Ancient Greek, Logic and Reason
Firstly, I have to point out that I'm as dumb as a lump of wood, so I need things to be explained in as simple terms as possible, what is the difference between "reason" and "logic"? I ask this because the Ancient Greeks (Plato and the like) created logic, but when you look at the definitions of logic, they talk about "reason". Now, before Ancient Greek, there was no logic system in place because the Greeks hadn't come up with yet. However, the Egyptians had already built their pyramids by then, and "being the 1st wonder of the world" nothing has surpassed it. They also farmed land, etc etc.
Now, they were using the power of reason there, not logic. So can someone please help out a stupid person like me and draw up their thoughts?
Now, they were using the power of reason there, not logic. So can someone please help out a stupid person like me and draw up their thoughts?
Comments (48)
Quoting fdrake
Sorry, I just re-read that. Is that not putting the cart before the horse? Reasoning was, before logic was?
But if reason came before logic, then reason does not need logic in order to be? Again, sort of putting the cart before the horse. Forgive my ignorance I just want to understand, that's all. Babylonian and Summeria were before logic, and they had pretty good cities and what have you, without logic.
Insofar as logic is understood as the study of methods of reasoning, yes. Humans have been able to reason long before we could write.
Ok, that's good. So I could reasonably say, "Reason was used to create logic by the Ancient Greeks". Or put another way, Reason gave birth to Logic.
Seems mostly fine to me.
So I could also write this as, "Reason was the cause, that gave rise to the effect of Logic". ?
And if there was an "error" in logic, then Reason would be the best tool to find it? Because logic would not be able to find an error in logic (like a snake eating its own tail).
Logic cannot exist without reason but reason can exist without logic?
Sorry, again, this looks like the cart is before the horse again. Surely, its the other way around? Those who have lost reason, but still maintain logic are insane?
They think so much that relativism kicks in but they are unable to handle it. That's why they say crazy things. That quote was from Chesterton but could have been from Jung.
A koan in the East is used to counter the logic of Aristotle. They stand opposed, apparently. Hegel might be a bridge between them. Read his first published book. Jung thought Hegel's subconscious was leaking out ideas, but Jung was not a philosopher. He might have been right on a psychological level though. Aristotle could maybe beat Hegel at chess, so to speak
Because you would be connecting thoughts with intuition. Logic and intuition are the halves of reason. This is all hard to explain. Logic and intuition interact in multiple ways, very various
Intuition which cannot be defined logically belongs to reason , or reason belongs to intuition because both of these can exist without logic. Therefore logic sits at the bottom of the cause and effect chain. We can remove logic without remove the others. We cannot remove the others without losing logic.
Very good
Quoting Antidote
Logical skepticism can freeze intuition, at least apparently, and reason then acts strangely
Logic is a mathematical based process of Identifying valid and invalid arguments within language. This can be done because language has a mathematical nature to it even though it deals with many abstract concepts, where as, math would be considered pure logic.
Logic is an assortment of rules, or indicators, that define a type of thinking - reasoning. If you are using logic, then your are using reason, or being reasonable. If not using logic, then you are not using reason. You are learning, imagining, remembering, supposing, or one of the other types of thinking that we do. Reason/Logic, coupled with observation, is science. Logic is to reason as the scientific method is to science. The former is a formal set of rules that define the latter. The rules are meant to make a formal distinction between different types of thinking and their uses.
A = B, therefore B = A
Logically this is sound, because logic is interested in sequence.
Reason, however, knows this is not true because reason is interested in Order.
Fast and slow is not the same as Slow and Fast.
Reason can see this, logic cannot. Therefore logic can never arrive at real Truth. It cannot explain our world.
Citation?
Logic is the same as reason. If you are using one, you are using the other because one formally defines the other. If you are being reasonable, you are being logical.
Merriam -Webster says:
Logic:
A. a science that deals with the principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration : the science of the formal principles of reasoning.
B. a particular mode of reasoning viewed as valid or faulty
Logical:
capable of reasoning or of using reason in an orderly cogent fashion
It seems likely to me that the person who asks such a reasonable and pertinent question about terms as confused in our tradition as these, is a thoughtful and perceptive person.
I expect there is more consensus nowadays about use of the term "logic". For the most part people seem content to use this word to refer to something like rules or systems of inference, including syllogistic, propositional, and predicate logic, for example. Sometimes people speak as if abstract systems of symbolic logic are the only sort of proper logic. So far as I can tell, that view is confused. Rules of inference need not be expressed in such terms, and may be expressed in ordinary language.
It seems to me there's less consensus on use of the term "reason". The way people tend to use this word depends on the sort of conversations they tend to have. Some logicians tend to speak about "reasoning" as if it's synonymous with logical thinking or logical speaking -- thinking or speaking in keeping with formal rules of inference, drawing valid conclusions from a consistent set of premises, defining terms in keeping with the principle of the excluded middle, and so on. Some radical postmodern critics speak about "reason" as if it is a confused prejudice of ancient and modern philosophers subconsciously motivated to legitimize the authority of an oppressive social order.
I'm influenced by another line of usage in our tradition. I tend to use the word "reason" and its cognates to refer to the peculiar human custom of "giving and taking reasons" by speaking. I further characterize this practice of reasoning as an exchange of assertions that have the role in speech of justifying actions. Some of the deeds thus justified are acts of speech. Some of these speech acts are assertions, or are in other words discursive claims.
Formal rules of inference are products of culture and convention, made explicit at particular historical periods. The custom of "reasoning" by using assertions to justify actions is a more generic practice, which surely emerged in the world before the articulation of formal rules of inference, and presumably was a condition of or factor in the emergence of explicit rules of inference.
I take it the custom of exchanging reasons in speech is exemplary of a yet more generic process of "rational thinking" that does not depend on language, and that is common to many forms of intelligent animal life. Some people may prefer to use the term "reason" to apply to this more generic form of thought, as does Hume, for instance. I aim to use the term "reason" exclusively to characterize the peculiar human custom I've indicated, without objecting to or entailing any conflict with the more generic use exemplified by Hume.
You give too much credit, I'm just a simple person and as such am prone to error like anyone else, so I state this from the off so people don't mistakenly think I am in possession of the truth (I'm just testing everything). I have a passion for Truth, not necessarily consensus, but actual truth in fact. There are errors in anything we do, and to be honest, this type of subject is more prone than any other so if I'm wrong, great because I get an education, but if not well then maybe fiction can be replaced by fact.
I'm also aware how our language (spoken and written) can be misleading for all of us. The errors that it can produce are terrible, because it means someone may have the truth, and yet in the communication, the truth is lost and the false is accepted instead. So I try to be simple and baby steps all the time, to reduce error. My Dad would say to me, "KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid!" :)
But don't take my word for it, because I may have made a mistake. Some people want an argument, I don't. I want an answer and the facts.
The "Logic" system can be defined because it was created, so the rules are known. However, Reason doesn't seem to be the same. It seems to have a quality to it that is indefinable and yet it is considered less important than Logic, or worse they are considered the same. If this was an accident, it can be put right. If it was intentional, then that's something much worse (as in a deliberate error to mislead people, myself included).
It sounds to me that we are kindred spirits. I say similar things about myself, about conversations like these, and about the ignorance, error and confusion that comes naturally to things like us. Perhaps you've also been inspired by the example of Socrates?
I agree that truth has priority over agreement. Nonetheless, I aim not only to seek the truth and speak the truth, but also to identify and expand consensus and common ground, in order to promote the common good.
It seems the search for common ground tends to direct my search for truth and the exercise of my critical powers in conversations like these.
Quoting Antidote
A wonderful custom!
I like to call myself a knucklehead, and I advise others to think like a knucklehead, by breaking complex problems into small manageable parts. It seems to me this sort of practice helps us avoid flying off the handle and chasing our tails in confused discursive adventures.
Quoting Antidote
I'm strongly inclined to agree with you, Antidote. And by now I'm fairly certain that if you're as dumb as a stump, then I am too.
It seems to me that reason is the more basic and natural power in things like us. By contrast, logic seems a more artificial, arbitrary, and fragile custom that depends on a prior practice of reasoning.
I'm not sure to what extent our traditional confusion in such matters is the result of intentionally misleading gestures. It's not clear to me that there is an objective basis according to which we might sort out the motives and intentions of the authors who have contributed to our confusion.
I would have to agree :) Everything I have seen gravitates to (or is attracted to) that of the same vibration. This is sort of like a universal guiding force that draws like-kind together. I'm still trying to compose myself having seen the "inspiration" of Socrates and the like. Some lessons in life are suppose to hard I guess.
Definitely so, the built-in potential error with agreement, as I bet you know, is that if all are mad and all agree, all are still mad. Not a great outcome in any real terms. We definitely do seem to be of the same wavelength!
What a beautiful way to describe it, I definitely agree. From what I gather, there is an infinite spectrum of vibration, always one greater, always one lesser.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Said the straight scientist. I'm sure a lot of the distraction in the name of entertainment works for some, but most certainty not for the likes of us. Reason must be purpose. And I only turn to purpose for a reason usually to learn something I don't know. Have you looked at Egypt much or before?
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Definitely so, logic is the lesser of the two by far but then it would be, logic was man made. I see logic at the beginning but then its soon surpassed by reason in the gap between.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
This is what I want to understand. Have you heard Kasabian - Days are Forgotten? Great tune. I think Plato's Republic - Book 1 gives an insight but I'm open and if the fiction can be put right then its something I guess.
I agree with a lot of what's been posted above, but wanted add something about the nature of reason.
Reason is clearly a multi-faceted ability but one facet is the ability to understand the relation of cause and effect - to understand why things happen, on one level, or the connection between ideas, on the other (i.e. 'if X is larger than Y, and Z is larger than X, then Z must also be larger than Y.)
If you can imagine back to ancient times, the realisation of 'the power of reason' must have been an intoxicating experience. For people in those days, life was indeed nasty, brutish and short, for the most part, and largely comprised sheer brute force and dumb labor, repetition and habit. In in the old stone age, it took millennia to slightly improve the stone axe. The abilities that became available through the discovery of reason - through the discovery of the causes of things, and the relationship of cause and effect - must have been intoxicating. It opens up endless vistas of possibility.
Nowadays, I think reason is often both misunderstood and taken for granted. First because it's associated with scientific rationalism, which has a very narrow view of reason, and secondly, because we assume it's a natural faculty, that has evolved, and so can be understood through the prism of evolutionary biology. And that sells it short, in my opinion.
Boy, big question.
I will talk about that through the lense of cultural history and history of ideas.
In classical (i.e. pre-modern) culture, it was always understood that man had dual nature, animal on one side, but transcendent on the other (sometimes depicted in terms of being 'between animals and angels'.) Again in Western classical culture this latter faculty was associated with reason, language, philosophy, and (in some respects) religion. (This was actually the background to Rene Descartes' dualism of physical and mental, but his form of dualism introduces many unsolvable problems which I don't want to go into right here.)
In any case, as a consequence of the European Enlightenment and of the overall drift towards secularism, it has become increasingly assumed that man can be understood as purely natural phenomenon along the same scale as the rest of the natural world, albeit with highly evolved abilities, but which are nevertheless understandable along the same axis, so to speak. Whereas the traditionalist view is that the human is different in kind from animals, largely because of the faculty of reason (hence, the traditional designation in Greek philosophy of the human as 'rational animal'). There was an ontological distinction between human nature and the rest of the animal kingdom.
On the whole, I agree with the traditionalist view, in that I think that through language, reason (and other faculties which are generally deprecated in secular culture), that the human transcends any purely biological analysis (whilst plainly acknowledging that physically, we are very much a product of evolution.) But I believe that when humanity evolved to a certain point, then they 'transcended the biological', so to speak. So I argue that the ability to grasp transcendentals (in the philosophical sense intended by Kant for instance) cannot be understood solely through the lense of biological evolution, as that theory is not actually concerned with such questions at all. But because of the way that evolutionary theory has become the defacto creation myth of secular culture, then it must insist that humans have a naturalistic explanation, and that there is no such ontological distinction as the traditionalist view envisaged.
It is of course a wildly unpopular and completely politically-incorrect attitude, but nevertheless that's what I feel about it. Interestingly, however, it is very close to the views of the scientist who was credited as the co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection, namely, Alfred Russel Wallace.
Yeah i think that about sums it up. I find that many people who embrace relativism in its many and numerous forms mistake it for some enlightened and open minded point of view. Thats not to say some things involve alot of relativity and ofcourse just about everything can have a spectrum applied to it.
There's the application and there's the formal study. When the ancient Egyptians built the amazing structures we call the Pyramids, they applied logic. But the Greeks, Aristotle et al, made a formal study of logic itself.
If there's a difference between reason and logic then one such difference is that the former is like the tools used by the Egyptians to build the Pyramids and the Greeks subjected the tools themselves to formal inquiry, refining it into something better or so it's claimed. In other words reason is the application of what is prescribed as good thinking by logic and logic is the study of reason.
We can happily say that the pyramids were built before the Ancient Greeks were about, and the Ancient Greeks invented logic by definition so it would appear, unless I'm mistaken, the cart is before the horse again.
If I use your last example, we are saying the Egyptians "knew" how to apply what we now call logic (if logic is within reason then reason knows everything about logic) and the Greeks then tried to describe it or define it. The Greeks of course may have had a very good reason to do such a thing, or not.
Logic is a tool in language that describes rules of relationships between numbers, sets, and objects (people included, as much as immaterial or phantasy objects) that are true at any time, anywhere, in any possible, or imagined world.
Reason is an ability that manifests in each person to different measures. Logic applies to all person's thinking equally. To absorb logic properly, one must have a reasoning ability to a certain minimum limit. You can tell a ten-year old child that 5 + 7 is the same as 7 + 5, and he will believe you, but you can't tell the same to even an intelligent animal, like a dog, because the dog's reasoning ability has not hit that lower minimum required limit to absorb the logic.
Some people make errrors in reason, yet they can't be shown their own errors, due to their limitations in their ability to reason.
----------------------
That said, many arguments (or all) among people start not because the topics are diverse, with many possible resolutions, but because the people who argue have different limitations to their ability to reason. Even very, very intelligent people can have limitations to their ability to reason, for instance, if they are obsessed or believe a religious dogma that stands in the way of their ability ot accept reason that leads to the contrary solution or resolution to their accepted one which had been dictated to them by their religious dogma.
---------------------
People on this website hate me for being an atheist and decrying religion. They went as far as telling me in public spaces and in private email that I am a fucking asshole.
I don't hate religion. I hate inability to reason.
Those who are not able to reason well, due to mental (intellectual) limitations, I don't condemn. I feel pity for them.
Those who are not able to reason well due to the limitations of their religion, I show them precisely where they make a mistake in reasoning. They hate me for that. They can't stand the fact that their own world view, their very philosophy is being threatened by unassailable reason and logic.
I normally abandon all arguments sooner or later, after I have had my say. I abandon the arguments becasue 1. I don't think I can change anyone's thinking, values, or ability to think and 2. They can't change mine.
If I am found in the wrong, in terms of logic, insight, facts, or reason, I capitulate. I do admit I was wrong. There are many instances on this website of my having done so, so I am not simply or falsely boasting.
I'm not sure I follow you here.
Do you mean to suggest that the "common ground" I mentioned might be characterized in terms of an "infinite spectrum of vibration"? How does that story go, on your account?
Quoting Antidote
I agree that animal rationality is guided by animal purposes, and that the reasoning of discursive sentient beings, including human animals, is informed by their purposes.
I recommend caution in weighing the role of purpose in reasoning: Imbalanced clinging to some purposes might lead one to forsake truth, sincerity, and good sense, for instance, and thus unravel the conditions required for reasonable discourse.
How is Egyptian history or culture especially relevant in this regard?
Quoting Antidote
I'm not sure I follow here either.
It seems to me the conventions of formal logic help us to define our terms so as to speak and reason more clearly and consistently. Their utility is overrated by some and underrated by others.
These conventions are of least utility where the speech acts that we call assertions, and that we evaluate according to the distinction between truth and falsehood, are of least utility.
For instance, when we stop conversing and chant AUM.
I'm not sure how I might reasonably apply the term "reason" or "reasoning" in such contexts.
Quoting Antidote
Plato and his contemporaries understood the political character of philosophical discourse.
Plato clearly thinks it's acceptable for philosophers to tell golden lies, allegedly for the sake of the common good. He mentions and perhaps seems sympathetic to the tendency among other schools or cults in his day to hide layers of their discourses behind the discourses they present to the public; surely we shouldn't discount the likelihood that his Academy followed a similar custom.
I wonder whether we should treat his dialogues more as advertisements for the Academy and acts of public propaganda than as accurate expressions of his considered view.
But how on Earth would we ever be able to answer such questions definitively?
It seems to me a similar set of problems of political motive and intention apply to all the major ancient schools; to ancient, medieval, and modern Christian philosophy; to classical modern philosophies like Cartesianism and Kantianism... straight through to the present day.
As well as to polytheistic mythologies promoted by Bronze Age elites.
Thanks for the musical reference. Nowadays I listen to a lot of Nikhil Banerjee, among others. Raga Malkauns is a perennial favorite.
Well, the "cart is before the horse" is probably a good place to start understanding the reason-logic distinction: horse riding was known to humans much before equestrianism became an established discipline". Well, what about building carts? Carts were built before engineering became a subject of study. Likewise, reason existed before logic, the study of reason.
I would've liked to reply "yes" but unfortunately, no, we weren't perfectly capable before logic as the long list of logical fallacies will attest to.
The logically-illiterate and even those who are experts and authorities on the subject are prone to committing fallacies and succumbing to cognitive biases that impede and block logical thinking. In other words, humans are prone to jumping to conclusions and this needs to be remedied and critical thinking in general, logic in particular, does just that.
The intriguing aspect to this tendency to "illogic" is that its existence and persistence in humans may have given our ancestor-hominids a survival advantage. For instance every rustle in the grass simply can't be a lion but it's safer to make this inference. The following reasoning is the fallacy of affirming the consequent
1. If lion then rustling of leaves
2. Rustling of leaves
Ergo
3. Lion
Reasoning like the above may make you the laughing stock among logicians but many a logician would probably end up as snacks for lions. Really turns the meaning of fallacy on its head, doesn't it? What now of logic?
It does turn fallacy on its head, i suppose it means that logic can answer some questions but it cant answer all questions. Reason must be superior to logic.
It sounds somewhat like René Descartes who framed being within thinking, instead of thinking within being and came up with "I think therefore I am" which is reductionism and puts the cart before the horse. I fancy that whenever logic is used on its own it has a terrible habit of turning things back to front. How would this be related in simple terms, as in, if you were trying to explain it to a child?