Positivism, laws of logic?

[Babble]

Question, I had this debate with my crit. thinking professor and want a serious, academic answer, not a debate.

His response eventually whittled down to this:

If one believes that anything that is meaningful can be sensed, the laws of logic are not valid in this worldview. Since we cannot dispute the laws of logic without affirming them and the laws cannot be sensed, there must therefore be meaningful things that cannot be sensed.

Is this sound? If not, why?

[BassRevelation0]

What he just did is say that logic is meaningless using a logical argument.

If logic is not valid how would one come to that conclusion, except through logic?

[Babble]

That's actually the opposite of what he did. He was arguing that intangible things could have meaning, and that to believe they cannot, then one must impossibly refute the laws of logic.

I think it could be possible to reply that the laws of logic have meaning, because like mathematics, they are symbolic of relationships that are recognizable.

[spitfirejunky]

If one believes that anything that is meaningful can be sensed, the laws of logic are not valid in this worldview.

I don't understand this.

[italic zero]

I don't think 'sensed' is the right word. (Ironically, Frege used the term 'sense' to denote objective meanings, which are unsenseable.) If you mean 'observed', which basically comes down to physically existing, then it is an argument against materialism. A materialist would probably dispute the premise that the laws of logic cannot be observed, in principle, i.e., laws of logic depend on neurological processes that could be observed given the right equipment and analysis. In this case, however, logic would be entirely dependent on humans. (Unless animals have some sort of rudimentary logic, in which case it would also depend on them.) Your teacher would probably disagree with this; there are some convincing arguments against it.

I'm also not sure about the use of 'meaningful'. Perhaps 'real' is better suited, given the ambiguity of 'meaning' in this context.

[Babble]

"real" is a portion of my definition of "meaningful" but I think a more appropriate definition would be "having effect or existence" though I'm not too certain.

For instance, a unicorn is a meaningless concept (speaking literally) because it does not have effect or existence, but the concept of a unicorn has both effect and existence and therefore is meaningful.

I think there is a hole that we are obviously speaking of a concept of logic which has an even more unquestionable meaning than logic itself. The concept of logic is what would (if indeed it could) be observed in the human brain. However, it seems to me that the laws of logic have to be universal and exist outside of the mind, just like a unified physics equation must exist.

It also seems to me that it shouldn't be a huge leap to establish that the concept/knowledge/understanding/thought of logic and logic itself are not too distantly related.

EDIT: Or could it be possible to establish that the laws of logic are based upon differentiations made by the human mind and therefore it exists within the human mind as well?

I don't really know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to explore my own worldview without much training.

[Babble]

nevermind guys, I found the answer:

a proposition is "cognitively meaningful" only if there is a finite procedure for conclusively determining whether it is true or false.

The laws of logic can be demonstrated finitely and conclusively to be true, so therefore bear cognitive meaning.

[BassRevelation0]

/Homework Assignment

[siva_chair]

bear cognitive meaning.

Lol bears.

http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/polar-bear-tongue.jpeg

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/animals/images/primary/grizzly-bear.jpg

http://www.bear.org/website/images/stories/images/HWB_800x600/HWB_Slide58_FS_800.jpg

[McP3000]

Lol bears.

http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/polar-bear-tongue.jpeg
oh my his poor little tongue looks cold!

[siva_chair]

Quit crying he's a bear he wouldn't cry about it. He laughs at the cold and your tears.

[peeted]

nevermind guys, I found the answer:



The laws of logic can be demonstrated finitely and conclusively to be true, so therefore bear cognitive meaning.

I would check out Quines two dogmas and the subsiquent philosophical debate before jumping straight to that conclusion. Also id say that deffinition of cognativley meaningfull leaves quite a lot of intuitivley meaningfull statements meaningless.

And what does this mean "Since we cannot dispute the laws of logic without affirming them and the laws cannot be sensed". I didnt understand that sentence.

[siva_chair]

It probably has something to do with Nietzsche's whole "Logic rests on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world" argument or some similar criticism raised against logic idk.