Logic Needs Evidential Support
Kevin R. Henke
October 15, 2022
In Henke (2022ax), I made the following statements:
“All of the evidence indicates that the great discoveries that humans have made is solely due to the biochemical activity in our brains despite the groundless claims from Lewis (1960) and Mr. Lundahl that desperately want to believe otherwise. If Mr. Lundahl wants us to recognize that there’s “something beyond nature” before we can even make “a completely naturalistic explanation”, he again has the burden of evidence. While we can measure electrical activity in the human brain as it thinks (e.g., Goodenough et al. 1998, p. 202), there’s not a shred of evidence that anything supernatural or “beyond nature” is required before we can adequately understand human consciousness (Dennett 2006; Dennett 2018; Harris 2010). There’s no evidence that physicists needed any participation from a god or heaven to discover that E=mc2 or F=ma, and to confirm the reliability of those equations. Until Mr. Lundahl or another individual demonstrates otherwise, claims about the supernatural are completely superfluous when effectively doing science and other reasoning.”
Lundahl (2022s) comments on my bolded sentence:
“There is evidence that they needed logic to do so. And logic is only a necessity for discovery when we go beyond our environment, as these formulations very clearly do. Therefore it cannot be reduced to reactions that "developed over evolutionary eons" to help us adapt to our environment. And the question whether that something other it should be traced to is "a god" or "heaven" is for the purpose of that argument not yet posed. We only get to God by a further process of narrowing down.”
In Lundahl (2022s), Mr. Lundahl further defines what he means by “environment”:
“My environment involves a computer and two mugs of caffeinated drinks in front of me, and a wall beyond these (plus some plywood attraptions to support the computer's table and keep it from squeezing computer vires to the wall), and what is beyond the wall is no longer "environment" - that is the extent which animality could know without universal laws of reason.”
As I explained in Henke 2022hp and Henke (2022aw), Mr. Lundahl’s definition of “environment” in Lundahl (2022s) and “surroundings” in Lundahl (2022j) is totally inadequate for this debate. Collectively, humans have the ability to observe and gain reliable knowledge that goes far beyond our individual immediate surroundings or “environments.” A distant galaxy may not be in my immediate surroundings, but I can gain information on the galaxy from the authors of peer-reviewed books and articles that have observed and collected information on the galaxy. Mr. Lundahl should be talking about our known Universe and trying to demonstrate that there’s anything beyond it. Instead, Mr. Lundahl’s views of humanity’s “environment” is even worse than that in Lewis (1960) – see Henke (2022hq).
As I also explained in Henke (2022aj), logic cannot be divorced from evidence. Physicists may use thought experiments to come up with equations and all kinds of ideas, but the products of their imaginations are only accepted once they have been tested and evidence demonstrates that they are true (e.g., Einstein’s equations on Relativity). Logic must be based on evidence and the interpretation of evidence must be logical. The statement “If A = B and B = C, then A = C” is logical, but if A doesn’t exist, then the logical statement is worthless.
Harris (2010, pp. 10-14) admits that our minds don’t just conform to the whims of biological evolution. Although our brains resulted from biological evolution, it was our brains, and not biological evolution itself, that developed mathematics, reason and logic (also see Heyes 2012 on the evolution of human cognition). Just as we have in many ways “outgrown” the whims of biological evolution, we have developed computers that have far surpassed some of the abilities of the brains that invented them. So, Mr. Lundahl’s groundless proclamations about logic and going “beyond our environment” are false because he uses an inadequate definition of “environment” and he doesn’t understand enough about biological evolution and the biology of the human brain to realize that humans invented logic and mathematics.
References:
Dennett, D.C. 2006. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon: Viking Penguin: London, UK, 448pp.
Dennett, D.C. 2018. “Facing Up to the Hard Question of Consciousness”: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, v. 373, 20170342.
Goodenough, J., R.A. Wallace, and B. McGuire. 1998. Human Biology: Personal, Environmental, and Social Concerns: Saunders College Publishing: Harcourt Brace College Publishers: Fort Worth, TX, USA.
Harris, S. 2010. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Hunan Values: Free Press: New York, N.Y., USA, 291pp.
Heyes, C. 2012. “New Thinking: The Evolution of Human Cognition” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B: v. 367, pp. 2091-2096.
Lewis, C.S. 1960. Miracles, 2nd ed., printed 1974: Harper One: HarperCollinsPublishers, 294pp.