|
|
|
|
|
by undershirt
781 days ago
|
|
Gödel gave an example of this by making a system of arithmetic generate statements about itself, and proved that it can't generate all possible truth statements (completeness) without generating some false ones (inconsistency). So, logic as cold machinery can start from the same axioms to prove that something is true in one path and then prove it false from another path. Logic is a world with its own rules that we can map reality onto sometimes but not always. The book Gödel's Proof does a good job describing this. A larger and more devastating argument I've heard recently is that in order to even create logical statements, you need to be arguing from a worldview that can give an account for the existence of logic that isn't arbitrary (e.g. not "it just is"). And the argument goes that if you can't justify the existence of the tool, you can't justify its usage. This is devastating because if you believe it, then you suddenly must recognize that something prior to and higher than logic must exist in order to inform you of its existence, and it is not subject to the bounds of any logical system founded arbitrarily, but becomes the means by which logic itself coheres into something meaningful. |
|