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?
Good question.
ReplyDeleteA premise is just the conclusion to a prior argument. So we keep working backwards until we come to propositions that do not need proving (or at least that there is no good reason to doubt).
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