Theology Club: The Big Picture

Nihilo said:

Any explanation that is not based upon tautology is not able to be said.

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Any explanation that has already been said, perforce, can be said.

I said that the real world, as a whole, is autologous. Those are words (particularly the word autologous) which have commonly accepted meanings. So I have said something meaningful. I have already said it. So I must be able to say it. How can you now say that I can't say it? Feel free to disagree with it and I am sure you will do so in a respectful manner, but it seems pointless you telling me that I cannot say it.

Desert Reign said:

As I already said, it has nothing to do with rationalising or rationalism. It has to do with Lon telling me that my argument was invalid because I was a sinful and fallen man.

Is this too hard for people with IQs in the 95th percentile to grasp? It is anti-intellectual, anti-logic and it is against the biblical injunction to have a ready answer for the hope that is in us.

Bowing out is not an answer. Sending me pos reps and PMs is not an answer. I don't expect intelligent Christians to tell me that my argument is wrong because I am a fallen sinful man. The only correct answer is to go back and correct the offending post and give me a proper answer, a rational answer.

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I agree with the thrust of this. I haven't read every post Lon wrote to you and so won't comment further about him personally but what you're objecting too here is precisely what got me off onto the logic tangent in the first place. People seem to think that its alright if their theology doesn't make sense. Several people on this website have said as much but I've heard prominent Christian teachers/leaders who have radio talk shows say on the air that of course we aught to expect there to be aspects of our theology that don't make sense to us mere human beings. They seem to not realize that taking such a stance is worse than throwing the baby out with the bath water, it more like just taking the baby and throwing it out the window without ever having given it bath to begin with. Taking such a stance literally opens the door to ANY belief no matter how outlandish. If your doctrine doesn't have to make sense (i.e. be rational) then how are you ever going to tell the cult leader that he's wrong in his belief that God and Jesus and Lucifer and Krishna and Ala are really all the same guy? You can't! You might as well go worship your bathtub and ask it to raise your dead grandparents from the grave!

Resting in Him,
Clete

Nihilo said:

Any explanation that is not based upon tautology is not able to be said. You're trying to talk about the world apart from language, using language, while excluding language from that world. That's literally nonsense.

When I say that you're creating a distinction between existence and reality that does not manifest detectably beyond language, this is an example. Since beyond the distinction that you're saying is there, this distinction does not manifest beyond your words, you have created a ghost with no reality beyond its trivial tautological manifestation. So, there really is a distinction, because you say there is, but it's at best insignificant, and in my estimation it is superfluous to distinguish existence from reality, causing nothing more than unneeded confusion and cloudiness in what you're trying to argue.

Ghosts exist and are real. Our Maker exists and is real. What's the difference? Their detectable manifestation beyond language. Ghosts have very little while our Maker manifests detectably beyond language quite a great deal. So it matters that our Maker exists and is real, and it doesn't matter that ghosts do also, because of detectable manifestation beyond language.

I also apologize for my own lack of clarity. It is not deliberate.

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What the heck are you guys talking about?

Desert Reign said:

As I already said, it has nothing to do with rationalising or rationalism. It has to do with Lon telling me that my argument was invalid because I was a sinful and fallen man.

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Weird...that seems to be a thing on TOL now. Recently someone told me I disagree with him only because of my carnal mind.

Desert Reign said:

Any explanation that has already been said, perforce, can be said.

I said that the real world, as a whole, is autologous. Those are words (particularly the word autologous) which have commonly accepted meanings. So I have said something meaningful. I have already said it. So I must be able to say it. How can you now say that I can't say it? Feel free to disagree with it and I am sure you will do so in a respectful manner, but it seems pointless you telling me that I cannot say it.

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I must have missed something. What the heck does "the real world, as a whole, is autologous" even mean?

If a patient has surgery and they take a blood vessel out of his leg and put it in his arm, the patient has had an autologous blood vessel transplant because the transplanted vessel came from the same patient. That's what autologous means, "from the same individual". It's almost always an medical term. I don't understand its use in this context.

Clete said:

I've heard prominent Christian teachers/leaders who have radio talk shows say on the air that of course we aught to expect there to be aspects of our theology that don't make sense to us mere human beings.

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On the way home from work not 2 hours ago, I heard Charles Stanley comment on Paul's distinction between the spiritual man's and natural man's understanding. You heard something else said? Just curious.

Fuzzy, not-well-thought-through, or still undecided elements of theology is one thing. We all have that at some point (I still do). But as you know, TOL is rife with confused, incoherent, self-contradictory lies and nonsense -- but sincerely believed! -- passed off as theology. In THOSE cases, it's almost certainly a sign of a darkened mind, esp. when correction is rejected.

musterion said:

On the way home from work not 2 hours ago, I heard Charles Stanley comment on Paul's distinction between the spiritual man's and natural man's understanding. You heard something else said? Just curious.

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Oh yes! Lots of times. It most often happens when one aspect or another of Calvinism is being discussed, predestination most often.

Fuzzy, not-well-thought-through, or still undecided elements of theology is one thing. We all have that at some point (I still do). But as you know, TOL is rife with confused, incoherent, self-contradictory lies and nonsense -- but sincerely believed! -- passed off as theology. In THOSE cases, it's almost certainly a sign of a darkened mind.

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Right! It is important to make the distinction between insisting that something be rationally coherent vs. insisting that everything be fully understood. The doctrine of the Trinity has to be the best example of this. We accept that God exists in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We also accept that there is only one God. Some people (lots of Calvinists) make the error of believing that God is both singular and plural at the same time and in the same sense but this IS NOT what the bible teaches nor is it necessary to believe that in order to accept the Trinity doctrine as truth. The bible merely teaches that in one sense God is singular and in another sense there is plurality in the Godhead. How that works exactly, we aren't told. It is a mystery that we cannot solve because we have not been given sufficient information to fill the knowledge gap. But acknowledging a lack of understanding is altogether different than accepting as truth that which if flatly and plainly and undeniably self-contradictory. Accepting the former is humility, accepting the later is intellectual suicide.

Resting in Him,
Clete

Desert Reign said:

I don't care what he was talking about.
It doesn't matter whether you intended offence or not.
Usually offence is not intended, but it is offence just the same.
It is cowardly of you to bow out, to run away.
I wasn't interested in your apologies but in your rectifying your mistake.
Your apology means nothing if you don't.
'I didn't mean it' is the child's response.
You need to grow up.

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You need to take your own advice...

But you keep returning to your own vomit...

Trying to vomit it on others, as above...

That was a rude post...

Not that you care...

Arsenios

Desert Reign said:

As I already said, it has nothing to do with rationalising or rationalism. It has to do with Lon telling me that my argument was invalid because I was a sinful and fallen man.

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ANY argument is only that: An argument...
Argument = Philosophy
Philosophy is NOT Theology
Theology = Revelation
Revelation is NOT Philosophy

Is this too hard for people with IQs in the 95th percentile to grasp?

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Is THAT why YOU cannot understand me?

It is anti-intellectual, anti-logic and it is against the biblical injunction to have a ready answer for the hope that is in us.

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The ready answer is
REPENT AND BE BAPTIZED,
FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
IS AT HAND

Don't you agree?

Bowing out is not an answer.

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Neither is your your rudeness...

Sending me pos reps and PMs is not an answer.

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Neither is your venom...

I don't expect intelligent Christians to tell me that my argument is wrong because I am a fallen sinful man.

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Your argument is wrong because it is an argument...

The only correct answer is to go back and correct the offending post
and give me a proper answer, a rational answer.

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The rational answer is that the Greek Classic Philosophers FAILED to INFER from ratitonal principles the Kingdom of Heaven... And you, with whatever IQ you may think you have, are not half as smart as a pimple on their backsides...

The Gospel of Jesus Christ does NOT say "RATIONALLY ARGUE YOUR WAY INTO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN!"

And it is ONLY from WITHIN that Kingdom that you can even BEGIN to speak the Truth...

And you are not even close...

Arsenios

Clete, Musterion, thank you for your comprehension.

Clete: reality is autologous for the following reason. Remember you yourself said that the definitions of things are given by others? Or was it something like 'value depends on the worth of a thing to an observer'? I wanted to focus on the fact that it was intrinsic but I acknowledged that also it does depend on the person valuing it. However the person valuing it is constrained by what it is in itself. It cannot arbitrarily be given (which is what happens in dualism). Now consider that everything that is real must be valued, be identified, be defined (whatever mode of thought you prefer) by something else that is also real. This is a necessary implication of saying that the universe is everything that is real. So, saying that the universe is autologous is another way of denying the dualist premise. Reality doesn't need an external party to give it meaning. It doesn't need anything that is 'supra' (to use Arsenios' terminology) to give it reality. Reality is reality because and solely because it is self-validating, self-defining and self-organising. There is no universe of ideas and concepts somewhere else, which cast shadows to make up the physical world in the manner of Plato. And - to use your own particular angle on it - autology is the only logically consistent way to view reality, the only way that upholds and justifies the grand principle of logic, unity.

This principle is also the origin and explanation of conscience. Any rules of morality, if they are to be classed as real rules (i.e. rules which are truly valid and authoritative as criteria for judging actions), must exist in reality. Where are these rules written? They are written in language that is readable consistently across reality. For example they might be written down as letters engraved in stone tablets, or they might exist as ordering of charges in neurones and synapses and communicated as words amongst humans transmitted by sound waves. Wherever these rules are, they are encoded in real things and the code is interpreted by other real things. So reality as a whole is self-interpreting code. Autology. However, no rule, no language or sentence is capable of fully defining morality because if it could fully define every possible action, then the code would be as large as the universe itself. Rules are always approximations. The rules (the language of morality) must always interact with the context of the action. It is that interaction that produces in rational beings the perception of conscience. This in fact answers my second question 'How do we establish criteria for judging actions?' And I would hope, if you have understood this post so far, that you will immediately see why it resolves the Euthyphro dilemma. Morality is an aspect of autology. It is why our consciences appear to be real and why we can say that God is good when we see what he does. In my view, any other answer implies dualism, which descends quickly into paradox and illogicality.

Desert Reign said:

Thank you...

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Glory to God!

Reality is autologous for the following reason.

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Why not just say that the only features of reality which human beings are able to grasp logically are those in which they present themselves as autologous? You see, you are making a claim from human reason to the whole of the nature of reality, which is a jump that is a great leap of faith, unless you can show it to be true from a perspective that includes ALL of reality, and this you cannot do, because you are only part of it, and that part of reality of which you are aware is infinitesimally small...

In other words, you cannot PROVE the autologicality of all reality...

The proof against your wild premise is the fact that if thoughts are real and autologous, then how can they change? And if they, in their autologicity, are determined by perception or human direction, then they are not autologous, but other-logosed. The inter-relatedness of things in the cosmos rules out autologicality as a fundamental principle of reality...

Remember you yourself said that the definitions of things are given by others? Or was it something like 'value depends on the worth of a thing to an observer'? I wanted to focus on the fact that it was intrinsic but I acknowledged that also it does depend on the person valuing it. However the person valuing it is constrained by what it is in itself. It cannot arbitrarily be given

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Value is almost always arbitrarily given, and the proof of this is that we often MIS-VALUE things... Go to a yard sale - Where junk can turn out to have value - Value is subjective to the one doing the valuing... Poverty and suffering are a great value to some, while for others, wealth and ease are greatly valued...

Now consider that everything that is real must be valued, be identified, be defined (whatever mode of thought you prefer) by something else that is also real.

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Most [99+%] of reality is NOT defined, is NOT valued, and is NOT identified...

This is a necessary implication of saying that the universe is everything that is real.

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The opposite necessary implication is the truth...

So, saying that the universe is autologous is another way of denying the dualist premise.

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A frivolous denial...

Reality doesn't need an external party to give it meaning.

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Reality needs God to give it reality...

It doesn't need anything that is 'supra' (to use Arsenios' terminology) to give it reality. Reality is reality because and solely because it is self-validating, self-defining and self-organising.

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If material reality is real, then this makes you a materialist...
If your ideas are real, then this makes you an idealist...
If concepts are real, then this makes you a conceptualist...
If emotions are real, then this makes you an emotionalist...
If God is real, this makes you a theist...

And all you have is IDEAS ABOUT reality, and words denoting those ideas...
The reality to which they refer is separate from them...

If thinking and materiality are real, then you are a material thinker...
If thinking determines materiality, then you are a visionary...
If the reverse, you are a robot...

There is no universe of ideas and concepts somewhere else, which cast shadows to make up the physical world in the manner of Plato.

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Nor will there ever be - Holy immanent transcendence is not a part of Plato's world...

And - to use your own particular angle on it - autology is the only logically consistent way to view reality, the only way that upholds and justifies the grand principle of logic, unity.

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Nice idea, but it does not define reality, it only justifies your presuppositions, as you acknowledge...

This principle is also the origin and explanation of conscience. Any rules of morality, if they are to be classed as real rules (i.e. rules which are truly valid and authoritative as criteria for judging actions), must exist in reality.

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So are you in denial of the fact that there are FALSE RULES? Rules exist in the mind alone... They are designed to govern conduct. The rock on the other side of the hill has no rules, neither true rules nor false ones. Do you think gravity is a rule? If rules are given, then who gave gravity its rules? It is a grave matter!

Where are these rules written? They are written in language that is readable consistently across reality. For example they might be written down as letters engraved in stone tablets, or they might exist as ordering of charges in neurones and synapses and communicated as words amongst humans transmitted by sound waves. Wherever these rules are, they are encoded in real things and the code is interpreted by other real things. So reality as a whole is self-interpreting code.

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So primordeal slime is self-interpreting?

Enough!

Arsenios

Arsenios said:

So primordeal slime is self-interpreting?

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If primordial slime didn't exist, I am sure you would be the first to invent it. Most of your recent posts have been nothing but. Don't expect any further comment from me.

Desert Reign said:

If primordial slime didn't exist,
I am sure you would be the first to invent it.

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I mis-posted - The term should have been "Primordial Ooze."

I am glad to know that it interprets itself...

Slime being what is Oozed...

Most of your recent posts have been nothing but.

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Have you no sense of humor?

Don't expect any further comment from me.

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OK - I won't...

Just one little additional querie:

Is God the Creator of the Reality of Creation and all Existence?

Arsenios

Desert Reign said:

Clete, Musterion, thank you for your comprehension.

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Yeah well, I'm not so sure how much comprehension is going on. I'm more confused than ever!

Clete: reality is autologous for the following reason. Remember you yourself said that the definitions of things are given by others? Or was it something like 'value depends on the worth of a thing to an observer'? I wanted to focus on the fact that it was intrinsic but I acknowledged that also it does depend on the person valuing it. However the person valuing it is constrained by what it is in itself. It cannot arbitrarily be given (which is what happens in dualism). Now consider that everything that is real must be valued, be identified, be defined (whatever mode of thought you prefer) by something else that is also real. This is a necessary implication of saying that the universe is everything that is real. So, saying that the universe is autologous is another way of denying the dualist premise. Reality doesn't need an external party to give it meaning. It doesn't need anything that is 'supra' (to use Arsenios' terminology) to give it reality. Reality is reality because and solely because it is self-validating, self-defining and self-organising. There is no universe of ideas and concepts somewhere else, which cast shadows to make up the physical world in the manner of Plato. And - to use your own particular angle on it - autology is the only logically consistent way to view reality, the only way that upholds and justifies the grand principle of logic, unity.

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Okay, explain to me the difference between what you are trying to say here and simply saying that something is what it is regardless of what anyone thinks about it. What's the difference between what you've said in the above paragraph and the Law of Identity?

This principle is also the origin and explanation of conscience. Any rules of morality, if they are to be classed as real rules (i.e. rules which are truly valid and authoritative as criteria for judging actions), must exist in reality. Where are these rules written? They are written in language that is readable consistently across reality. For example they might be written down as letters engraved in stone tablets, or they might exist as ordering of charges in neurones and synapses and communicated as words amongst humans transmitted by sound waves. Wherever these rules are, they are encoded in real things and the code is interpreted by other real things. So reality as a whole is self-interpreting code. Autology. However, no rule, no language or sentence is capable of fully defining morality because if it could fully define every possible action, then the code would be as large as the universe itself. Rules are always approximations. The rules (the language of morality) must always interact with the context of the action. It is that interaction that produces in rational beings the perception of conscience. This in fact answers my second question 'How do we establish criteria for judging actions?' And I would hope, if you have understood this post so far, that you will immediately see why it resolves the Euthyphro dilemma. Morality is an aspect of autology. It is why our consciences appear to be real and why we can say that God is good when we see what he does. In my view, any other answer implies dualism, which descends quickly into paradox and illogicality.

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I'm really sorry but I'm just not following this at all. I keep waiting for a light bulb moment to happen where I suddenly see what you are trying to show me but it hasn't happened yet. It feels like I'm reading the third book in a trilogy without having read the first two books or like I got up to go to the bathroom while watching Star Wars and came back just in time to see Han Solo falling to his death off the cat walk. I'm missing something important. I have no idea what it is.

Clete

Reality is reality. Who could deny it? The fact is, that "reality" in this opening sentence could be substituted by literally anything, and not just word, and it would still be true. Even a made up word or idea, or an object or symbol or any noun, really. It is what it is. There's a reason this resonates with some people sometimes. It's the very bottom of language, and by language I'm denoting language, and maths, and logic, because math and logic can be shown to be special languages, far easier than language can be shown to be a special form of either math or logic. Math and logic just have a special vocabulary, and beyond that, they both work exactly like language. Math has the equation, and logic has . . . the tautology, which language has also, but to be fair, tautology was most carefully elucidated in the field of logic, by Wittgenstein. The tautology in logic is usually expressed symbolically, while in language, it is exemplified and epitomized with language, like "it is what it is."

Platitudes are almost the equivalent of tautologies and equations, there are many platitudes that are tautologous, but it's not a one-to-one relationship.

You can't say any thing, without invoking tautologies. We can know for a surety that anything that cannot be said, is not said, and has not been said, and will not be said, because it is unsayable. We know that, or we can know that. Therefore, this limits our thoughts and our thinking, and while it sounds evil, it's actually good, because we literally cannot manifest something that we cannot say, and everything that we can say, is a variation on the tautological theme of "it is what it is."

Everything that's said invokes tautology. It's how language works. What's it like? It's like explaining how sound is generated and detected while speaking to someone with it. Is that what it's like? It could be. Anyway, what some people try to do is use sound to say that there is no sound. It's self-contradictory. It can be said, however. So therefore, when we say that we cannot say something, we do not mean falsehoods. We can lie.

If a known fibber tells me, "I just saw a flying elephant," I ask myself, "Is the flying elephant real?" and then I say, "Yes, but what's the significance?" to which, I respond, "The significance is that this person's a known fibber, so while I accept the existence and reality of the flying elephant, I also accept the existence and reality that this person's a known fibber."

Clete said:

Okay, explain to me the difference between what you are trying to say here and simply saying that something is what it is regardless of what anyone thinks about it. What's the difference between what you've said in the above paragraph and the Law of Identity?

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Clete, I am having trouble with this. I don't know how to say what I said differently. I have already said it in different ways to Arsenios, to Nihilo, and TIP seems to have grasped it easily enough. Your 'law of identity' is 2-dimensional. You are not seeing what is happening as a process, when you make these kind of assertions. You are not seeing the whole. The whole is this: Reality is autologous. This is a process. It must be. It can't be anything else. I mean, it cannot be static. Your rule is static. Your rule is only concerned with logic, not with reality. Please try to break out and think what happens when everything is defining everything else. Not just one thing being logical in an atomistic way as you seem to be focusing on. I really don't know how to say it differently. Perhaps you would benefit from re-reading what I have written here since page 5. I am talking about reality, not about logic. Sure, logic is a central feature of it, but the whole is about reality. The real universe. The set of all real things. How else can I say it???

What makes something real? I have already said this. So I repeat myself again and again. Something is real because it constrains all observers. It is not optional. I have already said this. Chaos has not been defined. It's what my daughters' rooms can sometimes look like. (In fact it's what my sons' rooms almost always look like.) It only becomes real when it is ordered. Because the act of ordering (of separating, of distinguishing) allows things that are otherwise meaningless to be given meaning. That meaning is always in relationship to everything else. The room is only an analogy. Don't take it too far.

Any description of a real thing implies common language. Again, I am just repeating myself. I don't know what is hard about it. Common language is mediated through symbols. Again, I am not stating anything new here. I am only stating what is totally obvious and commonly accepted. Those symbols must be written as orderings of real things, such as ink on paper or electrical charges in synapses, or bases in a dna long-chain molecule. This is nothing new. So please try to get a little beyond

''A is x' and 'A is not x' cannot both be true at the same time in the same sense.'

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to

'someone or something, somewhere, must be manipulating symbols according to a common language in order to make a statement ''A is x' and 'A is not x' cannot both be true at the same time in the same sense'.

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Or, to put it another way, when you say 'This is a chair', look beyond the atomistic statement in terms of its logic to what you yourself are doing when you say it! I call this self-reference. I know a lot of people get hung up on it. I hope you don't think I am being condescending. But I am getting tired of constantly repeating myself. When you say 'This is a chair' you are acknowledging that the chair is real.

Remember: reality is autologous. If you need me to spell this out (again, yes, I have already said it before...) reality is self-realising.
The Big Picture.

Nihilo said:

If a known fibber tells me, "I just saw a flying elephant," I ask myself, "Is the flying elephant real?" and then I say, "Yes, but what's the significance?" to which, I respond, "The significance is that this person's a known fibber, so while I accept the existence and reality of the flying elephant, I also accept the existence and reality that this person's a known fibber."

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Nihilo, I don't accept the reality of the flying elephant.
Wittgenstein was an ok chappy and did some good work. But he didn't go far enough and if your interpretation of him is that you can say that a flying elephant is real then it shows how actually unrealistic your views are. You are speaking a language that no one else understands.

Clete said:

I'm really sorry but I'm just not following this at all.
Clete

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It doesn't seem too difficult. All he is saying is that everything that is real relates to everything else that is real. You can define something any way you want, as long as your definition means the same to others as it does to you, and that definition actually represents the object in some way. See?

So anything that is real depends on its relationship with everything else in order to to have a definition and value. If the universe is everything that is real, then everything inside it is defining everything else in some way. So the universe is defining itself.

That is what autologous means here. That the universe defines itself.

But if an object is defining another object, then the first object is changing (because it is now defining another object). However, remember that the second object is also defining the first object. As the first object changes, the second object changes, and so on.

Now this was just an example with two objects. This happens with anything and everything that is real.

This means that the universe is autologous. It does not need anything outside it to give it a definition.

TIPlatypus and Desert Rain,


I just went through a re-read every post that DR and I have written in this thread as well as both of the last two posts. I still have every question I had when I posted my first post in response to DR.

You guys are talking about the Law of Identity. That is what you are talking about - period.

No one has yet even attempted to explain HOW value emerges from an object's intrinsic nature (i.e. from it's identity). The claim has been made repeatedly but the claim has not been established nor even well explained as what it even means. Nor has it been explained how such an idea is pertinent to the establishment of an objective morality that would apply as well to God as it does to us.

Value is a subjective judgment made by a thinking mind - period! That's what it is because of the definition of the word "value" (i.e. this is not my mere opinion). If someone wants to claim it to be something else, it is on them to clearly redefine the term in the context of this discussion and to establish that the new definition is both valid on it's own merits and that the new definition is not identical to another term that could be used in the place of 'value' (a term like 'identity' for example).

Now, if it sounds like I'm a bit frustrated, its because I am. I ask questions, honest, on topic, pertinent question that HAVE NOT BEEN ANSWERED and what I get in response is irritation because you feel like you'd have to repeat yourself. Well, I feel like I've got a pretty solid grasp on the English language and I'm no slouch when it comes to following linear thought processes and I tell you that you have not answered my questions. There's no need to repeat one single syllable of anything you've said so far because I just spent the last hour re-reading it all and none of it answers any question I've posed up to this point.

You say that the Law of Identity has to do with logic and not reality and I say there is no difference! Logic is nothing more than the rules that govern the mind that restricts itself to reality. Logic is that which draws the line between what is real and what is only conceptual or even fantasy. Logic is that which divides the truth from falsehood. Is reality autologous? Yes or no? Only logic can answer. In other words, the nature of reality, whether autologous or not is what it is - period. That's what it sounds like you guys are saying and that is nothing at all other than the Law of Identity.

And can somebody please explain what any of this has to do with morality?

Resting in Him,
Clete

Clete said:

Logic is nothing more than the rules that govern the mind the restricts itself to reality. Logic is that which draws the line between what is real and what is only conceptual or even fantasy. Logic is that which divides the truth from falsehood. Is reality autologous? Yes or no? Only logic can answer. In other words, the nature of reality is what it is - period. That's what it sounds like you guys are saying and that is nothing at all other than the Law of Identity.

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Clete, if logic is a set of rules that govern the mind, can you tell me where these rules are written down in words so that anyone can check them out? Plus, of course, explain why the mind needs to follow these rules and how the mind knows that it has to follow them? When you have done that, can you please re-read your answer and tell me what thought processes were involved in formulating that answer, including an explanation of what you mean by 'mind', such as where I can find this 'mind' and what it is made of?

And can somebody please explain what any of this has to do with morality?

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Obviously we need to take things one step at a time here.

Desert Reign said:

Clete, if logic is a set of rules that govern the mind, can you tell me where these rules are written down in words so that anyone can check them out?

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There are only three....

The Law of Identity. (A = A).
All rational thought, including the other rules of logic are corollaries of this single rule. What is is. Reality is absolute and everything that exists has a specific nature (i.e. A chair is not a computer).

The Law of Excluded Middle. (A does not equal ~A)
Everything must either be or not be. This law simply states that a truth claim is either true or is it false given a particular context. There is no middle ground.

The Law of Contradiction. (either A or not A but not both A and ~A)
Alternatively called the Law of Non-Contradiction. Nothing can both be and not be. Two contradictory truth claims cannot both be true at the same time and in the same context.

Some say that there is a fourth....

Law of Rational Inference. (A=B & B=C, Therefore A=C)
I reject that as a law of reason because it is merely a use of the laws of reason. It's an argument, not a law.

EVERY single truth conforms to the laws of reason - PERIOD!
ANY claim that does not conform to these laws if false - PERIOD!
To conform to these rules is the definition of the word "truth". To be true simply means to be consistent. Consistent with what? The laws of reason! Or put another way, consistent with itself and with reality.

Plus, of course, explain why the mind needs to follow these rules and how the mind knows that it has to follow them?

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Reason is man’s only means of grasping reality and of acquiring knowledge and, therefore, the rejection of reason means that men should act regardless of and/or in contradiction to the facts of reality. Reason, however, is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. He is not, however, free to evade the consequences of that choice. He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every “is” implies an “ought.” Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction. Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil. (Rand - Various quotes and paraphrases)

When you have done that, can you please re-read your answer and tell me what thought processes were involved in formulating that answer, including an explanation of what you mean by 'mind', such as where I can find this 'mind' and what it is made of?

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I can post you links to the volumes of philosophical treatises that have been written on these issues or you can explain what the relevance would be to doing so.

Do you deny the existence of your mind? To do so is to deny your own existence.
Do you deny the veracity of the laws of reason that govern its proper use? To do so is to deny your ability to do so.

What in the world are you getting at?


Resting in Him,
Clete