Essay 6: Logic As Subjectivity

Essay 6: Logic As Subjectivity

Funny story, the day before I began writing this iteration of the essay I thought it would be a good idea to “disprove logic” for this essay. I went through the three laws of logic, deductive thinking, and inductive thinking and made the case for how they do not reflect how we process the world. I decided against it in the end because I believe in the usefulness of logic and would not define why the arguments I made were wrong until well into book 3. There is no point in dedicating a whole essay in a book called “A Snapshot of My Belief Structure” to arguments I do not believe the implications of. So instead, I’ll take the time here to highlight what I do believe, that the “logically correct thing to do” as we come to process it is more subjectively motivated than we already believe. This will not be a “values are subjective” argument, that horse has been beaten to death 76 times over by university students who think they are smart, it will instead define the non-logical preconditions for reasoning. Logic is a powerful tool that allows for a more intentional dedication of time and resources towards an aim. Yes, even that aim can be and often is logically derived but how aims are prioritized and how logic is exercised are in no way, shape, or form rooted in our utilization of logic itself. I will express the impossibility of a purely logical mode of being by first defining the scope of logic, and then detailing what lies outside its scope through the individual explorations of prioritization, observation gathering, and the story of the Black and White Wolves.

The scope of logic lies solely in the forming of insights from a set of premises, it does not extend to either determining the premises or the intent of its utilization. That one sentence exhaustively explains the limitation of individual thought and the fallibility of man. In order to substantiate the stated scope, we need to first define logic (or more specifically, reasoning, through its premises. The first premise for logic lies in the Principle of Identity, which is that every thing shares all attributes that can be assigned to it with itself. Basically, in every way it can be analyzed, everything is identical to itself. The second premise is The Law of Non-Contradiction which simply states that any proposition can not be true and false in the same sense at the same time. Propositions in this case refer to statements that can have a truth value assigned to them. The third premise is the Law of The Excluded Middle, which even more simply claims that a proposition can only either be true or false, there is no in-between term. These are the three premises that make a deductive argument possible. An argument is a series of premises that makes the case that a conclusion has to be the case. Take the infamous example of “All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.” The two premises stated in the beginning, “All men are mortal” and “Socrates is a man” would seemingly invariably lead to the conclusion of “Socrates is mortal” in a self-evident fashion but this line of reasoning does not work without the three stated premises of logic itself. If Socrates did not have a distinct identity that was always a man then the argument would not hold. If we could not prove the truth function of either premise, then there would be no basis for the argument as premises require truth. So we can say logic itself is an argument that goes something like “The Principle of Identity, The Law of Non-Contradiction, and The Law of The Excluded Middle are not contradicted by anything in the world, therefore we live in a world where reasoning is possible”. This is deductive reasoning, the act of forming a conclusion from a series of premises assumed to be true. This is in contrast to inductive reasoning which is the formation of generalizations from a set of observations. For example, if we live on the equator then we can observe the sun rising every day without exception, thus we can use inductive reasoning to form the generalization that from the perspective of one living on the equator, the sun rises once per day. So to summarize, logic is an argument, the argument has a conclusion called reasoning, and reasoning involves the taking of specific observations that are assumed to be true (garnered through memories of interactions) to form generalizations we call “facts” (inductive reasoning). Then we take those facts and find what conclusions must be true if they are all true (deductive reasoning). This can be structured as a pipeline that converts observations into actionable conclusions, so how is that not a comprehensive explanation for determining what specific action we take?

The above pipeline is not comprehensive because it is a pipeline that comes from nothing; we need to ground its entrance to reality. The pipeline begins at the level of “observations” but that assumes that observations are a given or otherwise not an active process, which is an assumption that is entirely disconnected from reality. Let’s start with the determination of a specific action and work backward through the pipeline to get a sense of where the flaw lies and how there are even more fundamental flaws than that. Someone decides that they need to run away immediately. Why? Because a tiger is trying to hunt them. What drove them to that conclusion? A set of premises that create the argument “There is a tiger behind that tree, the tiger is looking at me, the tiger is slowly walking towards me in a stalking position, I am the only mammal of appropriate size within view, tigers only walk towards a mammal in a stalking position if they are trying to eat them, therefore the tiger is trying to eat me.” Obviously we do not ponder all of this when we see the black and orange stripes and we could be mistaken on any of these premises but subconsciously something akin to this is happening, which is deductive reasoning. How did we gather these premises? Exposure to videos of tigers hunting in documentaries, an initial glance that shows the stripes of a tiger being obscured by the trees, relevant lessons from biology class, and a highly developed set of neurological circuits developed in the lower recesses of the brain that respond to predators. The formation of the stated premises from these sources of observations is based on inductive reasoning. Is that it? Do the observations just happen? No, not even remotely. There are three levels of analysis missed in the above reasoning pipeline: the compiling of observations at the moment of necessity, the gathering of observations historically, and the question being asked. These will be the focus of the remainder of the essay.

The first non-stated level of analysis is how we compile relevant observations at the moment preceding action; in this instance referring to the the raw data feeding into our inductive reasoning at the beginning of the pipeline. As mentioned in Essay 5, the set of observations we are aware of at any given moment is our state-of-things, and it changes depending on the problem at hand in a way that our urges determine. The observations that we feed into the inductive reasoning stage of the pipeline are being reduced in scope by the emotional intensity of the situation, and oriented around getting away from the tiger immediately. This first means that it is easy to miss any tools that exist nearby that would otherwise be easily observable, say a shotgun nearby. This also means that seemingly irrelevant details like tree climbing do not come to mind. I imagine most do not remember that tigers are awful at climbing trees but even if they heard it offhandedly at some point it would not ordinarily come to mind in that situation. Furthermore, the premise that there is even a tiger to begin with is environmentally influenced. Our mind leads us to initially subjugate reality in such a way that most closely aligns the sense data with our state-of-things (or stories). If we saw tiger stripes obscured by trees in the middle of Central Park our mind would likely assume it was clothing or a stuffed animal even before we properly identify what it is, but in the middle of the woods, all bets are off. Even if we are wrong it is better to run away from nothing than spend an extra two seconds processing and thus not running away from a tiger. A great example of how thoroughly our observations are shifted by our environment (or more specifically our stories) is the rotating mask illusion. Go to Google Images and search “rotating mask gif”, when the mask turns around and you would have expected to see the inside of a mask (inwardly curved) you will note that it looks uncanny and like an outwards facing mask still. This is because one of the most deep-seated stories is the recognition of faces, and our minds are prediction machines that balance sensory data with our stories. The inwardly concave mask stands in direct opposition to our expectations of how a face should look, so our mind interprets the sense data as an outward-facing mask with weird lighting. Even when we are consciously aware that it is facing away from us, our mind overrides it given how evolutionarily ingrained the story of facial recognition is. Do not tell me “It does not work on me”, it does and you just happen to want to be right all the time. The only group of people it consistently does not happen to are schizophrenics. The point is that the scope AND CONTENT of information being drawn on to create the observations we then reason with are being actively (not even passively) manipulated by our minds in real time.

The second non-stated level of analysis is where the observations came from. In this instance referring to what drove us to watch the documentary? What got us to sit through the biology class? What got us to look in the direction where we noticed the stripes in the first place? That may seem like a stupidly arbitrary distinction as it may not seem to apply to the moment we decide to run away from the tiger but it raises one of the foremost philosophical questions, when do we accomplish something? When a boxer receives the title of World Heavyweight Champion, at what point do they actually become the best? My opinion is it is not when the belt is given, and it is not when they are in the ring. It was at some point during training that they became the best, the ring only served to confirm what was already true. So when do we decide how to react to a tiger? Is it in the moment when we encounter the tiger or the countless interactions with the world that make us who we are going into that situation? I will say the latter every time, and the encounter just confirms what was already true before it. This obviously kind of throws a wrench in the whole “free will” thing but I do not think I’ll be getting any pushback on that one point. What logic overlooks is that the information and tools we have at our disposal are built on preceding choices and we do our best with the cards our past self dealt. These cards are the observations that feed into the inductive reasoning stage as observations are not raw sense data, they are interpreted, and that interpretation is also built on the stories we constructed for our entire lives preceding an event. Who we are is the accumulation of all past actions, both psychologically through our actions and genetically through our ancestors’ actions. So when I am asked “nature or nurture?” my answer is nurture, either by our circumstances or our ancestors’ circumstances. We are the sum of everything built over billions of years of evolution and a couple of years of life, every action we take is backed by the weight of that collective history so there is no interpretation of reasoning that is not built on preceding actions. What determines those preceding actions? As mentioned, our needs. For that matter, even the fact that we decide to run away from the tiger is built on a need to survive, although whether it is certainty-based or falls under the category of homeostasis I don’t know.

The final missing frame of analysis is also the one that is most pragmatic to act upon and transitions quite well from the previous one, the story of the Black and White Wolves. It is a stupid name for a frame of analysis but my dad was taught it by Tony Robbins personally and then he taught me his interpretation. I then slightly retooled it to fit into my Belief StructureTM (not actually trademarked by me) (also, I made the whole story up, I just used their characters). The core of it is simple, what question are you asking? Logic cannot function without a question to answer. We cannot act outside of the bounds of a specific, if often implicit, question. There are two wolves within us all, starving for dominance in every situation. The black wolf has certainty as its stomach and seeks to protect. He wants everything to make sense and to never rock the boat. The question he elicits is usually a variant of “Should I do this?” and is always weighing why I should against why I should not, leaning towards not when in doubt. The black wolf is not evil, he simply does not want you to mess everything up. Even in your darkest moments when you do not see the good in life, it is the black wolf that loves everything you created and seeks to protect it and you along with it. The black wolf thinks in territory, family, career, and what we ordinarily think of as logic. To the black wolf, one plus one is always two, and two minus one is always one. That is to say, something always has to give, and the black wolf makes sure you are not throwing out the baby with the bathwater when you go about your whims. Where the black wolf can fall short is that he hates experimenting, taking risks, other people, or new territories. When life presents us with an opportunity, the black wolf will never pounce on it, and if the white wolf even dares to try he will bite. So who is the white wolf? He’s a fragile thing. The white wolf is the wolf of play. He is an ADHD-riddled child who pounces on everything and never ages. He wants growth, new friends, and to wander to new places. As far as he knows there isn’t even a boat to rock. The thing is, he sucks at fighting. He pounces on anything but the second he goes “too far” the black wolf bites him and he often gives up and goes back to his corner. The white wolf could not care less about “Should I?” all his mind wants to know is “How should I?”. This is only until a point though, one day after he tried and tried desperately to play with something but gets bitten by the black wolf over and over again he learns to never do it again, and he goes silent. Every time you ask “Should I?” instead of “How should I?”, and every time you talk yourself out of taking that risk, asking that person out, taking that opportunity, pushing just that little bit harder, or saying what needed to be said you are letting the black wolf win. Do you want to know how people become jaded and depressed? When the white wolf is so scarred, bruised, and terrified he never gets up and tries again. The white wolf is without limits, the white wolf does not know math. As far as he’s concerned everything he wants is worth so much that even if he melted mountains of gold to get to where he wanted to be it’d be his pleasure. The innovators, the pioneers, and the inspirations let their white wolves roam and teach them how to fight because that’s the only way to make 1+1=3. Whether you think the world is a zero-sum game where every kilogram we take is a kilogram lost or you think it’s a place where every kilogram we use in pursuit of a dream causes two new kilograms to come out of the boundless realm of opportunity, you are right. Logic can get us to either conclusion (I’m not being cheesy I meant the latter literally) which one depends on which wolf wins most of the time. So the next time you want to ask someone out, say something risky, or pursue your dreams remember the two wolves and decide “Should I?” or “How should I?”. Bonus points if you act before thinking.

That is all, see you all sometime by February 7 for Essay 7: Other People!