On Logic and Alternate Universes

[The Grand Nudger]

Some other thing might be gloople and glorp.  2, 5, identity, these can all be the same things in that different universe and yield the sum of 5 -because- those other things are differnt, because of gloople and glorp (whatever they are).  I would certainly call the ruleset, even if it included identity alongside gloople and glorp "something other than logical" - but this business about the hypothetical failing to identity, it just doesn't.  In a different universe, things would be different.  It's a different universe, where, again, 5 just is what you get when you add those quantities together, for whatever reason, as weird as that sounds to us because it doesn't happen here (there's our glorp).  Their math would reflect that reality, and the law of identity... if it applied in that universe... would apply to the same.

Then it's not math.  It's something else.

It's not -our- math...that accords itself to the relationships between quantities as that's expressed in -our- universe, no, but that's completely besides the point, isn't it..because we aren't talking about our math -or- our universe. 

Different universe, different relationships between quantities.  Their math would reflect those differences, or be wrong with respect to their universe.  In their universe, for whatever reason (glorp), when two quantities of something are added o two quantities of something, you have five quantities of something.  I don't know how that happens, because I don;t know what glorp is, I don;t live in that universe, I have no evidence from that universe to appeal to or explain it by, but I don't -have- to know what glorp is to accept that this is how those relationships play out in their hypothetical universe.  That's one of the things that's different, about this different universe with different rules. Refusing to accept that is -not- accepting the hypothetical, it;s simply refusing to consider it. I've accepted it, I've considered it, and ultimately, it doesn't matter whether or not such a universe is possible or exists, or that 2=2 really does equal 5 in that universe....there's no reason to call whatever rules make that true logical, and every reason to call them something else...and that, that and only that, was the question asked, the point of contention.

@Fallen.  
There you go again, referring to this other set of rules by the term we use to refer to the set of rules that you have decided to distance them from.  I can't know which set of rules you're even talking about if you use the same terms for both.

The ability to produce an answer doesn't make something logic or logical. Now you;ve gone from equivocation to complete non-sequitur. There are plenty of illogical things that can produce answers all day long. I have four of them living in my house producing endless answers to any question you might care to ask...most of which are entirely untrue but sometimes...just sometimes, they get one right on accident. My daughter, just a few nights ago, informed that the moon moved because it was falling. Well I'll be damned, she's right...but not because of any logical reason - in fact her reasons were completely out of left field and nevertheless she correctly identified what it means for something to be in orbit.

Similarly, 2+2=5, in that hypothetical universe, is an answer...particularly to what the sum of two plus two is....but it's not a -logical- one, even if it's right. It's a glorpical one, or a goblygoopal one...it's true because of some rule that's -different- from the rules we are referring to when we use the term logic here.