning as well, being a type of thought, also requires emotion. However, this is not necessary for logic, which any computer can preform.