Natural Logic

I am hereby advocating the renaming of “Logic” as a discipline, to “Natural Logic”. There is a good reason for this. Logic is a discovery, not an abstract creation. Logic describes the reality in which the universe is encased and functions. The universe is deterministic and predictable. Predictability is what forms the foundation for logic, and ultimately for science and language and human cognition.

There are universal principles that have been observed over the centuries which always, as far as we know, apply. These are the First Principles. They apply to the way things exist and to the way things are valid. Building on these natural principles, a system of thinking valid thoughts has been developed: Logic. Logic exists out there in the universe, and was discovered gradually by humans and developed for our use in understanding. So logic is a natural thing, describing orderliness in nature and in thought. Hence, “Natural Logic”.

I suggest this new name as an expanded understanding of what logic actually is, does, and can do. Some have criticized logic as consisting of mental parlor tricks, sophist gaming, designed to bias arguments to preconceived conclusions. Those accusations are the inverse of reality. Logic… Natural Logic, is outside the ability of humans to change. That’s because it is merely a description of reality. One might argue that the reality they see is not described by Logic; that is a separate issue.

It would seem as though Atheists would flock to the study of natural logic, and would advocate its use and its instruction as a first principle of their faith. Atheists almost universally claim rationality as their own domain. Yet without exception, every Atheist claim which is made to support their faith is found faulty if it is subjected to the analytical scrutiny of natural logic. Atheists claim to be critical thinkers, and that critical thinking should be taught in schools. Yet critical thinking, as the term is used by Atheists, is never defined, it is never applied in a disciplined format, and taken in context it usually means “to conform to Philosophical Materialism” as the basis for reality. Since Philosophical Materialism artificially limits reality to the mass-energy realm completely without satisfying its own criterion of material, empirical, experimental / falsifiable validation, Atheist critical thinking is actually illogical and anti-rational.

Atheism is demonstrably a religious concept, not an artifact of the universe. It does not conform to the basic observations of the universe, especially the idea of internal coherence. So Atheism cannot be valid, even taken solely within its own pre-constrained domain, materialism. As Ilya Somin admits, Atheism is merely a rejection of deity. The undeniable implication of that denial is the associated denial of the existence of a first cause of the universe, and the engineer of its coherence. So it is an emotional rejection, not rational; it is a hubristic rebellion, not a submission to rational tenets outside the control of humans (no matter how long the humans have been in the educational system).

True critical thinking starts with premises, which are examined for validity by following them back through their presuppositions to their fundamental axioms for validation – premises must be true and complete, clear down to the fundament. Then, with valid premises, a conclusion can be drawn in a disciplined, orderly fashion, a conclusion which is not declared valid a priori. True critical thinking then concludes with the intellectual humility of accepting whatever conclusion is drawn in this disciplined fashion. This is not to say that the process is not ever to be repeated; it should be repeated, again and again, until there is significant confidence that it is the proper conclusion, based on that set of premises.

Dogmas – and Atheism is a dogma – rely on rationalization to support a desired, previously determined conclusion. Then a search is performed to attempt to find premises that support the conclusion; disagreeable premises that might jeapordize the conclusion are discarded, or argued away with faulty reasoning.

If philosophers truly wanted to find truth, which their job description suggests that they love, they would vociferously eschew rationalization, and they would champion Natural Logic (regardless of what they call it). Modern philosophers are generally merely apologists for Atheist Materialism, it appears. Read almost any post by Pigliucci, for example, who decries dualism as delusional, claims possession of critical thinking almost constantly, and never ever describes what that might entail, except that he has it and dualists don’t. Yet when analyzed under the rigor of Natural Logic, Pigliucci’s claims always reduce to Materialist fallacy, at least every one to which I have applied Natural Logic.

This seems to be the way it is with all those whose job is “philosopher” these days. Any dualist need not apply; those are shunted off to divinity classifications. Except for “religious studies” which are taught by Atheists using materialist critiquing methods. And it appears that logicians who value the rigor of the process, such as Copi, for example, are not considered philosophers. No matter. It’s just as well; the term “philosopher” has been nearly irreparably tainted, along with “Public Intellectual”, which is pretty much tautological. Maybe they should be renamed “Sophophobes”? Or maybe, “Natural Sophophobes”? Wait, Sophophobic Antirationalists. There ya go. No, I won’t use that; accurate but too much typing.