# Basic question about logic and empiricism



## nwink (Jun 17, 2013)

I understand from reading apologetics that the laws of logic are immaterial...so the argument is that a naturalist worldview couldn't provide a foundation for the laws of logic.

My question, though, is: why can't empiricism support the laws of logic? Please explain what it means that one can't prove the law of non-contradiction through sense experience and observing the world. I'm a little confused and just need someone to explain this issue for me. Thanks.


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## ooguyx (Jun 17, 2013)

I guess there are a few different problems for the empiricist concerning the laws of logic. First, while he can experience the law of non-contradiction through the senses he has no basis to extrapolate that information into a "law". What he merely has is a bunch of evidence that something cannot be both a and not-a, but how can he experience that it will be the same in the future (known as the problem of induction)? Further, how can he know that the law of non-contradiction holds even when he (or someone) isn't experiencing it? 

That doesn't even mention the problem of how he can know his senses are telling the truth when he experiences the law of non-contradiction.


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## au5t1n (Jun 17, 2013)

ooguyx said:


> First, while he can experience the law of non-contradiction through the senses he has no basis to extrapolate that information into a "law". What he merely has is a bunch of evidence that something cannot be both a and not-a, but how can he experience that it will be the same in the future (known as the problem of induction)?



That's it. What's interesting is that many unbelieving philosophers actually admit this and deny the existence of all law and all causality. They say that these concepts are impositions of the human concept of a "mind" onto the universe, but that the universe does not really function this way. How they are able to function in such a universe is a mystery. It really goes to show the depths of nonsense into which the natural man is willing to plunge himself in order to escape the God he hates.


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## Tim (Jun 17, 2013)

ooguyx said:


> he has no basis to extrapolate that information into a "law"



Correct. Empiricism can only say, "it _did happen_ this way every time I tested it", not "it _will always happen_ this way every time I test it". Empiricism cannot traverse the distance between the former and the latter.


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## Jerusalem Blade (Jun 17, 2013)

au5t1n said:


> How they are able to function in such a universe is a mystery.



I wrote a poem about this (it was to a poet):


*AS IF*

the unacknowledged foundation
of your life
which has no meaning
– a biological anomaly
in a chance universe

even your poetry
but chemical exuberance
frothing
out of the skin-bag
in illusions of personhood

no wrong
no right
no thing
true, or sure, just passing
accidents

and yet you live your life
as if
you were a person
with meaning
in an ordered universe.​


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## Christoffer (Jun 18, 2013)

Hello

You cannot prove the law of contradiction since you have to assume it to have any sort of meaningful experience. I personally would not call it a "law" per se, since it is not really possible to violate it. 

But anyhow, the law says that A cannot be not A, which just says that if something is a car it cannot also belong to the class of things which aren't cars. This "law" is a precondition of truth.

For example, lets say you observe something you identify as a horse. In order for this experience to have any meaning, it must be the case that horses aren't the same thing as cars, men, computers etc. Otherwise there is no definite meaning to the belief that "that is a horse". The belief is just as true as it is false. So without non-contradiction, there is no such a thing as knowledge.

Most would probably reply that it is self-evident that they are not the same thing. *But it is exactly this claim of self-evidence that we question.* Why should the "self-evidence" of non-contradiction be anything to base our beliefs on? How can we be sure that the universe is not really a irrational place, and that the non-contradiction we base our thinking on isn't just something that goes on in our heads?

This question is difficult, if not impossible, for the atheist to answer since he does not believe that there is any purpose with our minds. They just are. They are not intended for anything.

The empiricist must assume non-contradiction before making any observations of the world. He cannot prove it empirically, therefore empiricism is a self-refuting doctrine.


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## Skyler (Jun 18, 2013)

Christoffer said:


> You cannot prove the law of contradiction since you have to assume it to have any sort of meaningful experience. I personally would not call it a "law" per se, since it is not really possible to violate it.



In the context of logical/scientific discussion, that's what a "law" means. It's a basic principle that isn't possible to violate.


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## Afterthought (Jun 19, 2013)

Christoffer said:


> You cannot prove the law of contradiction since you have to assume it to have any sort of meaningful experience.


Dabney argues similarly against attempted empirical derivations of a priori laws of thought in the _Sensualistic Philosophy_. Kant did too for his categories, but his categories are different than what Dabney was arguing for, I think. Also, it is possible to speak of these laws as "self-evident" (though I realize you were speaking of the "self-evidence" of the empirical derivation, rather than the law itself) if we understand it to mean: carries its evidence with itself. The evidence that it carries with itself is that one cannot argue against it without using it: it is a necessary precondition of reason.


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## Christoffer (Jun 20, 2013)

Afterthought said:


> Christoffer said:
> 
> 
> > You cannot prove the law of contradiction since you have to assume it to have any sort of meaningful experience.
> ...



Yes but that kind of self evidence is then possibly only a description of our psychological make-up. It does not necessarily say anything about the outside world.


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## Supersillymanable (Jun 20, 2013)

John Frame has an excellent section on rationalism, empiricism and subjectivism in the Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. he points out how all of them, ultimately don't work. Eventually, they all actually end up as forms of subjectivism because none of them find a genuine grounding upon which reality can be determined.


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## Afterthought (Jun 21, 2013)

Christoffer said:


> Yes but that kind of self evidence is then possibly only a description of our psychological make-up. It does not necessarily say anything about the outside world.


That would be one of my remaining questions for common sense realism, though I do have an idea of how it might be answered (more and more, I understand its difference to all other positions to be that it makes these preconditions knowledge too, though not "actual knowledge"). Anyway, I may not be following your thought correctly, but it seems to me that I have said nothing more than you: without these things, we would have no knowledge, i.e., it is a precondition of knowledge, i.e., a precondition of truth. And knowledge of the outside world requires the outside world, so far as I can see, or else it is no longer knowledge (that is, the same sort of self-evidence that shows it to be a precondition of reason does the same for being a precondition of truth and knowledge). Unless it is "knowledge" of the "phenomenal" world only that you were speaking of?

I should note that my own thought on this sort of question is still in development, so while I do not find myself disagreeing with challenging the atheist with showing that these things work and that the world is not an irrational place, I also am not precisely sure how that fits in with the self-evidence of "common sense." Part of it may be that we cannot properly identify "universal" truths without God, and so all these "common sense" notions cannot provide a ground for knowledge unless we trust the God who created our faculties, but this seems to me to be a bit different than defending the common sense defense of these preconditions from the charge of them only providing "phenomenal" "knowledge."


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