Re: logic is innate?

From: Acid Pooh (poopdeville_at_gmail.com)
Date: 12/03/04 

Date: 2 Dec 2004 20:00:42 -0800

"Jesse F. Hughes" <jesse@phiwumbda.org> wrote in message news:<87vfblyqx5.fsf@phiwumbda.org>...
> poopdeville@gmail.com (Acid Pooh) writes:
>
> > "Jesse F. Hughes" <jesse@phiwumbda.org> wrote in message news:<871xeasayt.fsf@phiwumbda.org>...
> >>
> >>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?
> >
> > Because there are different natural language conditionals, some of
> > which are truth functional.
>
> Can you give a simple example of a natural language conditional that
> is best interpreted truth-functionally? Let's leave informal
> mathematical discussions out, if we may.

How about informal philosophical discussions? This might seem like
cheating, since this sort of discourse shares many of the features of
mathematical discussions (and includes more than a small amount of
equivocation). I'll ask my linguistics buddies if they can think of
any.
>
> > I still stand by my "Eat veggies, get ice cream" example, since in my
> > experience, if the father gives the kid ice cream without him having
> > eaten his vegetables, people would say that the caved. Of course,
> > your experience could be different. Assuming that this reaction is
> > universal is too far out.
>
> I didn't disagree with your claim that this example is better
> understood as a biconditional, but even then, I'd say that each of the
> two conditionals is probably non-monotonic, rather than material
> implication.
>
> > Granting this, your example of the non-monotonicity of this
> > conversational conditional doesn't really show what you think it
> > does.
>
> I'm not sure what you're correcting here.

Well, you claimed that "_The_ conditional operator of natural language
is non-monotonic," whereas your example shows that it isn't unique.
(\emph mine)

> I didn't want to claim that
> the fact natural language conditionals aren't truth-functional
> *proves* logic is not innate. But if natural language gives us any
> hints on that question, I'd guess it pushes us towards the negative at
> least as strongly as to the positive.

I don't have any strong opinions (that would settle the issue,
anyway). Like I've said before, in my experience -- say, during
freshman year analysis, I would reason by internally thinking things
along the lines of "So 'X' is true, and 'X->Y' is true" and using my
intuitions about what "truth" meant. My abilities have grown in
sophistication since then (not to toot my own horn, but the fact that
we can have intelligent discourse on abstract topics is testament).

But one can mean many things by "logic." Mentally applying an
algorithm to solve an NP-complete game would be equivalent to applying
an algorithm to solve the satisfiability problem -- it would be
difficult to say that this person wasn't using "logic," even though
all they've done is raw, likely brute calculation. This sort of data
crunching ability might seem to be innate, but it seems like a
different skill than *finding* the algorithm.

The best I think we can say about this issue is sort of a compromise
-- we each start with certain mental faculties (the raw data crunching
stuff) that we can develop into higher level skills with intense
critical thinking. Maybe we can even improve our raw data crunching
skills with lots of practice (yuck). Developmentally, we might find
people's rough, intuitive notions of how logic works somewhere between
the two. But this isn't philosophical or empirical. It's downright
flakey.

>
> To be honest, though, it's not the kind of philosophical question I
> spend much thought on. Matter of taste, I suppose.
>

Me neither, usually. But you and Mitch brought up some interesting
points regarding my posts.

'cid 'ooh