Daniel_AnglumTM

If we rule out the Bible, Koran, Illiad etc as evidence of God then I dont see that it is probable it is only verging on the possible.

Basicly we cannot know as we know so little about the nature of existance..

Clutch

Philosoft, SOMMS,

The claim that logic is not a matter of faith does not require that we could not conceivably give up an axiom. All it requires is that, when we do revise or switch from one logic to another, we do so on (roughly) empirical grounds.

So intuitionistic logic gives up the Law of Excluded Middle. Why adopt it? Well, because this is a useful way of working in certain areas of mathematics, in proof theory, in some computer programming problems, and in modelling human reasoning that involves vague predicates, where LEM strikes most people as leading to unwarranted conclusions. In short, the usefulness and empirical consequences of using or not using a "law" are relevant to our decisions about what logic is best suited for particular investigations.

Another example is quantum logic, which gives up the the law of distributivity. On faith? No. QL does not have distributivity because with distributivity you can infer falsehoods in the quantum domain. Distributivity is "If A and (B or C), then (A and B) or (A and C)". But this fails quantumly, if you read A as a position statement and B and C as momentum statements. (Or vice versa).

So such laws can be given up. Dialethicists even give up Non-Contradiction. What matters is that laws are given up or added on a domain-specific basis, with a single goal in mind: to make sure the logic's notion of validity really is truth-preserving. That's measurable against the results a logic generates, and is pragmatic and at least quasi-empirical. Nothing whatever to do with faith.

[ July 27, 2002: Message edited by: Clutch ]</p>