Logic and Neutrality

By Timothy Williamson

May 13, 2012 5:00 pm May 13, 2012 5:00 pm

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

Here’s an idea many philosophers and logicians have about the function of logic in our cognitive life, our inquiries and debates. It isn’t a player. Rather, it’s an umpire, a neutral arbitrator between opposing theories, imposing some basic rules on all sides in a dispute. The picture is that logic has no substantive content, for otherwise the correctness of that content could itself be debated, which would impugn the neutrality of logic. One way to develop this idea is by saying that logic supplies no information of its own, because the point of information is to rule out possibilities, whereas logic only rules out inconsistencies, which are not genuine possibilities. On this view, logic in itself is totally uninformative, although it may help us extract and handle non-logical information from other sources.




...logic supplies no information of its own, because the point of information is to rule out possibilities...

The idea that logic is uninformative strikes me as deeply mistaken, and I’m going to explain why. But it may not seem crazy when one looks at elementary examples of the cognitive value of logic, such as when we extend our knowledge by deducing logical consequences of what we already know. If you know that either Mary or Mark did the murder (only they had access to the crime scene at the right time), and then Mary produces a rock-solid alibi, so you know she didn’t do it, you can deduce that Mark did it. Logic also helps us recognize our mistakes, when our beliefs turn out to contain inconsistencies. If I believe that no politicians are honest, and that John is a politician, and that he is honest, at least one of those three beliefs must be false, although logic doesn’t tell me which one.

Leif

MY COMMENTS************************************************************

This article from the New York Times examines Logic in a way where there is more of a definite "attack" on the term. People in this article do not seem to take a civil approach or easy attempt at understanding. The simply do because that is the way they feel. Logicians and philosophers do not have the full status or accounting of what anyone can theorize or explain. They just take it for what its worth. I do not think that this particular type of logic was discussed in class, but it definitely fits the discipline in that it is not a perfect science.






 Logic cannot really be defined . As the example in the article suggest, if there is a murder and Mark and Mary are suspects, if Mary has the alibi then logic dictates that Mark is the guilty party. On a base level this would be true, but do we have all the facts? The author states more than once that "standard logic" would be the main for that many people, professional or otherwise, deal with. That is something that I can agree on. An average, or template to follow would be helpful.  I am sure, though, that there are feelings, emotions and certain conditions where logic has a boundary that it cannot cross. How do we deal with it then?