The inability of Fortunate_son to grasp the distinction between the concept and codification of the Laws of Logic and the physical reality they refer to is really becoming tedious.

The regularities of reality which we can describe by the Laws of Logic, and of Science, are what allows mind of any kind to emerge, not vice versa.

Damn, I accidentally deleted the wrong post.

Favorite_son, could you just post a simple post in that thread, then I can replace it with what was in your thread, then I will put my response back at the end of the thread?

Well. he's posted what he thinks is his victory lap so I guess that'll be all from him for a bit.

those of us without his magic Jesus glasses will have to settle for the written record.

The debate over on the Bob vs Fortunate Son thread just reinforces the pointlessness of such things. Fortunate has great confidence in his peculiar position - that logic is the template for everything and actually underpins reality regardless of the fact it's the device of humans who use their very recently evolved brains to label things in the natural world that appear logical to them. It's hard not to think we simply hurl anthropomorphisms out like confetti - logic being one such - in fact even the furthest wiggles of the largest people brains are stuck in their unbending and constraining human reality. I had to agree with bob that our logic is shaped by our minds and their interaction with our environment. Without the ability to perceive apparent constants we could not plan. I particularly liked Bob's dissection of Fortunate's initial post which laid out the necessity for god as Fortunate saw it.

Fortunate also kept insisting that logic could not be in the human brain because all humans are different and presumably we would have entirely different systems of logic if it were left to each of us. I disagree with this. I think humans are broadly consistent and if we were not things like logic and language would be completely useless to us.

Personally, I always get pleasure when Bob reaches the point of frustration required to push him to identify his contender as 'insane'.

Lame!

So from where in nature do I derive Rule UI (universal instantiation)?  

Where in nature is "p-->q, p, :.q" located?

Can you tell me how I can derive Bayes Theorem from watching cells divide?

From the deductive process, ultimately from the axioms like every other theorem in Math!!

A specific theorem may be suggested by observation of some phenomena, but its rigorous development is by deductive methods within a system of Math or Logic.

Do you seriously not understand how deductive systems like Math and Logic worK?

Axioms are unprovable but reasonable assumptions which serve as the starting point for systems of knowledge like Math and Logic.

Here, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom and see if you can learn something real, instead of your silly God fantasy.

To my fellow forumites:

I went through being annoyed by this whole conversation and then laughed a while about it and then wrote it off.
After all of that this morning I woke up and thought about the subject and realized there's an important point to be made here.

The irony of this whole thread is that the OP is presenting essentially a gigantic red herring.

The OP fails to grasp that the validity and the truth of an argument are not synonymous.  This is logic 101.

He presents some absurd and self-contradictory premises and then argues a potentially valid argument.   Or at least it sounds close enough to kosher to be arguable.

Then when people attack the argument or premises he continually red herrings back to the validity of the argument and the laws of logic rather than the truth or untruth of the premises which is really where the truth or untruth of his conclusion lies.    It is an elementary mistake or deliberate deception.
 
To Natural Son:

Oatmeal Waffles
Original Recipe Yield 6 servings  

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

Directions

1. In large mixing bowl, stir together flour, oats, baking powder, cinnamon and salt; set aside. In small mixing bowl, stir together eggs, milk, butter and brown sugar. Add to flour mixture; stir until blended. Pour batter on to grids of preheated, lightly greased waffle iron (amount will vary with size of waffle iron). Close lid quickly; do not open during baking. Use fork to remove baked waffle. Top with fresh fruit and yogurt.

Right which is more or less what I said.  The truth of an argument has nothing to do with its validity.  
An argument based on an untrue or unsubstantiated naked assertion(s) will lead to an untrue or unsubstantiated conclusion even if every step along the way is completely valid and follows all rules of logic.

In other words, if you start with Grade A bullshit and run it through the blender of logic you will still come out with Grade A bullshit just in a different form.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE:

Vishnu=1+1=2=Vishnu exists.

Crap in crap out even if 1+1=2

The OP like I said, is simply responding like a child throwing a tantrum failing to realize that our blasphemy is FOR A REASON and not out of hate. It is to get not just this OP but for all theist reading this to get to this point.

You cant start with a vacuous claim and plug in a lagit formula after the fact. The starting point MUST be established before something can act upon it to test it and confirm it and falsify it.

I would say the same to someone claiming their invisible friend's name was Allah or Vishnu or Yahweh.

Allah=1+1=2=Allah exists

I am quite sure the OP doesn't accept that, but fails to see that you can plug ANY god claim into the very argument the OP is making and it would STILL be invalid for the reasons you and I stated.

I also get accused at work of being "closed minded". I will rightfully admit to being impatient AND blasphemous. I don't care if someone is claiming that Ouija boards work, or that big foot is real or that an invisible brain called Allah is real, or that the sun is a thinking being. How much of a comic book do you have to read before you realize it is a comic book? And how much do you need to entertain a comic book fan before you state the obvious, "BULL SHIT".

I have absolutely no patience for needlessly complicated distractions when verifying something is painfully simple, ON ANY GIVEN CLAIM ON ANY SUBJECT. All you have to do to convince me is to DEMONSTRATE IT.

Theists are back pedaling because science is not pointing to their magical super heros and they don't like it. So instead of doing the honest thing and scraping bad claims, they attempt to retrofit science AFTER the bad claim has been made and attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole. It is sheer desperation.

Deduction presupposes prior knowledge of logic.  You cannot use logic to prove itself.

What phenomena would you observe that would suggest Axiom S5 in modal logic?

Absolutely.  As sentient beings, we are able to step back and examine our own thought process and come to the realization that the standards by which we judge logical vs. illogical themselves transcend our sense experience.

You are saying that these principles are based on sense experience and that the objects through which we extrapolate these principles happen to be fundamental simply because we cannot think of an alternative.  What kind of epistemology is that?!  Furthermore, if evolution is what determines the way we codify the fundamental properties of reality, what reason do we have to trust that we are being logical since codification in that way is itself not inherently logical, but simply determinant?   

EDIT:  By the way, I am totally disappointed that you screwed up the debate by messing up the posts (i.e. how you replied using my name).  Now it looks all convoluted.

Awww, I'm sorry that these issues are too esoteric for you. 

Be nice and we'll go back to arguing over cherry-picked passages from the Old Testament.  Deal?

Have you met ex_Nihilo?  No one can prove logic.  It'll always be circular to do so.

You really have no clue.

My statement was not about trying prove 'Logic', it was about the standard process of deducing higher order theorems from the axioms of the system, IOW that things like 'modus tolens' etc follow from, ie are consistent with, the axioms of Logic.

You don't even know the difference between an axiom and a theorem???

But I can still put that in some sort of simple context:

That axiom is clearly devised to help simplify certain messy propositions, so it was the observation that modal logic can give rise to such propositions that it was suggested that it might be worth expressing it in that form. 'Simple' problem solving, not strictly involving the application of logic, but finding a way to best handle the realities that arise in applying the logic system.

This is not what my response was about - you had asked from what observation would I derive a particular logic statement from, which is a nonsense, in that any statement or theorem beyond the axioms is ultimately logically derived and proved from those axioms. That is how math and logic work! Only the axioms need to be externally justified, they are by definition primary statements not provable within the system.

We judge logical vs illogical by whether an argument is ultimately is consistent with logical theorems, which are all ultimately based on the LOI and the LNC. 

IOW, something is illogical if it can be shown by applying logical analysis to it to contain a contradiction, and so violating that axiom (LNC).

I am pretty sure that you don't think there can be an alternative coherent universe in which things can be both themselves and their opposites. So the observation that we base the LNC on is that we cannot imagine a universe that could exist where the LNC did not hold, and it certainly makes sense here. It is about as fundamental as you can get, and it works, and we cannot conceive of how it could not apply. More than adequate justification to accept it, I would think.

You ask, what kind of epistemology is that? The same as yours, in principle, as it seems you cannot conceive of a Universe that could be coherent without God - you certainly have not provided a serious argument, just this persistent conflation of the codification with what is being codified.

Being evolutionarily determined actually means that it must work to a useful extent. No human knowledge, whether purporting to be knowledge of logic or God, can be perfect, so that's as good as we can hope for.

I am using 'reasonable' in the sense of our intuitive, wired-in, somewhat informal judgement, which is the only thing we have to start any such process as development of a formal system for logical analysis. If it seems to leading to further confusion, we would try some alternative. We do have a native reasoning capability thanks to our evolutionary background, which is what accounts for our basic reasoning ability. Evolution will have determined that our reasoning ability has been tested - if it was unnecessarily error-prone, if it didn't 'work' to a useful extent, it would not have helped us survive, and those who had more accurate reasoning abilities would have survived us.

I did hit the wrong button at one point, but I did have all the text of your posts, and was prepared to reconstruct the thread, but I needed you to enter a 'dummy' post at the right point so that I could replace its contents with your earlier post. I asked if you could do that in this thread, but I didn't see a response before you had gone ahead and posted your final wrap-up.

You wanna go there? The OT? We cootie spreaders LOVE the OT. Out of the entire bible the OT has got to be the worst part of the book. Chock full of scientific absurdities and morally repugnant infanticide, incest and genocide.

I also find it funny that people that sell this book to their children gloss over the sex and violence and make it look like an episode of Barny.