Studying logic in an illogical world
07/02/19 04:40
I graduated from a liberal arts collage that required a small amount of interdisciplinary study of all of its students. Students with majors in mathematics or science were required to take a religion course. Those of us who majored in the humanities were required to take a science course and a mathematics course. We all were required to take basic physical education courses. I was drawn to philosophy and Christian Thought and declared my major early and focused on those classes, but I also knew that I had to get my basic requirements in order to earn my degree. I found some obscure PE courses to fulfill my requirement. I’m not sure how valuable a college credit in trampoline and tumbling has been in my career, but I did learn some basic safety in regards to falling that probably has reduced injuries throughout my life. I took a science survey course titled, Atoms to Stars during my freshman year. My math requirement, however, was a bit of a challenge until I discovered that the philosophy course Logic was taught by the mathematics department and awarded math credit. I signed up for the course. It was a small class, not far from individualized instruction, which was a good thing for me because I hadn’t studied math much more advanced than high school algebra and geometry.
The course had a fair amount of history in the reading materials. We read about how Aristotle cited laws of contradiction and of excluded middle as examples of axioms. We learned about how in the early 20th century Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell established patterns for talking about prediction and future events. I understood the basic concepts. If we observe that the sun rises each day and our experience of the past has been that the sun rises every day it does not logically follow that the sun will rise tomorrow. We can draw that conclusion, but our past experience does not constitute proof. Our conversations in the class were often obscure and covered topics that I since have forgotten, but I have a general sense of the existence of some basic rules of thought that enable scientific exploration. Just like basic rules of mathematics, rules of thought help to create a system of interpreting the world that allows for consistent argument and thought shared by multiple generations. Not every observation has to be repeated in every generation. We can learn from the past if we share consistent rules of thinking. We can contribute to the knowledge of future generations if we are consistent in our thought and presentation.
Having taken a single course about an obscure topic in a small college more than four decades ago does not make me an expert in logical thought, but I can be rather quick to judge an argument made by a politician or simply a friend in conversation when it contains obvious contradictions or is based on false of misleading premises.
Sometimes, however, it seems like many others either do not or choose not to observe such basic rules of logic. I am impressed at how people will repeat information that seems to me to be obviously false. I notice that people will frequently vote against their own best interests. They will accept a politician’s promises when there is no evidence that the politician intends anything more than getting elected.
Looking back I now realize how much my college and graduate school years were influenced by the time in which I was educated. My teachers were, for the most part, people who had been shaped by the events of the Second World War. The rise of authoritarian regimes had shaken the intellectual community. Eric Fromm’s “Escape from Freedom,” and Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” were serious reflections on how modern societies could slip into such barbarian cruelty. Over the course of my formal education I read countless books that were, in part, trying to make sense out of the violence of the middle of the 20th century. Generally accepted rules of thought and general senses about progress were disrupted by the actual events of history. The development of weapons capable of completely destroying all humans on our planet presented an existential challenge to basic assumptions about the nature of humans and human progress.
Now, nearly a half century later, some of that education seems increasingly relevant. Once again our world is being confronted by the rise of authoritarian leaders. General rules of logic don’t seem to apply to political discourse. We struggle to find meaning in the midst of events that seem to be chaotic and devoid of logical consistency.
I know that I must sound like a broken record, but our society is in desperate need of more people who have been educated in the history and philosophy of science. My college logic course was lightly attended, but at least my college offered a course in logic. Try to find such a course in the catalogues of any of our state universities. We are no longer studying patterns of thought and no longer questioning the conclusions of thinkers and teachers. We are no longer teaching the tools to examine an argument or to analyze the psychological roots of the human choice to yield basic freedoms. We no longer can even have a meaningful conversation about the nature of freedom because we cannot agree on the basic rules of argument. We are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past in part because we have failed to teach history.
Maybe it is inevitable that I am growing into an old man who is constantly complaining. “You young whippersnappers!” So, instead, I will remind myself of something that Viktor Frankl wrote. H was a Holocaust survivor. He survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering and Türkheim. He wrote: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
There is good reason for me to pay attention to my own attitude. Despite the chaos of the world, I still have the freedom to choose my own attitude. What I choose can make all the difference in the world.
The course had a fair amount of history in the reading materials. We read about how Aristotle cited laws of contradiction and of excluded middle as examples of axioms. We learned about how in the early 20th century Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell established patterns for talking about prediction and future events. I understood the basic concepts. If we observe that the sun rises each day and our experience of the past has been that the sun rises every day it does not logically follow that the sun will rise tomorrow. We can draw that conclusion, but our past experience does not constitute proof. Our conversations in the class were often obscure and covered topics that I since have forgotten, but I have a general sense of the existence of some basic rules of thought that enable scientific exploration. Just like basic rules of mathematics, rules of thought help to create a system of interpreting the world that allows for consistent argument and thought shared by multiple generations. Not every observation has to be repeated in every generation. We can learn from the past if we share consistent rules of thinking. We can contribute to the knowledge of future generations if we are consistent in our thought and presentation.
Having taken a single course about an obscure topic in a small college more than four decades ago does not make me an expert in logical thought, but I can be rather quick to judge an argument made by a politician or simply a friend in conversation when it contains obvious contradictions or is based on false of misleading premises.
Sometimes, however, it seems like many others either do not or choose not to observe such basic rules of logic. I am impressed at how people will repeat information that seems to me to be obviously false. I notice that people will frequently vote against their own best interests. They will accept a politician’s promises when there is no evidence that the politician intends anything more than getting elected.
Looking back I now realize how much my college and graduate school years were influenced by the time in which I was educated. My teachers were, for the most part, people who had been shaped by the events of the Second World War. The rise of authoritarian regimes had shaken the intellectual community. Eric Fromm’s “Escape from Freedom,” and Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” were serious reflections on how modern societies could slip into such barbarian cruelty. Over the course of my formal education I read countless books that were, in part, trying to make sense out of the violence of the middle of the 20th century. Generally accepted rules of thought and general senses about progress were disrupted by the actual events of history. The development of weapons capable of completely destroying all humans on our planet presented an existential challenge to basic assumptions about the nature of humans and human progress.
Now, nearly a half century later, some of that education seems increasingly relevant. Once again our world is being confronted by the rise of authoritarian leaders. General rules of logic don’t seem to apply to political discourse. We struggle to find meaning in the midst of events that seem to be chaotic and devoid of logical consistency.
I know that I must sound like a broken record, but our society is in desperate need of more people who have been educated in the history and philosophy of science. My college logic course was lightly attended, but at least my college offered a course in logic. Try to find such a course in the catalogues of any of our state universities. We are no longer studying patterns of thought and no longer questioning the conclusions of thinkers and teachers. We are no longer teaching the tools to examine an argument or to analyze the psychological roots of the human choice to yield basic freedoms. We no longer can even have a meaningful conversation about the nature of freedom because we cannot agree on the basic rules of argument. We are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past in part because we have failed to teach history.
Maybe it is inevitable that I am growing into an old man who is constantly complaining. “You young whippersnappers!” So, instead, I will remind myself of something that Viktor Frankl wrote. H was a Holocaust survivor. He survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering and Türkheim. He wrote: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
There is good reason for me to pay attention to my own attitude. Despite the chaos of the world, I still have the freedom to choose my own attitude. What I choose can make all the difference in the world.