Would some hypothetical alien civilisation have a notion of propositional logic, complete with equivalents of syllogisms and modus tollens and all that stuff? Would any of it be different to ours? Would they even have a concept of “proposition” or is the whole endeavour a weird parochial human construct for navigating the world? It kind of feels that logic and mathematics exist independently of logicians and mathematicians, somehow. But how? Is this actually the case? What is logic “made of”? Is this question even meaningful, and what does that say about how the universe works?
This is interesting. It’s certainly way more interesting than never asking what logic is. Most people never do, and yet they still use the word “logical” in an intuitive, folksy way, convinced that they know exactly what it means. The word that comes out of the everyday user’s mouth is loosely pointing to the same set of ideas that philosophers talk about when they talk about logic, but the everyday user has never bothered to follow the pointer to see where it goes.
The point of asking questions like this is to find out what ideas we take for granted without being aware of the complexity behind them. As a material object, contemporary fiat money isn’t unusual, but as an artefact of human culture it has some of the weirdest properties you might possibly hope to dream up. In order to appreciate this, you have to think about what money is. Plenty of people are happy to talk about quantitative easing, the gold standard or the Eurozone as if they know what’s going on, and yet they haven’t asked themselves this question. Maybe they should ask themselves this question, is all I’m saying; and if they’re not in a position to ask that question to themselves, maybe someone else should ask them.
Well, what is logic?
Would some hypothetical alien civilisation have a notion of propositional logic, complete with equivalents of syllogisms and modus tollens and all that stuff? Would any of it be different to ours? Would they even have a concept of “proposition” or is the whole endeavour a weird parochial human construct for navigating the world? It kind of feels that logic and mathematics exist independently of logicians and mathematicians, somehow. But how? Is this actually the case? What is logic “made of”? Is this question even meaningful, and what does that say about how the universe works?
This is interesting. It’s certainly way more interesting than never asking what logic is. Most people never do, and yet they still use the word “logical” in an intuitive, folksy way, convinced that they know exactly what it means. The word that comes out of the everyday user’s mouth is loosely pointing to the same set of ideas that philosophers talk about when they talk about logic, but the everyday user has never bothered to follow the pointer to see where it goes.
The point of asking questions like this is to find out what ideas we take for granted without being aware of the complexity behind them. As a material object, contemporary fiat money isn’t unusual, but as an artefact of human culture it has some of the weirdest properties you might possibly hope to dream up. In order to appreciate this, you have to think about what money is. Plenty of people are happy to talk about quantitative easing, the gold standard or the Eurozone as if they know what’s going on, and yet they haven’t asked themselves this question. Maybe they should ask themselves this question, is all I’m saying; and if they’re not in a position to ask that question to themselves, maybe someone else should ask them.