Showing posts with label logic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label logic. Show all posts

My New Favorite Syllogism

The moon is made of green cheese. Therefore, either it is raining in Ecuador now or it is not.

In our earlier discussions of logic, the failure of modern logic to take relevance into account seemed to me a great failure. Specifically, I maintain that the forms of natural language cannot be entirely separated from the content, no matter how many logicians deeply pine for such a situation.

Now, to the extent that modern logic is a branch of mathematics, I have no problem with it. It has found uses in computer programming and probably other fields, and it's an interesting intellectual exercise in itself. It is to the extent that modern logic attempts to use natural language to create or understand meaning that it fails.

Relevance / Relevant logicians have tried to develop formal expressions of relevance and have come closer to making premises and conclusions relevant to each other, but they haven't solved the problem entirely.

As for me, while I fully understand there are practical uses for modern logic, it seems that Aristotelean logic is superior for analyzing arguments in natural language. Else, it is either raining in Ecuador, or it is not, because the moon is made of green cheese.