thomblake comments on [Poll] Less Wrong and Mainstream Philosophy: How Different are We? - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 26 September 2012 12:25PM

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Comment author: thomblake 27 September 2012 07:20:06PM 0 points [-]

In the context of the present poll, "logic" means those methods of reasoning that are guaranteed to produce, from true premises, only true conclusions. And the poll is asking whether classical logic is it.

I think you're begging the question. I think you've given a definition of "classical logic" rather than "logic".

Comment author: RichardKennaway 28 September 2012 08:23:39AM *  0 points [-]

I think you're begging the question. I think you've given a definition of "classical logic" rather than "logic".

I think that it seems that way only because classical logic has so definitively answered the question. The question is "how shall we reason?", and it was not obvious beforehand that the first-order predicate calculus was the answer. It took two thousand years to get there from the ancient Greeks' understanding.