Logexit – leave Logic – do Brexit

Published September 23, 2017 · 

© Georg Boomgaarden

Modern Logic is a complicated issue. But even the old-fashioned Aristotelian Logic is not very popular. I fear any referendum on keeping Logic as a super-rule for all thinking would lead to Logexit, leaving logic for ideologic beliefs. There is a law of logic, some even say it is a law of thinking itself, saying that A and not-A cannot co-exist. Don’t come with Hegel who thought that dialectics can beat logic, when he said that from thesis A and anti-thesis non-A history lifts both up to a sythesis B. Hegel had no knowledge about calculus. He confused the opposite with opposition. If one person wants to have the cake and the other wants to eat it, just have a cake for each person, and let one eat it and the other have it. But with the very same cake logic comes into play: you just cannot eat and have the same cake at the same place at the same time.

Boris Johnson does not like Logic. He should have learned about it at Eton, but it is uncomfortable to use it. Logic may be useful to convince a sceptic, but to persuade a believer you do not need it. So he wants to eat the cake and since he is opposed to not having it he declares that having it at the same time is possible – a real magician’s trick.

The worst thing about logic is that each logic fact has a long thread of logic consequences following from such fact. If you cancel membership of your club, the consequence is that you also cancel the use of the restaurant, of the swimming pool, the squash court, or the golf course of that club. You cancel the possibility to decide which of the facilities you want to continue to use, because you cancelled the whole thread. Remaining Logic is unhelpful. So the only way out is Logexit, Leave Logic.

Brexiteers were doing just that. Leaving Logic allowed them to claim that A and non-A are perfectly compatible, that if you cancel membership, you can continue playing golf, tennis, or swim in the club. You will offer the club to help by paying for meals in the restaurant, you may not go to the members‘ meetings any more, but just have your cakes for high tea.

Brexit means Brexit – that is pure Logic stating an identity relation. But for the British government Logic does not imply that you can be outside the single market and the customs union and at the same time have access to the market as if you were an insider. That is creativity instead of logic. For the British government it is no breach of elementary logic that when you leave a customs union you automatically get a customs border – nobody imposing it but just established by the one who leaves the union. So Logic is very exaggerated and unhelpful when it states you cannot have an open border and a customs border at the same time at the same place, A and non-A at once. An eaten cake becomes a non-cake by logic, so to keep it you have to leave Logic.

Truth is not logic, but something closely linked to logic. When you leave logic you run into the problem that you loose any criterium for what is true and what is not true. After Logexit you can declare that truth and non-truth are compatible and the difference is irrelevant. 

After Logexit there is room for facts being true and false at the same time, real alternative facts, also called fake news. Traditionally these were called lies. But that is unhelpful, because it only helps Logic-remoaners.

© Georg Boomgaarden