Can those outside of science credibly speak about science?

Oh, I'm sorry, Holmes. I must have missed where Percy and the admins anointed you as the one who gets to decide who talks about evolution and who doesn't.I'd like to point out that if our educational credentials are suddenly required to be taken seriously at this forum then it becomes an open question of who we're going to believe in regards to who actually has degrees and who does not. ..and? Your evidence for this assertion? Hey, don't bitch at me. You raised the question when you implied that the rest of us without degrees aren't fit to be involved in the discussion.Wait, did I say "without degrees?" What I meant was "BA's in biology, chemistry, and computer science, a masters in plant physiology, a Ph. D. in the same, and ten years of experience as lead researcher at Monsanto, Dow Agroscience, and ADM." I mean, as far as you know.

How about this for a crazy idea - why don't we judge the credibility of someone's post based on its accuracy and factuality? Rather than on the alphabet soup someone decides to pretend comes after their name?Who is right and who is wrong will become instantly apparent when their posts are compared to the facts. I don't see the need to base credibility on anything more than that.

But your example doesn't show that. It shows that certain logical conclusions can be implied merely by English grammar. You're going to have that problem with all your examples until you have an example of "inherent" logic that isn't dependant on language.Schraf's example is one such, and the fact that people only tend to succeed when they consciously apply the contrapositive rule (which they learned as part of a specific education in logic) rebuts your claim that there's any kind of generalized inherent power of logical human thought.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 03-03-2006 01:06 PM

How does that make any sense? If it's natural to us, why would we be so bad at it?If logic is so natural, why did it take so much of human history to develop formal logic? Many civilizations had risen and fallen long before humans began teaching each other logical thinking.It's like saying "bike riding is natural to us; it's just that some people need a lot of practice first." If they need the practice, then it isn't natural to them. And everybody needs practice in logic before they can use it.

No, it's not. Logic is deduction from assumed axioms by means of transformations that are logically valid; i.e. if a logically true statement is transformed by valid means, the result will always be true as well. Neither the axioms nor the transformations are inherently known to any human being; they're the result of thousands of years of human linguistic development.Human thinking is correllative; we're very good at noticing patterns, like "when I wear my lucky hat, I win at Bingo." We're so good at it that we do it even when there is no correlation (i.e. you don't actually win more often when you wear the hat.) Human thinking is not generally logical, which explains the timeless popularity of such things as gambling and religion.

All it proves is that this is another example of of logic loaded into English grammar and language.Do you have any examples that aren't linguistic in nature?

This is the second example of the undistributed middle term, but you're arguing against your own point. It's in fact very common for human beings to make this error, because if you approach it from a correlative aspect:All X have the Y quality
Z has the Y qualitythen almost everybody will conclude that Z is probably an X. And most of the time, they're right.The fact that it's recognized as an error, and common enough for everybody to relate, proves my point, not yours. Human thinking is not inherently logical; it's correlative. We have to be trained to recognize this sort of thinking as logically fallacious. Where did I say that? I said that our grammar was highly logic-loaded, not that grammar is logical. Language grammar is arbitrary, but we have brains specialized for absorbing grammar from usage. The proof of this is that native speakers of a language have almost zero difficulty recognizing errors of grammar; but if you asked them to elucidate the rules of grammar of their own language it's all but impossible for most to do so without training.I'm not saying that there's no rationality to untrained human thought. Of course not - a mind that could not make justifiable, accurate predictions about situations or outcomes would be useless. Worse than useless. We might call that situation "insanity."But to suggest that just because human thought tends to be rational means that we're programmed with logic, or to conflate informal reasoning with the rigor of formal logic, are mistakes. They're fallacies. (And since you're making them, that's sort of a double disproof of inherent human logic.)

It's only impossible if we can't agree on the definition. I've stated what logic means to me in this context. Do you have a specific disagreement with that definition? If so please state it. If all that you mean to argue is that people aren't inherently insane, and their thinking about the world proceeds from largely defensible reasoning, I've already stated that I don't disagree with that.But you seem to have forgotten what the context of the original discussion was:

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I don't think the study of FORMAL logic is necessary. Many can recognize a contradiction or a fallacy like "begging the question" when they see it, even if they don't have a label for the fallacy. Logic is a natural faculty.

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It's been proven by Schraf's allusions to the Wason card selection test and Robin's own examples that this is false. Most people don't recognize the falllacies in their own thinking without specific training in formal systems of logic.

The evidence shows quite the opposite. This has been studied, robin. People don't catch fallacies that become obvious with training.

I don't think the card problem is "tricky and subtle". It's a fairly straightforward selection problem, and easily solved with the application of a few simple rule. Intuition, however, offers no help whatsoever. Fascinating, but irrelevant.

My very close friend is a graduate student in computer science. His research work involves a system that employs logic to formally prove mathematical hypotheses.If we define "logic" as "thought", are we to conclude that my friend's logic software is thinking? That seems like a bit of a step. Your informal definition of "logic" (which, by the way, was not synonymous with "thinking" in any of your definitions) doesn't seem very useful or precise. What's with you and your insistence on terms that don't have a precise meaning? Sloppy definitions lead to sloppy thinking.

Ah, right. That would explain the vast progress of humanity during the past 400 of enlightenment scientific thought, and the abject failure of religious thought to develop anything more sophisticated than the water clock for over 1000 years of the Dark Ages.Oh, wait, no, it doesn't explain that at all. Did it occur to you that the deficiency in thought and reasoning is yours, not scientists?

Apparently not; you've consistently ignored your own fallacious thinking.

So, you're rebutting a claim that people do not recognize logical fallacies unles educated about them with an observation of educated persons recognizing logical fallacies?Does that seem logical to you?

Probably because it doesn't seem to sink in with you?