Best way to develop logic? Epistemology, Or logic courses?

[charlie cho]

I guess to develop the intellect, I think developing our logical brain, or the encoding brain is most important. 

Emotional intelligence/social intelligence, which basically sounds the same to me in their meaning, can't be developed by effort. I heard Daniel Goldman say the best way to train social intelligence is meditation, and meditation isn't something you 'practice' in order to get good. Meditation in itself means to discard any 'habit' or 'practice' in one's life, so to practice meditation is a contradictory statement in itself. 

I don't know why schools don't teach logic courses now. I heard law schools have to teach logic, though, because it helps for the students to make persuasive arguments in court, but it doesn't seem to me they care about anything else other than to just convince audiences.

What's the best way to develop the logical brain? Study Epistemology? Reading that book, Leo recommended, 'Theory and Reality', I instantly saw results of the change in my way of thinking. I've watched some videos on Logic, but they never helped me to change my way of thinking, though. They just felt like rote learning "logic" not really changing the way I thought. Just reading a lot of scientific text, solving math problems, reading chemistry texts didn't help me change the way I thought. Again, it felt like rote learning. Actually, reading history and philosophy helped me most in my logical thinking. It's ironic to say, I know, but I can see how the things I studied in the humanities helped me in learning technological things. 

So, how did you learn logical thinking, encoding? Did you play a lot of poker, chess? Did that help?

Edited June 1, 2022 by charlie cho

[Razard86]

1 hour ago, charlie cho said:

I guess to develop the intellect, I think developing our logical brain, or the encoding brain is most important. 

Emotional intelligence/social intelligence, which basically sounds the same to me in their meaning, can't be developed by effort. I heard Daniel Goldman say the best way to train social intelligence is meditation, and meditation isn't something you 'practice' in order to get good. Meditation in itself means to discard any 'habit' or 'practice' in one's life, so to practice meditation is a contradictory statement in itself. 

I don't know why schools don't teach logic courses now. I heard law schools have to teach logic, though, because it helps for the students to make persuasive arguments in court, but it doesn't seem to me they care about anything else other than to just convince audiences.

What's the best way to develop the logical brain? Study Epistemology? Reading that book, Leo recommended, 'Theory and Reality', I instantly saw results of the change in my way of thinking. I've watched some videos on Logic, but they never helped me to change my way of thinking, though. They just felt like rote learning "logic" not really changing the way I thought. Just reading a lot of scientific text, solving math problems, reading chemistry texts didn't help me change the way I thought. Again, it felt like rote learning. Actually, reading history and philosophy helped me most in my logical thinking. It's ironic to say, I know, but I can see how the things I studied in the humanities helped me in learning technological things. 

So, how did you learn logical thinking, encoding? Did you play a lot of poker, chess? Did that help?

Logic is no where near the most important part of your intellect. Its the same reason the most brilliant scientific minds... are unable to find the truth of reality. I.Q. is not true intelligence, and neither is logic. Logic is only one aspect of intelligence and it is limited. It is limited by memory. There are tons of people every year who are  able to join Mensa. https://www.mensa.org/ Which is a high IQ society. 

The greatest inventors and innovators are not usually the higher in I.Q. or logic, they are the highest in intuition. So if you want to raise your intelligence, start there. Intuition helps you with discernment, which is the ability to figure out what information is helpful and which is not. It helps you overcome your bias, cognitive dissonance and the self delusions your mind will create. Logic will NOT help you overcome this, as the more logical you are, the greater ability you have to delude yourself because your arguments will become even better. 

Logic is a start....but if you think of it as the holy grail you will lose touch with the other types of intelligences there are. 

Here is a list.

https://www.iberostar.com/en/inspiration-guide/wellness/eight-types-of-intelligence/

What I would add to that list again is discernment, and then lastly Intuition.

[charlie cho]

@Razard86 Yeah. But intuition is basically the intelligence of the heart and gut. Intuition can't be trained though, does it.

So all I have that I CAN train is logic. And I don't see how logic can delude oneself if it is used in the service of intuition. You know, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Logic having nothing to support is dangerous, but as long as it serves intuition, it is the best ally. 

And as long as intuition has logic as its ally, why not develop logic at its best? I say this because my logical skills isn't the best, so I want to develop it as much as I can so it can be a cause for good fortune.

You know, the question shouldn't why shouldn't we develop our logical skills. The question ought to be, why not develop our logical skills to an elite level, as long as it serves intuition?

 

[Reciprocality]

Instead of considering logic to be a bunch of steps to follow, instructions to be algorithmic-ally applied, I would instead ask what is the given totality of interest/object of concern in a 'singular' moment and what attributes does it hold, when have you exhausted its elements and when have you not?

Logic is not something we develop, logic is something trough which the world is given us, what we can develop is a meta cognition of how this is so such that we have good tools not to reduce it to logic. (this may sound most peculiar, is it not already reduced to logic if I claim that it (the world) is already given us by means of logic? nope. This has to do with completeness, for only in saying that I have the complete (or x->complete) set of logical rules for the way the world is given me can I be faulty in saying that it is so, and only in exemplifying a logical condition for which the world is not given me can I reduce it to it.)

 

Logic is prior to conscious calculation, it is because of the inherence of logic to consciousness (as you know it) that it is possible to calculate at all, I would begin asking a bunch of questions like "windows are on every house I've seen, what essentializes windows such that I did not take them for something else, and what are their accidents, that is, what does window have that they do not need to have to be recognized as windows?" The essence of windows can then be applied in a statement-structure such that "every window is of glass" or accident "a window can be of glass but does not have to", formal logic is the application of the universality of the structure of these statements (x can be of Y but not always), logic "includes" also the particular window and its particular accidents/essences and substances, the universality itself is deductive while everything else so far as it is formalized is inductively applied.

Formal logic typically disregards everything which has to do with real-world thought, and attempt only answering questions that relate to the structure of statements in the very general.

 

Axioms are assumptions, many people will consider a priori conditions for proof as assumptions yet believe in the truth of the proof anyway, I have spent uncountable hours trying to understand the mind in which this makes sense but to negative avail. Which is to say that you may formalize "there is a straight line between every two points" as an axiom, and in some systems it is a mere assumption (general relativity) but it is non the less an a priori condition for the system itself, as this condition it is not an assumption, it is not for instance an assumption that you must have a base to apply a uniform metric to a function in calculus. The domain of "every point" is prior to us looking for them, it is possible to look for points because their domain is necessary.

Logic does not rest on axioms, despite everyone telling you so, axioms rests entirely on logic (even the most inane assumption does so), the alternative is oblivion and paradox, not computational paradox, literal the 'sky became a literal pencil forever" paradox.

Axioms are defined by being unprovable statements, yet some axioms are a condition for the possibility of computing all possible proofs (they are often implicit in actual formal axioms, these (proofs) are a synthesis of axioms by logical necessity. This necessity is prior to the very computation, if not then every second of our life would literally be us lifting ourself up from the bath-tub by our hair, which is a form of mysticism and skepticism in conjunction that you will find pretty much everywhere on this forum.

Logic has nothing to do with completeness except for in the efforts at failing such a task, you do not have to find a consistent set of sets to be conscious of windows and distribute its identity over everything owed its essence, you are doing this NATURALLY, to be aware of this being what you are doing can and should make you more competent at doing it abstractly in your head, as I presume you desiring.

 

Formal logic is almost the opposite of logic, and is analogous to building a boat instead of swimming in the sea, logic is like the air you breath in, it brings you a new moment. Metaphors in disjunction are our operating system and the condition for time as such, the units or metric of logic are metaphors.

 

Pure mathematical ideals (that transcend the metaphors in which they are found) rests upon accidents of experience to be discovered and initiated in metaphors (by the synthesis of imagination), which is why it is so hard to admit to (or understand) them being a condition for our existence).

Edited June 1, 2022 by Reciprocality

[Reciprocality]

If you understand holonism then the codependency of points and straight lines, second-dimensionality and triangles etc should really just be application of that understanding, making meaningful axioms unprovably true and therefore not "assumed" axioms.

Which is another way to say that any particular system is not contained in but instead projected by an absolute system.

Containment is inherently paradoxical, time is the opposite of containment, time can be referenced because of the disjunction between the very metaphors that renders it, these disjunctions are in a naive and irreducible proximity to each other held in short term memory.

 

Most logicians would find my understanding of axioms circular, but they are radically oblivious to how they have to first assume AWAY the straight line from its inherent points, they do this because of the accidental nature trough which they may be given points and straight lines in conjunction.

My whole philosophy is the opposite, there are platonic forms/substances that are perfect in a world we do not understand very well, we are mere instruments of it, if you triangulate many things by walking trough "time" then you should get a "glimpse" of them, you do not infer from apples their shape, you impose blindly their shape on the canvas of colors and light.

 

In fact there very being such a thing as proofs proves there being unprovable truths (by disjunction), for otherwise nothing could be in conjunction to something else and there would literally only be super symmetry of proofs in every possible direction, no identity anywhere.

That is, proofs are computational accidents to the proven object, some axioms (without even taking a look at any single one of them) must therefore necessarily be true and not assumed.

 

In conclusion, and I am (a little) sorry for being too eager in your thread, the asymmetric world of mere information (pure empirical sensation) and the perfect world of forms are each others contingent being, precisely like (a. proofs, b. computation and c. accidents) inheres to (a. true axioms, b. the computed and c. substances), there would be nothing of the latter group without the impermanence of the former as there would be nothing of the former group without the constance of the latter, there literally is no constance of the latter except for in relation to the impermanence of the former, you would be left with nothing without the relation.

An analogy here (to the relation itself) is that of physical emergence, or emergent causation, there is literally nothing more "contained" in a system a-z than a bunch of symbols, yet emergent of them there is more than their summation (alphabet), and it is computationally irreducible that it is so, which is why you are either thinking of the symbol or the alphabet but never actually both, that this is possible is remarkable.

[Carl-Richard]

I generally don't believe in reductionistic approaches when it comes to bettering yourself in broad and overarching aspects such as logical reasoning (I'm more "learning by doing"/"practice makes perfect"), but also in this case, learning some philosophy wouldn't hurt.

[charlie cho]

@Carl-Richard I'm just saying, there are many things that logical reasoning can help you 'DO' and 'PRACTICE'. For example, the computer you are typing in. That computer wasn't built by just "doing" things. They were "thinking" things logically to come up with making first computer ever made. 

[Carl-Richard]

@charlie cho I don't think the most brilliant logicians you can think of ever spent their time doing practices to better their logical reasoning specifically, just like a climber doesn't just do finger crunches all day. In life, logic tends to be a subset of a larger process.

[Lila9]

I think that by "developing logic" you've meant to: developing your strategic thinking, developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills?

[Ulax]

That moment when you realise logic is flawed .

But, anyhow, from what I understand, volker halbach, the 'logic manual' is the way most philosophy undergrads learn logic