To ask yourself "What is logic?" is to ask yourself one of the most important questions in all of human epistemology. Understanding of the nature of logic is the key that unlocks the doorway to knowledge. I have written at length about various aspects of and truths about logic elsewhere, so here I will focus almost exclusively on the metaphysics of logic: what it is and why it cannot be something material or found in nature. Someone who realizes that logic is immaterial can understand the nature of logic and see that the core of reality is immaterial. Only then can someone recognize the transcendence of logic and that nature is contingent while certain nonphysical things are not contingent but inescapably necessary.
Logic is a series of universal and inviolable laws that govern all of reality and reveal what does and does not follow from specific facts and propositions. To claim, as I have heard of some doing, that logic is anything else--a social construct, the product of human intellectual evolution, a process merely contained within the human brain or mind--is to claim something impossible and false. Despite any denial of this, logic and logical truths exist by pure necessity and exist independently of anything else; nothing else has to exist for logic to exist.
Logic is grasped by the mind, which is itself a nonphysical, immaterial thing [1]. No one can physically grasp logic with the hands--someone can understand that he or she is grabbing a specific material object with his or her hand(s), for instance, through comprehension of the logical law of identity, but that person is not grabbing logic itself. Logic is the means by which he or she understands what he or she is doing, not the object being grabbed. Every intelligible experience of the mind and senses is only intelligible because the mind comprehends the three basic laws of logic (law of identity, law of noncontradiction, and the law of excluded middle) and, at least to some degree, what follows from them.
Truth and logic exist by self-mandated necessity even if no consciousness or matter did. If no matter existed, non-matter would still be non-matter instead of matter, it would be true that matter does not exist, the proposition "Matter exists" would be false and not true, and so on. Logic does not depend on the existence of any conscious mind (not even God's) or material object in order to exist; as I have said, it is a series of universal, inviolable, immaterial laws that govern all of reality and that exist by pure necessity by its own nature,not because of anything else, immaterial or material. Even if no material world and thus no trees existed, and even if neither God nor any other conscious mind existed, it would still be true that IF trees existed then matter would exist and that IF all humans are mortal and Cooper is a human then Cooper is mortal. Apart from logic no knowledge could exist in any mind. Yes, experience of some kind is necessary for all knowledge [2]--but logic alone makes experiences intelligible to begin with.
Of course, logic is not the only thing that exists. I exist as a mind with a body, so both mind and matter exist [3]. From this and several logical truths alone it follows that an uncaused cause exists, whether me or some other thing [4]--this uncaused cause cannot be logic, because logic cannot actually cause anything to come into existence.
Really, understanding logic is quite simple. Reality cannot be reduced down into any lesser components than those in logic. Logic is; logic exists by pure necessity; logic cannot be erroneous; logic and its laws are immaterial and exist totally independent of any matter or mind.
Logic, people. It is helpful.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-immateriality-of-consciousness.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-necessity-of-experience-to-knowledge.html
[3]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/09/examining-meditations-part-6-mind-body.html
[4]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html
No comments:
Post a Comment