Re: logic is innate?

From: Mitch Harris (harrisq_at_tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de)
Date: 12/01/04 

Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 11:12:45 +0100

Jesse F. Hughes wrote:
>
> These aren't paradoxes of material implication. They are problems of
> natural language, relevance, and so on. If they're relevant at all in
> the current discussion, then they cast doubt on the claim that logic
> is innate. How does one claim that logic is part of the fundamental
> features of the human brain, when natural language conditionals are so
> obviously not truth-functional?

Good point. The currently accepted propositional logic rules are a
social construction from the past 2 centuries (whether they were
"always there" or not).

But maybe we shouldn't be so strict as to what logic is.

In analogy with language, we (humans) certainly have biological
adaptations to allow us to speak and hear (breathing control, trachea
connected with mouth, threshold neurons for phonological features
(yes, chinchillas have some too but that's irrelevant), brain areas
with specific language function). Any particular language is not
forced on us by our parents but language capability certainly is.

To tell if some specific logic capability is innate, we'd have to be
pretty clever in defining our notions.

And as usual, even though there is a question as to how the
individual gets the skill (through sheer conditioning, triggering, or
built in), you still need the explanation of how/when/why the
development of a species gained whatever mechanisms necessary to do
logic or math or language. 

-- 
Mitch Harris
(remove q to reply)

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