If you dismiss this post outright, without reading it, intuitively, because I said logic is intuition, you lose.
I’ve long wondered what “logic” meant. It made no sense to me. What is being said? I thought math was an example of logic. I’m really good–like really good–at math by the way. I won a state championship for a science and math challenge in high school. I aced a “make or break” Calculus test in college and was held up in class, as I got a 100 on this, which had several difficult equations (I was the first to do this. I ran circles around the men.). I went on to work in modeling and simulation and dealt with many coordinate systems, etc., as I modeled airplanes flying through the air. So. I thought math might be a good explanation of logic, as you balance each side of the equation. But it’s not. Math is considered a separate field from logic.
So what the F is “logic”?
These are largely my notes for something I want to work on later. But logic seems to be a leap in conclusions. “If A, then B.” If your car is covered in snow in the morning, it probably snowed last night. There is some amount of evidence leading to a conclusion. Which is better than no evidence, I guess. But there is still a leap of faith in all “logic.” It’s a lot of, “It stands to reason that…,” “It stands to reason that…., “It stands to reason that…”
The problem is there is literally no way you have ALL evidence to make ANY of these leaps of faith. Sure, it provides a model and a paradigm to help humans think about things and deal. And if we get it remotely right, it helps us live. But it’s still a bit hit or miss.
For instance, Bernoulli’s Principle of flight was proven wrong. The principle is that flowing air over the top and bottom of a wing creates different pressures, with more pressure on the bottom pushing the wing up. But this was proven wrong. Colorized smoke under slow motion cameras did not cause this theory to hold up. And yet. Airplanes still fly. It was a “logical enough” explanation. It apparently, gave enough of an explanation to let people trust that airplanes fly–and sit, in a cabin with some wings that flies literally on nothing except air. Somehow.
But my point remains: these are, at all times, thought models. These “stands to reasons,” where we fill in the holes, are always apt to be wrong. Can you be utterly sure aliens didn’t come to earth last night and cover your car with snow? I mean. Really.
This is not mere philosophical discussion–though I quite think philosophical discussion should be demoted as mere philosophical discussion. “Logic” is a concept invented by the Greeks. Their entire educational system was designed around it: the trivium. It had a Grammar-Discussion-Rhetoric model. Grammar is when you learned something. Discussion: work it out…through discussion (not observation or results!?). Rhetoric: get up and defend yourself.
And I propose this paradigm is abysmal for finding deeper or meaningful truths. There is a minimal evidence gathering in the “grammar” stage–learning…what? How? How other people did things? Are you getting hands-on experience to see what works? Discussion…with whom? Peers? The experts? Did you make anything at all successfully work? And the rhetoric stage kills me. They get up and defend their position. They are right. They are now the expert. They have every reason to dig in and stay entrenched. It’s combat, not curiosity.
And this is the tyranny we’ve been living under for thousands of years.
I do child development work. It’s very popular. I have hundreds–thousands at this point–of notes from all over the world about how much I help people as parents. My work is described as “so bloody accurate it’s scary.” The most recent note to me was, “She’s a super hero … of the woman kind.” These aren’t people I know. We have no bond over “common values.” They are people, literally from all over the world, and their politics and outlook on life are often complete opposite of mine. They find my work and come to me.
When I do my work, I am humble. I know I can be wrong. I am painfully aware of it. I don’t get up behind a podium and ‘splain myself. I am constantly listening, humble, learning, and re-theorizing. In fact, my entire personality is the exact opposite of boastful or oratory. Everyone who knows me describes me with one word: quiet.
The Greeks invented “logic,” and, no, it’s not an observational method. That came during the Enlightenment. It was kicked off by Copernicus who wrote the book The Little Book on the Revolutions on the Celestial Orbs. The little book. His humble little thing. Because there’s no way he could state it out in the open–he would be, and was, persecuted by the Church. He kept it quiet until his death. The urban legend is his book was published and placed in his hands on his death bed. He wasn’t learning the “grammar,” discussing with others what they thought, or making speeches explaining himself. They tried to make him learn the logic of Aristotle–he didn’t want to. He did his work, in private, using detailed notes–indeed, using quite a bit of math to figure out what he figured out.
The Greeks, who invented “logic,” came up with the idea that the universe was made up of spheres. This was the only way they could explain the weird behavior of stars versus planets. Stars spin around predictably at night, a bit like a merry-go-round going around. Planets–they’re a bit different, aren’t they? So, through a bunch of “it stands to reasons,” they invented a complex system of spheres that just must have been out there in outer space governing these objects. These spheres are an eloquent visual of what logic itself is. It helps connects all the dots in a way that makes sense–and is wrong.
As noted, I do child development work. My work shows it is utterly natural for humans to make these logical inferences. At Toddler Milestone 8: Inference, around 2 years and 6 months, children start to do this, naturally. They hear the garage door is opening, and they conclude their dad must be home. They see their brother’s door is still closed in the morning, and conclude he must still be sleeping. This is how we humans live. We are constantly gathering data and information, and this information allows us to make conclusions. Life is “predictable enough” to let us make such conclusions and use them to successfully live. But it’s something already by design: you are designed to make connections in causal relationships.
And you can safely call this intuition. That’s what intuition is. It’s a tremendous amount of life experience that lets you make an on-the-spot guess as to what is going on or about to go on. It lets me, as a woman, cross the street when I feel scared. Carl Jung argues we have not just our own personal experience but all the experience of our ancestors, etched somewhere in our unconsciousness, as well. But this is what it is. Your “logic” is actually your intuition. You just feel it should be stamped as “logic” because it’s your intuition.
You won’t find me defending my child development work. I don’t get defensive about it. I just do the work. If people start judging me, I take it, always, as a catalyst to invest yet more in the quality of the work–and it always takes me to the next level. I’m not going to go to the town square and prove to everyone walking by that my notes and theories are right. I put them out there. And that’s it. People can verify them with their own eyes.
I had someone recently ask me for my credentials. I explained my methods to her, all observational in nature. I spend an enormous time looking through photos of my children, comparing side by side stories of them around the same age in development, and putting things into patterns. I can’t begin to tell you the amount of hours I’ve clocked in this work. But after hearing about what I did, this woman, who was giving a dissertation, informed me she would not be referencing me. For reasons. This person who has helped no one, who has nowhere near the notes I have, who has no results–is now giving a dissertation with her thoughts. Awesome.
I’ve learned no longer to explain my methods. People love my results. They rarely understand my methods. My methods are purely observational in nature, and in all of my work, I punctuate it implicitly with “to the best of my knowledge.” And yet, in modern “science,” it’s discredited. I had to have someone say to someone else who was questioning me, “Observational methods are valid in science.” Wow. Validation. Thanks. (That same thread was filled with people showing their gratitude to me, saying they don’t care about my credentials, and they’ve verify what I saw with their own eyes. As it should be.)
The “logic” model is very future oriented. We make a leap in logic, based on some amount of evidence–but it’s still faith. It forces us to think in the future or in the abstract, dwelling there, not the now. We’ve decided that this leap in logic is valid knowledge. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dealt with people who won’t deal with the now or the actual evidence. I am always in “what if” conversations with people. This “logic” has utterly bastardized actual science. It creates a class of “experts,” whose “logic” is valid, and a class of pleabs, not allowed to trust their own eyes and ears.
You know modern science and all philosophy is one gigantic gaslighting of people, right?
Amber is intuitively logical and logically intuitive. She is prolifically quiet and an expert who knows there is no such thing. See her child development work at The Observant Mom and send people who truly want a new way of thinking and authentic freedom and happiness to The Ex Objectivist.