quotes an article:
"Dogs have four legs, and Lassie has four legs, therefore Lassie is a dog" is not a valid argument. The conclusion ("Lassie is a dog") may be true, but it has not been proved by this argument. It does not "follow" from the premises.
Now in Aristotelian logic, a true conclusion logically follows from, or is proved by, or is "implied" by, or is validly inferred from, only some premises and not others. The above argument about Lassie is not a valid argument according to Aristotelian logic. Its premises do not prove its conclusion. And common sense, or our innate logical sense, agrees. However, modern symbolic logic disagrees. One of its principles is that "if a statement is true, then that statement is implied by any statement whatever."
Symbolic logic definitely does not hold that that Lassie argument is valid.
That claim in the article is either sneaky sophistry or egregious ignorance. It is a ludicrous claim. It goes dramatically against what obtains in symbolic logic.
Let:
'Fx' stand for 'x has 4 legs'
's' stand for 'Lassie'
'Dx' stand for 'x is a dog'
The argument is:
Ax(Dx -> Fx)
Fs
Therefore Dx
[EDIT: There's a typo there. It should be:
Ax(Dx -> Fx)
Fs
Therefore Ds]
Symbolic not only does not say that that is valid, and not only does symbolic logic say it is invalid, but symbolic logic
proves it is invalid.
Here is where the authors try to pull a fast one:
Correct: A valid formula is implied by any set of formulas.
Correct: If P is true, then, for any formula Q, we have that Q -> P is true.
Incorrect: If P is true, then Q -> P is valid.
Look what the authors did:
By saying "'Lassie is a dog; is true", they are adopting Dx [edit typo: should be Ds] as a premise. So, of course,
Ax(Dx -> Fx)
Fs
Dx
Therefore Dx
is valid.
[EDIT: There's a typo there. It should be:
Ax(Dx -> Fx)
Fs
Ds
Therefore Ds]
Or I invite the authors to show any symbolic logic system for ordinary predicate logic that provides a derivation of:
Ax(Dx -> Fx)
Fs
Therefore Dx
[EDIT: There's a typo there. It should be:
Ax(Dx -> Fx)
Fs
Therefore Ds]
Moreover, we
prove that classical logic provides that its proof method ensures that the the premises indeed entail the conclusion. That is, if the conclusion is not entailed by the premises, then the conclusion is not proved by the premises. And that goes for both true and false conclusions. If the truth that Lassie is a dog is not entailed by the premises, then 'Lassie is a dog' is not provable from the premises.
That's a disgustingly specious and disinformational start of an article. And unfortunate that that speciousness and disinformation is propagated by another poster quoting it here.
But this is good:
Logician: So, class, you see, if you begin with a false premise, anything follows.
Student: I just can't understand that.
Logician: Are you sure you don't understand that?
Student: If I understand that, I'm a monkey's uncle.
Logician: My point exactly. (Snickers.)
Student: What's so funny?
Logician: You just can't understand that.[/quoye]
Quite so.
Logicians have an answer to the above charge, and the answer is perfectly tight and logically consistent. That is part of the problem! Consistency is not enough.[/quote]
Indeed, that is why we prove both consistency and soundness.
So a proper answer is that the logic is consistent, sound and extaordinarily useful for many contexts. And it is useful even in everyday context where vacuousness doesn't even come up.
My point is that it is a vacuous instance of validity — Leontiskos
((a→b)∧(a→¬b))↔¬a is valid
— Lionino
My point is that it is a vacuous instance of validity — Leontiskos
The proof does not use vacuousness.
As I claimed above, there is no actual use case for such a proposition — Leontiskos
(1) I'd like to see you forrmulate a grammar, formal or informal, that restricts to only locutions that "have use".
(2) Even though the form mentioned is not found in everyday discourse, it is equivalent with very basic everyday reasoning
and I want to say that propositions which contain (b∧¬b) are not well formed. — Leontiskos
Not well formed in everyday language? Not well formed in formal languages?
And I would like to see your formation rules for either.
They lead to an exaggerated form of the problems that ↪Count Timothy von Icarus has referenced. We can argue about material implication, but it has its uses. I don't think propositions which contain contradictions have their uses. — Leontiskos
Being able to write a contradiction is useful, as I explained.
This is perhaps a difference over what logic is. Is it the art of reasoning and an aid to thought, or just the manipulation of symbols? — Leontiskos
And the study of formal logic is not just a study of manipulating symbols.
ones I have in mind are good at manipulating symbols, but they have no way of knowing when their logic machine is working and when it is not. They take it on faith that it is always working and they outsource their thinking to it without remainder. — Leontiskos
I take it that the machine Leontiskos was using when he wrote the paragraph above is working. That's a machine whose invention and development is steeped in formal logic, steeped in the use of sentential logic, steeped in syntax that has material implication, disjunction, conjunction and negation, steeped in truth functionality, steeped in 2-value Boolean algebra.