RE: Common Apologist Fallacies
July 7, 2011 at 4:33 pm
(This post was last modified: July 7, 2011 at 4:36 pm by Rayaan.)
(July 7, 2011 at 4:05 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: A fine example of circular reasoning or reasoning where the conclusion of an argument is used to support itself.
Logic is over-rated sometimes.
Even in mathematical systems, there are certain statements which are true which cannot proved to be true (see Godel's Theorem) because there are axioms within a system that have to be assumed to be true inherently, without any proof, meaning that logic itself is circular at the deepest level. The other point is that, if a system can prove some facts, it can never prove it's own consistency.
In Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, (by Douglas Hofstadter), there is a section titled "Introspection and Insanity: A Godelian Problem," and he writes:
"I think it can have a suggestive value to translate Godel's Theorem into other domains, provided, provided one specifies in advance that the translations are metaphorical and are not intended to be taken literally. That having been said, I see two major ways of using analogies to connect Godel's Theorem and human thoughts. One involves the problem of wondering about one's own sanity. How can you figure out if you are sane? This is a Strange Loop indeed. Once you begin to question your own sanity, you can always get trapped in an ever-tighter vortex of self-fulfilling prophecies, though the process is by no means inevitable. Everyone knows that the insane interpret the world via their own peculiarly consistent logic; how can you tell if your own logic is 'peculiar' or not, given that you have only your own logic to judge itself? I don't see any answer. I am reminded of Godel's second Theorem, which implies that the only versions of formal number theory which assert their own consistency are inconistent" (696, Hofstadter).
