In Conclusion

Overall, I'm incredibly thankful that I decided to take Logic this semester. Yes, I needed it for my minor, but that's not the point. This class has really made me think about the way I frame my arguments. Even in everyday language, I'm pretty sure my conclusions don't always follow exactly from my premises. None-the-less, the course has challenged me to think this way.

Also, I really love the strength that comes from deductive logic. The ability to make an argument airtight that can't be proven wrong, based on the premises, is great. I only have one concern moving forward, and this is the question that I will ask you all.


Is formal deductive logic going to change the world? Probably not, right? Well, I'm wondering how we can use logic in the most effective way to posit beneficial change for the world.


Ideas?

Logic and Roadtrips

So, I know this post is a little simple and silly, but I just thought I'd share it with you all. This past weekend I travelled to Toronto with a former philosophy student and current Freel Library employee, Shelby. On the way up, while stuck in traffic, we started cracking logic jokes based on some things we observed. We found the following funny, maybe you will too.

Apparently most highway traveling is a continuous string of disjunctive syllogisms. For example--

Either Route 403 or Route 410 is the correct route

We know it isn't Route 403

Therefore--it is Route 410.


What do you all think?

Calm Reasoning in Dialogue

The beauty of formal logic is that it leaves no room for wildly radical statements full of informal fallacies. However, this isn't so true in our everyday lives. Sure, sometimes we may be able to have a calm, metered out conversation with people, but sometimes it isn't possible. Take abortion for example. People understandably have strong views on this subject, but when the other side calmly expresses a view, they are often meet with antagonism and shouting.

How exactly are we supposed to remedy this? Is there a way to change our culture so that any discussion, even by the uneducated, can be metered out and mellow? I wonder what lessons we can learn from formal logic to apply to informal conversational argumentation.

Writing Theses in Standard Form--Different than in Other Subjects?

So, for class tomorrow we need, as you all know, to write out our arguments in standard form with all that entails. It seems that at this point, without writing a full essay, we still have several lines of argumentation that all lead up to our conclusion, and this is our thesis. However, this seems very different than theses that I've written for other classes.


Below is a thesis for a paper that I took to a national undergraduate research conference:

         Though the anti-forced busing movement of the 1970s in Boston was in part a result of          racism, there were other key factors such as the concept of defended neighborhoods,             various sociological issues regarding city structure, white poverty, and issues         
        regarding unequal treatment between white and black children that were equally as      
        important which lead Bostonians to their fierce opposition of the policy.

Now, I guess I personally feel that this thesis is different than the ones we're structuring for class. However, is my thesis a bit more truncated than the ones we're supposed to be doing? Maybe each section separated by a comma can be expanded into its own sentence and line or argument. Who knows?

The GRE's and Logic

A friend of mine too the GRE this past saturday, and her "argumentative" essay question was pretty fascinating for us budding logicians. I'll briefly explain the argument, and go from there.

To condense the prompt, the argument is as follows:

P1. If you give students less homework, they will get better grades.
P2 The students got better grades.
Conclusion. It was because the students received less homework.


Now, that is the fallacy of affirming the consequent, which we all know is a big no-no. But, what are we to do when we come across arguments that are formally invalid? Well, I was speaking to Matt after class today, and he suggested that the next step is to allow for intellectual charity and try to help revise the argument in a way that makes sense.

I'm not sure where I was going with this post, but I found it interesting for the course!

Determining True Premises

One of the really wonderful things about formal logic is that when the argument is structured properly, and the premises are true, we can believe with great amounts of confidence that the argument is valid and therefore the answer is true. However, there is the problem of the premises themselves.

How, exactly, are we to determine whether or not a given premise is true? I mean, we can't really use Formal Logic and deductively prove a premise; that would just exponentiate the problem. Is there a particular means in logic to show that a given premise is actually true? If there isn't, what hope do we have of learning anything about the world from Formal Logic?

The Inclusive "Or"

I found it really fascinating in our class experience that the "Or" function can also include both ideas. for example PvQ could also be P and Q. Why exactly do we use that function and what sense does it really make? Obviously, it make's DeMorgan's make sense, but it seems like there must be an actual reason for the inclusion.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the ancient Greek Stoics used the "Or" function in the exclusive, and it seems that modern English language conventions do the same. So, why the change?

The Merits of Logic

Wednesday in class we discussed the benefits of being able to take a given piece of text, then diagram the argument in a way that the premises flow, in order, to the conclusion. Overall we determined the benefits of applying logic to issues outside of deductive formal proofs.

However, I have a different question to ask.

Is there a way to reap the benefits to organizing formal proofs in everyday, non-philosophy classroom discussion? Do the rules of logical inference, the structure of the arguments, and formal (as opposed to informal) fallacies benefit the rest of our studies in college? I'm not sure of an answer, but I'd love to hear what you all have to say.

Only Inductive Logic?

I really want to ask an open ended question that I really don't have an answer to myself, but here goes. Do you think that there may be some questions that cannot be answered deductively and can only be answered inductively? We briefly touched upon this in class, and what was said is that our knowledge may be limited, and therefore our arguments are only inductive under lack of sufficient evidence.


However, I have another example--the Judeo/Christian god. Some, such as Anselm and Aquinas would argue that the existence of God can be proved deductively. However, what if this isn't the case? If this god exists (and I'm not making the claim one way or the other) wouldn't the role of faith be important, and therefore the use of deductive logic would be moot since God would be unknowable without faith? I'm not sure as to an answer, but I find it interesting indeed.

Arguments for Latin American-US Differences

I'm currently the TA for a class on Latin America and United States relations. Since we're in the introductory stages of the class, we're looking at why the United States and the nations of Latin America have developed differently.

One of the arguments proposed is this: Since the Latin American populations were Catholic as opposed to Protestant like in America, and since Catholicism is authoritarian by nature, and democracy requires egalitarianism, the Latin American countries generally had authoritarian leaders because of their Catholicism while the United States had democratic ones.


Now, that's quite the mouthful of an argument, and I think considering the circumstances at hand, it makes a lot of sense. I chose this argument hoping to diagram it, but I'm not sure if I'm able to do it here. Lets see if I can tease it out.


I think our conclusion is 4)
   the Latin American countries generally had authoritarian leaders because of their Catholicism while      the United States had democratic ones.

But, how do we get there? I think that maybe we need to start with 2) Catholicism is authoritarian by nature and what follows from that is 1) the Latin American populations were Catholic as opposed to Protestant like in America

On the other side we have the statement as a stand alone which is 3) democracy requires egalitarianism.


Overall, we have 1) follows from 2) which, in conjunction with 3) comes to our conclusion 4)

Not sure if I structured this right, but give it a look!

The Real Meaning

I was having a conversation with Jondavid earlier today and we were discussing some pretty interesting issues, chiefly among them the idea of a religion and its figures as literature. As he said to me, and I'm paraphrasing, "If religion was really who has the best literary figure to follow, we'd see more Gandalfism than we do current." I think he has a point here; if religion is literature, albeit very powerful literature, what is its meaning?

I guess I'm still in the camp that it has no meaning if this is the case. As a Catholic I really believe that Jesus performed miracles, was crucified for our sins and was raised from the dead. Also, I actually believed he established a hierarchical Church here on Earth. This has no meaning if Jesus is only a strong literary figure. Rather, since I believe these to be true, metaphysical claims, it makes all the difference in the world. My faith is shaped by the implications of these truths not just here, but in all of reality.

I'm not convinced that as literature, Christianity has any of the meaning it does if it is literally true.

Religion and Duty

We've discussed in class several things relating to duty. Christians have a duty to follow Jesus' teachings and help attain the Kingdom of God, Confucius taught the duty related to human ritual and Muhammed taught a duty of submission to Allah.

Regardless of our own religious beliefs (or lack thereof) duty is something that we can all accept and implement into our lives. What, therefore, should be the duty we should have in a secular 21st century society?

The Three Faiths

I find it interesting that Isalm, Judaism, and Christianity all claim to come from the same source and often times use the same stories and people. However, at the end of the day they all believe radically different things. How does something like this happen? The Qur'an as well as the New Testament mention Jesus and the Virgin Mary, yet there are different beliefs in both religions.

More so, why do you think that in Christianity's sense first, then in Islam, the already-established stories were changed, yet accepted by large groups of people?

I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this, but I find it interesting!

Common Culture

This blog is more of an open-ended question considering what we talked about in Tuesday's Class.

What do you think should be some of the factors of a common culture, if we were to have one in America? I'm pretty skeptical of the notion, as you heard me ranting about in class, so I'll spare you most of the argument. Basically, I'm just concerned that having a common culture will lead to the erosion of cultural practices of other groups. As a person who values language, religious identity and expression, and above all food, this worries me.

If something is taken from one culture and incorporated into the unified, then it loses its meaning for that culture. I'm just scared that people will lend things to the idea of a common culture that we'll never get back.

However, what benefits might this have overall?

Gestures in the East (but not as far as China)

What struck me as really interesting when discussing Confucius was the idea of the importance and the "magic" of gestures. What they teach us about ourselves is important and the significance of relationships between people and how they impact society cannot be undermined. It actually, however, made me think of honorifics in Eastern Christianity.

Eastern Christians, such as Eastern Orthodox and Catholic as well as Oriental Orthodox and Catholic engage in a series of greetings and gestures. For example, immediately after the feast of the baptism of Jesus, an Eastern Christian would greet a brethren with "Christ is Baptized!" or, durin Easter-time  "Christ has risen!" These gestures seek to show the importance of an action from the past.

Likewise, when greeting an Eastern priest, the understood first thing to say is "Glory be to Jesus Christ!" and then to ask for the priests blessing. These gestures do not magnify man, but rather glorify Christ through the office of the priesthood. Is this a possible link to Confucianism? Do these gestures help to speak to something beyond the tangible and finite?

Jesus' Resurrection Miracles

We've talked a lot in class about Jesus' healing of the lepers and of the casting out of demons. Though I may disagree with Crossan that there were no supernatural occurrences happening, I do agree, however, that there are social implications. The acceptance of people that Jesus shows is fantastic and his "open-table fellowship" with everyone from prostitutes to lepers and tax collectors shows that the Kingdom of God is open to everyone. What does Jesus' raising of the dead, such as with Lazarus mean?

In more than one of the Gospels, Jesus raises different people from the dead. Even if we agree with Crossan's method and take these stories as figurative constructions, there is still something important here. The Judaism of the first century A.D. was very concerned with the body, and so it only makes sense to show an immense figure such as Jesus raising those who were dead. To Jesus, the Kingdom of God does not end when someone dies, but rather that all people are part of it. Death is no immediate release from the world, but rather the world has something important to give. The Kingdom is here and now according to Jesus, and therefore even the dead should partake in it.

Giving Jesus Meaning

We talked in class today about the power of a story (such as Santa Clause) and how that can inspire people or affect their lives. But, I have a different question. Would someone die for their belief in Santa Clause

It is apparent that the very early Christian communities were persecuted to some extent in the Roman Empire. Why, then, would they believe in stories of a man who they didn't believe to be God and the messiah? Was Jesus' simple message of "do unto others as they do unto you" worth dying for? Many of Jesus' lessons can be found in many cultures since they're apparent to humanity. However, maybe they died for something more.

I would argue that the gospel writers must have believed that a good portion of their writings were actually true, or at least tried to convince others they were.

Perhaps these early followers did actually believe Jesus to be an actual savior worth dying for. I don't know about the rest of you, but I wouldn't be martyred in the name of an illiterate Jewish peasant who taught some good moral lessons.

"Fear" in a Religious Context

"Fear" is a term that in modern English almost always means terror. However, in antiquity, fear did not always have these connotations. We discussed the fear aspect of Chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita today in class and learned a lot. Because of the immensity of the divine, people are often overwhelmed when they come in contact with it. Glimpsing the infinite as a finite being can cause stress, and fear: a fear which is awe.

Arjuna's glimpse of Krishna had a similar allegory to Christianity. In the Gospel of Luke, the angels of the Lord reveal themselves to the shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus. They had to tell the shepherds to "be not afraid," due to their majesty (since they are beyond human experience.)

So, whenever we come in contact with the divine, whether in writing or in reality (if that's your thing) then we should "be not afraid" and appreciate the divine for what it is.

Hinduism and Terrorism?

I'd like to preface by saying that I'm not making a judgement call about Hindus with this post, It's merely an inquiry.


In my "Terrorism Seminar" we discussed motivations for terrorism from both Christian and Muslim perspectives. We as a group determined that there could be certain verses from scriptures that justified terrorist-like attacks. I brought up the question of whether or not the Bhagavad-Gita could do the same. I think that someone could misconstrue Krishna's instruction to Arjuna to fight and kill people that were his family, teachers, etc.

Do you think that this could be applied to justify terrorism? How can we as a people keep this bastardization of sacred scripture from happening?

Musings about the Gita

Hi everyone! I'd like to preface by saying that our reading so far is way out of my wheelhouse of information. Coming from a Catholic Christian background, it is hard for me to think of things to write about without linking them in somewhat back to Christianity. So, please bear with me if I happen to draw connections that I'm not hoping to make.

Now, we discussed in class that there are different paths, or Yogas, to acheive this detachment from the Self. Why are they so different? If one is the path of action and one is the path of inaction, how is anyone supposed to determine which Yoga to follow? Is it based on your state in life, or is it based on a personal decision that benefits you the most? I guess, to me, it seems strange that two very different paths could have the same end goal. Normally, one would be easier or more difficult to follow, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

So, an open question could be: if the yogas are totally different, how can they achieve the same outcome?