(May 24, 2011 at 1:50 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Thanks for the response. Could you elaborate on two things for me though? You say that the laws of logic come from humans, but then how could we have a law of contradiction when human minds contradict one another all the time? So could you explain your point?My answer was fairly short because we covered this point in one of our earlier discussions, though I don't blame you for not remembering anything in those cumbersome posts.
Humans being able to contradict one another is irrelevant to the fact that we created them.
More to the point, the reason we have the laws of logic is because we have several strong languages. It is a result of a very nuanced method of communication with one another. Humans not always seeing eye to eye, not always having all the necessary information, and sometimes following to seporate but logical conclusions don't always follow with a lack of contradiction.
The very nature of law (such as US law) and formal debate stems from equally valid and logical but contradictory conclusions.
Computer sofware is built on very basic 'yes-no' bionary dynamic and yet computers have compatibility issues all the time, even within the same programming language (as any Windows owner will attest).
Being logical and possessing laws of logic (or creating them) doesn't always mean perfectly aligned thinking.
(May 24, 2011 at 1:50 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Secondly, I don't follow your answer to number 7, are you saying natural events are indeed rational?Yes. "rational" in the sense that things don't just happen for no reason. The laws of physics are built upon the operation of cause and effect and other natural processes. Not knowing the cause or how an effect is brought about from a cause (or whatever) or a natural process that leads to a known result doesn't mean that an event is irrational (meaning without rhyme or reason).
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
