TAG: Logic Is A Game
With Specific Rules
Bob Webster
From: "Bob Webster"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: TAG
Date: Thursday, March 01, 2001 2:43 PM
I was reading the "TAG help" letter, and the reference, and I'm a bit confused. It seems to me that Logic doesn't presuppose it's principles and constructions are necessarily true. Logic is a game with specific rules. If you follow the rules, you have a Logical inference. If you don't, you don't. The explanation below about the nature of reality seems to bear this out: Anselm was playing by different rules, making different assumptions, so he came to different conclusions. If you construct the rules carefully, the game tallies well with what we can see in the real world; this rule "creation" you might call a "meta-game." However, there is no necessary connection between the two. You can certainly come up with more "advanced" types of logic where the syllogism doesn't necessarily work, or where all manner of things are different. We had several examples in my Symbolic Logic classes.
An analogue may be mathematics. I don't remember the details (such as the name of the mathematician who did it), but here goes: There is an axiom in geometry that, given a line and a point not on that line, one can draw only one line through the point that doesn't intersect the other line. A mathematician decided that this was so self-evidently true, he should be able to prove it. He tried a "reductio ad absurdum" proof: Assume the opposite and find a contradiction. He tried saying one could draw NO line that didn't intersect, but no dice. he tried saying an INFINITE number of lines didn't intersect, but no dice again. These attempts lead to two new forms of geometry, one based on the surface of a sphere, and one based on an anti-sphere (the infamous "saddle" shape). In other words, he changed a rule and created a new game.
I think the same could be said about Science. It isn't that it presupposes that there is no god; rather, it says, "What if". Science isn't about discovering Truth (capital T), but discovering things about the world that the unbiased (whatever that means) observer could agree with. Whether it has any relation to Truth is irrelevant. Thus, in the case of both Science and Logic, I thing TAG and TANG break down on premises. Besides, if logic is subject to the whim of a god, doesn't that include the logic behind TAG and TANG? Just a few thoughts.
Thanks,
Robert Webster
"We've got a date with Destiny, and it looks like she's ordered the lobster."
-- The Shoveler (Mystery Men)
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