Your "Own Logic"?

Do you have your “own” logic? If you’re explaining why you think something is true, and someone else challenges it, is it a sufficient response to say that you have your “own” logic when it comes to these things?

Of course not. Read on for a very thorough examination of this claim, along with an analysis of the kookiness that they just rolled out of the Fruitcake Factory.

 There’s a somewhat interesting thread going on at the Fruitcake Factory (www.heruraha.net), where this notion of your “own logic” appeared (read the thread here). The thread in question started out discussing the Cairo Working specifically, but it’s grown into a more general discussion of supernatural claims and their place in Thelema. I use the word “discussion,” of course, very loosely – basically, it’s just a bunch of superstitious nuts reasoning poorly, interspersed with generally insightful  questions from the thread’s OP and antagonist, “Frater Potater.”

While Frater Potater is generally correct in many of the things he says, he claims somewhere in the middle of the thread:

I have my own logic, and my own standard with which to process the evidence. We both have our different reasons for thinking the way we do. I guess we'll just leave it at that.

He explains this a little later:

Yes I say "My" logic, meaning it's coming from my perspective. It is a given that we are two different people. Like I said, we have our own inclinations, our own biases, our own filters. We will look at the evidence and draw different conclusions. Everyone will be looking at the same evidence. We all draw our own conclusion.

 No, actually, you don’t have your own logic or your own standards. There’s just logic, which is not subjective or different or varying from person to person. Logic is a tool that deals with the process of producing conclusions, and there are objective criteria for this process. Any independent observer can examine someone else’s reasoning and conclude, objectively, whether the conclusion is logical.

Take, for example, the famous syllogism:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

This syllogism is an example of how we can objectively determine whether a conclusion is logical. Here, this deductive conclusion is both sound (based on true premises) and valid (properly drawn from the premises).

The objectivity of the logical process applies also to processes that start from premises that only one person can observe. Witness:

I feel hungry right now.

Hunger is frequently caused by the body needing energy.

Therefore, my body very likely needs energy.

The conclusion is both valid and sound, objectively so, and that validity and soundness are not altered in the slightest by the fact that only the person speaking the syllogism can personally observe the first premise. If I tell others about my logical process, any objective party can examine my train of thought and determine if it is valid and – equally important – if it is sound.

However, what many people seem not to forget is that “logical” – the sense of being a valid conclusion drawn from premises – does not necessarily mean “true.” Take this syllogism:

I had a vision while I was on a movie line.

The vision felt like a communication.

Any internal experience that feels like a communication is likely a communication.

Therefore, the vision was likely a communication.

This syllogism is valid (that is, the conclusion is produced correctly from the premises), but it is unsound because it introduces a premise not demonstrated to be true (“Any internal experience that feels like a communication is likely a communication”). After all, there are lots of examples of people experiencing what seems like a communication but is in fact self-suggestion, daydreaming, imagination, or, more rarely, a psychotic break with reality.

In other words, while we might say that the conclusion is “logical” (in the sense of being a valid syllogism), we can also judge that the logic here is – objectively – unsound.

In other words, the fellow advancing the above argument doesn’t have “his own logic” with which he makes and evaluates claims. He has the same logic that the rest of us have, and he applies it foolishly. He may tell himself that he has his “own logic” or his “own standards,” but this is merely a device that enables him to ignore the fact that he is poorly applying logic.

Michael Staley (presumably the OHO of the Typhonian Order) likes to say frequently that we all have our own “standards” for making evaluations, but this isn’t really true. Standards of logic and evidence are objective, and they remain objective whether we’re talking about evidence that only one person can perceive (like visions) or evidence that multiple people can perceive (like, say, statistics).

One time, when engaging him on this point, I pointed out that a man who hears voices and who therefore concludes that “aliens must be beaming messages into my head” is demonstrably drawing an incorrect conclusion from that evidence, objectively.

As I put it at the time:

this is a phenomenon that only one person can observe, but the "standards of evidence" for accepting that claim are something that we can discuss and come to conclusions on. To put it another way, the experience of hearing voices is entirely subjective (in the sense of "arising in the mind of only one individual"), but the conclusions that one comes to about the experience don't have to be subjective (in the other sense, of being "colored by personal bias"). One's conclusions -- and the standards of evidence by which one comes to those conclusions -- can be objective (in the second sense, of being "uncolored as much as is possible by personal bias"). Through rational discussion, we can evaluate those standards of evidence and conclusions.

 And as I put it to someone else, using the same example:

the claim “aliens are beaming messages into my brain” is – objectively, in the second sense – sufficient but not necessary (as an explanation of the phenomenon under discussion). As such, based solely on the evidence presented, an individual cannot (validly) accept the claim.

That’s an objective conclusion because it does not matter what I (or anyone else) personally think about aliens: we can’t (validly) accept a sufficient but unnecessary cause without evidence that suggests it’s operating in this situation.

In the same way, if I lose my keys, I can’t say, “Well, that means that aliens must have taken them.” Aliens taking my keys would be a sufficient explanation (it certainly would cause me to lose the keys), but it’s not necessary: there’s nothing about the evidence that even remotely suggests it’s likely at all.

This is objective (second sense), universal criteria for analyzing this kind of claim.

With these basic concepts out of the way, let’s turn to one of the stupid ideas that appeared in that thread on the Fruitcake Factory.

One confused kid who calls himself Bereshith repeats the standard believer script that atheism can lead to atrocity:

the scholarly consensus can be just as close-minded and experientially lacking as the faithful. If you think atheistic, materialist, empirical science-types don't kill for their ideals, review both historical and present-day Communism. The faithful aren't the only ones with blood on their hands.

 The problem here is that the poster is trying to argue that there is equivalence between believers and non-believers because both believers and non-believers have committed atrocities. For this comment to be relevant in the thread in which it appears, it would have to be asserting a basis of comparison between believers and non-believers, asserting that just as believers hold to a position that can cause them to commit atrocities, so too can non-believers hold to a position that can cause them to commit atrocities (as he says directly above, when he notes that “atheistic, materialist, empirical science-types […] kill for their ideals,” presumably the causes of atheism, materialism, and science [because if he wasn’t claiming that they kill for those things, it wouldn’t be a proper basis of comparison]).

But, in point of fact, we can determine – objectively – that not holding a belief (atheism, materialism) can never logically be the cause of an action, while holding a belief (theism) can be the cause of an action. People take actions on the basis of what they believe, not what they don’t believe.

Stalin, for example, never committed his crimes “in the name of atheism” or “in the name of materialism” (in other words, in the name of not-believing-in-god or not-believing-in-worlds-other-than-the-physical). He committed them in the name of beliefs of his: the belief in a political ideology, and a belief that it is appropriate to use force to impose that political ideology.

This Bereshith kid makes a bunch of other stupid arguments on the thread, and they are all – objectively – just as bad. I was going to refute his other arguments, but it would literally take me hours to point out all of the objective flaws in his thinking. The sad part, figuratively speaking, is that this kid probably thinks he’s a “free thinker” who has “boldly escaped dogma” or some crap like that, when in fact his own poor reasoning is making him the prisoner of his false ideas about reality.

Anyway, go and read the thread if you need a laugh. A more important point will be made in my next post, where I address Eshelman’s syllogisms.