Then we agree that animals think and behave logically given the way they are designed and the sensory information they receive as inputs, — Harry Hindu

It seems to me, although I am not certain, that logic requires higher mind functions and perhaps self-awareness. I'd say rather that animals think and behave effectively.

just as I explained with my example with the moth. — Harry Hindu

Many animals have much more complex and intelligent behaviors than that. I think, although again I don't have specific knowledge, moths aren't attracted to the moon but to a bright light against a dark background. This is, I assume, a genetically encoded instinct and is not learned. That's not logic or even logical.

humans are exponentially more complex in the way they perceive and behave in the world than the other animals. — Harry Hindu

This is just not true.

Name an animal that can shape the landscape without a brain, or that when shaping the landscape they are not using their senses and brain. — Harry Hindu

It's clear, at least to me, that organisms without brains have had a much greater impact on the environment than those with them. This is from Wikipedia:

The Great Oxidation Event (GOE) or Great Oxygenation Event, also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Revolution, Oxygen Crisis or Oxygen Holocaust, was a time interval during the Earth's Paleoproterozoic era when the Earth's atmosphere and shallow seas first experienced a rise in the concentration of free oxygen. This began approximately 2.460–2.426 billion years ago (Ga) during the Siderian period and ended approximately 2.060 Ga ago during the Rhyacian. Geological, isotopic and chemical evidence suggests that biologically produced molecular oxygen (dioxygen or O2) started to accumulate in the Archean prebiotic atmosphere due to microbial photosynthesis, and eventually changed it from a weakly reducing atmosphere practically devoid of oxygen into an oxidizing one containing abundant free oxygen, with oxygen levels being as high as 10% of modern atmospheric level by the end of the GOE...

...The oxidative environmental change, compounded by a global glaciation, devastated the microbial mats around the Earth's surface. The subsequent adaptation of surviving archaea via symbiogenesis with aerobic proteobacteria (which went endosymbiont and became mitochondria) may have led to the rise of eukaryotic organisms and the subsequent evolution of multicellular life-forms. — Wikipedia - Great Oxidation Event

It's clear to me you and I are not going to come to any common understanding on this issue. I've already started repeating myself. Let's leave it at that.

It seems to me, although I am not certain, that logic requires higher mind functions and perhaps self-awareness. I'd say rather that animals think and behave effectively. — T Clark

Sure. I can agree with that. It depends on how we're defining "logic". If I were defining "logic" in more broad terms, I would say that it is a means of processing inputs to produce accurate/useful outputs, and all brains (and computers) do that.

Many animals have much more complex and intelligent behaviors than that. I think, although again I don't have specific knowledge, moths aren't attracted to the moon but to a bright light against a dark background. This is, I assume, a genetically encoded instinct and is not learned. That's not logic or even logical. — T Clark

As I said, the moth's behavior only appears illogical because we can distinguish the difference between the porch light and the Moon. So of course many animals are capable of more complex behaviors because they can make finer distinctions thanks to their larger, more complex brain.

Moths use the Moon to navigate. They use the distant light source to keep an angle that allows them to fly straight. If you were to take the position of the Moth, having evolved in an environment where there were no porch lights, this method works, and would continue to work until the Moon ceases to exist as a light source. If we were living in a time before there were porch lights and observed the moth's behavior, it would appear completely and utterly logical. The environment changed and now the method is not as useful as it once was. We can tell the difference, but the moth cannot. It was designed to handle a different problem, or handle different input.

humans are exponentially more complex in the way they perceive and behave in the world than the other animals.
— Harry Hindu

This is just not true. — T Clark

Please, explain why it isn't. What other animals are aware of their own extinction and have the power to do something about it?

It's clear, at least to me, that organisms without brains have had a much greater impact on the environment than those with them. This is from Wikipedia: — T Clark

Environmental scientists are saying that we're doing the same thing - modifying the atmosphere on a global scale. We even have theories of how to do it on Mars.

As I noted, I'm repeating myself and we're not getting any closer to a common understanding. I have nothing new to add.

You're trying to finish the race before starting it. — Harry Hindu

Nobody needs to start your off-topic race.

Can you perform logic without causation or without determinism being the case? . . . Is reasoning a causal process? — Harry Hindu

These are key questions. So:

Reasoning takes time. It is a process. As such it is causal.

You provide a reason for your conclusions. Your reasons determine your conclusion. Your premises determine the validity of the conclusion. As such it is deterministic. — Harry Hindu

Is this a partial answer to the above questions? Do reasons determine a conclusion in the same way that a physical cause determines an effect? Not trying to back you into that position, just intrigued whether you do see them as the same.

Reasoning is a process.
Reason is not a process.

Reason is a product of minds, usually. And so to answer the question of where did logic come from it’s from our minds (specifically brains). Therefore it’s of human (maybe animal) origin and logic cannot exist without minds so the answer to the question of where logic came from is that it emerged with us human beings.

When my mind is blacked out, logic is still valid.

You're trying to finish the race before starting it. Most people on this forum, once they realize the direction of inquiry, start to dance around the issue. Does a newborn baby have a direction of inquiry when trying to understand and make sense of what its senses are telling it? Don't worry about the direction of inquiry right now and just answer the questions as posed. If there is a problem with the question or you need some definitions for the words in the question, just say so. — Harry Hindu

If this is going somewhere, please dispense with Socratic questions and get to the point. On the other hand, if you have no clue, as you seem to imply, then go and have a good think, and get back to us when you have something to even start a conversation. I am not interested in watching you stumble in the dark.

If you were the last mind alive capable of logic and ceased to exist the concept of logic would cease to exist with you for there would be no minds to conclude 1+1 = 2. These concepts only exist as processes in minds. They’re not out there but for us to make sense of the world.

What's the reason you think your hypothesis is true?

What would be there to do logic but minds? Therefore no minds = no logic.

no minds = no logic. — kindred

Is this statement meant as an empirical observation or as a logical rule? If it's empirical, I see no evidence. If it's logical, it stands transcendentally a priori to the possibility of a mental existence. In other words: Logic is there before you can even think about it.

No it’s not. Logic is one of the many properties of minds. A rock can’t do logic. Where would you find logic in world without minds?

A rock can’t do logic. — kindred

I agree. Logic cannot be done; neither by a rock nor by anything else.

You set a different premise than I do. Your premise is that logic is an action. My premise is that logic is not an action.

Is logic not reasoning then? Something done by minds ?

Is logic not reasoning then? Something done by minds ? — kindred

Reasoning is done by minds, yes.

But reasoning is not a logical rule. In my view, reasoning is a subjective act and may lead to wrong results when certain logical rules are incorrectly applied. -- Logical rules per se, however, are constant, timeless, objective, and in any case valid.

It's similar to math. Mathematical rules are not acts; they are rules. Rules don't do anything. A rule shouldn't be confused with the act of calculating. Calculations may be wrong. Joe calculates 123+321=999, and Jane calculates 666. -- Mathematical rules per se, however, are constant, timeless, objective, and in any case valid. So I think logic and math were not invented by minds; they were discovered. And I guess in logic and math there is even more to discover; we are just not intelligent enough yet. The unknown is already there. It's just not discovered yet. You think there is no unknown at all? You think everything new that surprises you in this moment is something you just invented yourself in this moment? I don't believe in solipsism.

What's the reason you think your hypothesis is true? — Quk

It’s not a hypothesis, there is no empirical test that could be performed that would verify or falsify it.

It’s not a hypothesis, there is no empirical test that could be performed that would verify or falsify it. — T Clark

That's why I call it a hypothesis rather than a thesis. A thesis can be tested. A hypothesis doesn't claim to be testable as it's just an idea.

A hypothesis doesn't claim to be testable as it's just an idea. — Quk

I went and checked and you’re right. An hypothesis can be a metaphysical statement or a scientific one. A scientific hypothesis does need to be testable.

If this is going somewhere, please dispense with Socratic questions and get to the point. On the other hand, if you have no clue, as you seem to imply, then go and have a good think, and get back to us when you have something to even start a conversation. I am not interested in watching you stumble in the dark. — SophistiCat

"Socratic questioning is a form of disciplined questioning that can be used to pursue thought in many directions and for many purposes, including: to explore complex ideas, to get to the truth of things, to open up issues and problems, to uncover assumptions, to analyze concepts, to distinguish what we know from what we do not know, to follow out logical consequences of thought or to control discussions. Socratic questioning is based on the foundation that thinking has structured logic, and allows underlying thoughts to be questioned. The key to distinguishing Socratic questioning from questioning per se is that the former is systematic, disciplined, deep and usually focuses on fundamental concepts, principles, theories, issues or problems."
-Wikipedia.

Is this a partial answer to the above questions? Do reasons determine a conclusion in the same way that a physical cause determines an effect? Not trying to back you into that position, just intrigued whether you do see them as the same. — J

What does "physical" mean? Your question seems to stem from a dualist perspective in that somehow mental processes not part of the "physical" world, or are somehow distinct from "physical" processes. Its all process. I don't see "physical" as a useful distinction when a process can encompass both physical and mental - like participating in a philosophical discussion on an internet forum. Reading involves the process of looking at the scribbles on your computer screen (what you might call a physical object) and processing the input to produce a valid response by typing on your keyboard and clicking the submit button.

What caused you to look at your computer screen? What caused you to interpret the scribbles on the screen the way you did? What caused your response to appear on others' computer screens? It seems to me that there was a whole lot of causation crossing "physical" boundaries here, appearing to be without any regard to "physical" things. Is the term even necessary?

Don't we point to "physical" states of affairs as reasons to act certain ways? For instance, when you see a Stop sign, is that not the reason you stop? A stop sign is a "physical" object that somehow becomes a mental construct - a reason - to perform an action - to stop. Why did you stop? Because there was a stop sign. You might also run into the stop sign and stop by the stop sign impeding your movement forward. Was the stop sign the reason you stopped in both cases?

But reasoning is not a logical rule. — Quk

Reasoning is using reasons to support a conclusion - logic.

Your question seems to stem from a dualist perspective — Harry Hindu

Yes, at least dualist in terms of how we talk about these things. Let's bracket the question of whether we're right to do so. I'm interested in seeing whether our ways of talking about, say, a broken tree limb causing a window to break is the same way we talk about the premises of an argument causing me to reach a certain conclusion.

I think we don't talk the same way about these things, and have different operations in mind for each. Would you tend to agree with that? Again, we may be wrong to talk this way, but we might as well start with what we do in fact say.

That's why I mentioned what happens at a stop sign. What caused us to stop? Is what caused us to stop the same as the reason why we stopped?

A broken tree limb caused the broken window. The broken tree limb was the reason the window is broken. What's the difference?

I think the stop sign example is better because the process crosses those "physical" boundaries into the mental. The tree limb breaking the window does not include a mind in the process like the stopping at a stop sign does.

Is our reasoning merely representing the causal process? If we assert there are causal process in the world, why would that not be applied to our minds being that our minds are part of the world? If we were omniscient, we could predict every effect of every cause, and that would include the causes of others' behaviors - the reasons they use to act certain ways.

Yes, I understand. I'm trying to take a slower path, through the Land of How We Talk, before getting to things like

A broken tree limb caused the broken window. The broken tree limb was the reason the window is broken. What's the difference? — Harry Hindu

That's a good question, of course, but before trying to answer it, I want to look at what we normally understand such questions to be about. So: Do you think it's the case that, in our everyday talk, no one would find a meaningful difference between what caused the broken window, and the reason why the window broke? What I have in mind is that reasons generally are broader, and to ask an interesting
question about reasons is often to require an answer that talks about more than some efficient cause like a tree limb.

Eventually, that may get us to this:

Is our reasoning merely representing the causal process? If we assert there are causal process in the world, why would that not be applied to our minds, being that our minds are part of the world? — Harry Hindu

Here again, I think we ought to start by noticing that this is not how we have to talk about reasoning. Some people don't think that everything in "the world" is caused, or that minds are in the world in the same way that trees are. Right or wrong? Let's defer that, and ask into why this would represent a common way of thinking and talking.

(And my personal view is that any talk of "the world" is going to be a matter of stipulation, as there is no agreement on how to use such a term.)

Do you think it's the case that, in our everyday talk, no one would find a meaningful difference between what caused the broken window, and the reason why the window broke? — J

I'm not sure. This is the first time I'm asking this question of anyone, including myself. It does appear to be the case given how they are using the terms. I would have to ask that if they do mean something different, what exactly is it that is different.

What I have in mind is that reasons generally are broader, and to ask an interesting
question about reasons is often to require an answer that talks about more than some efficient cause like a tree limb. — J

I don't know. It seems to depend on what we are talking about. It seems to me that we can give specific reasons or broader reasons as to why some state-of-affairs is the case, and those reasons correspond to the causes as to why some state-of-affairs is the case. We could talk about more broader causes of the tree limb breaking in the tree had to grow to a certain height to have one of its branches break the window, another tree had to begat the tree near the window, all the way down to the Big Bang, or we could talk about the more immediate (specific) cause/reason as to why the window is broken - a tree limb broke and hit the window.

(And my personal view is that any talk of "the world" is going to be a matter of stipulation, as there is no agreement on how to use such a term.) — J

If you don't agree that the world is something we share, then I don't know how to talk to you about anything and we would just talk past each other all the time. Do you think that we are always talking past each other when talking about the shared world?

If you don't agree that the world is something we share, then I don't know how to talk to you about anything and we would just talk past each other all the time. Do you think that we are always talking past each other when talking about the shared world? — Harry Hindu

That's a bit dire. I didn't say there was no such thing as a shared world, or that we can never decide how to talk about it meaningfully. I just meant that, taken out of any context, the term "the world" is going to refer to different things for different people. If you and I, or anyone else, want to introduce the term into a conversation, it would be a good idea to first agree on some rough reference. We could locate our usage on a map of well-known usages, such as physicalism, idealism, intersubjectivity, Platonism, et al.

I would say there's no wrong way to do this -- it's only a term -- we just need to stipulate how we'll use it. Then we can indeed talk about our shared world, and if it turns out that our way of using the term isn't as perspicuous as we wanted it to be, we can revise.

I am pretty sure I had almost this same conversation re reasons versus causes with , using the stop sign example. Maybe it was a stop light :rofl: .

I would just suggest that a difficulty here is that "causes" is often used very narrowly, as always referring to a linear temporal sequence (either as extrinsic ordering, or a sort of intrinsic computation-like process), but also very broadly as encompassing the former, but also all "reasons." Or, causes might also be used narrowly in a counterfactual sense. "Reasons" often tend to include a notion of final and formal causality that is excluded from more narrow formulations of "cause."

So, it's tricky. Lift is a "cause of flight," but you won't find the "principle of lift" as an observable particular in any instance of flight. Likewise, moral principles are causes of people's actions, but you won't find them wandering about the world.

It's probably the one of the most challenging disambiguations. There was once an extremely influential book called the Book of Causes that is hardly ever taught any more because no one knows who wrote it (and it is derivative of Proclus' Elements). I mention it because it's a great example of how extensive the understanding was in former epochs. Essentially, anything that did not occur spontaneously for "no reason at all," (which was presumed to be nothing) was considered to have a cause, and indeed many causes, because proximate causes were arranged under more general principles. Which is interestingly, not a position that demands any particular ontology, and works as well for idealism as physicalism despite its rather stark decline.

It's probably one of the most challenging disambiguations. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It sure is, and the "reason/cause" subspecies of disambiguation has always seemed to me especially important to understand. The problem can be put sort of crudely, in the context of free will: If we believe we are free to make choices, in more or less the ways we commonly think we are, then that means we are also free to make mental choices. We will not be caused or forced to think any particular thing, or at least we needn't be.

So a "reason" for thinking something -- say, that a conclusion follows from its premises -- has to have a dual character. We want to say, on the one hand, that nothing has compelled us to this conclusion, at the level of brute neuronal activity. We have freely chosen to think that X is true, based on reasons. But on the other hand, we want to say that the reason is compelling at the logical or epistemological level. We do not have a choice, at that level -- not if we want to think what is true.

So we're looking for a way to differentiate a cause from a reason, at the propositional or mental level, that can account for both these aspects. I would say additionally that, as we work on this problem, we want to pay attention to our usual ways of talking about it. We don't, for instance, say that I am caused to believe the Pythagorean theorem. We tend to reserve "cause" for physical events (this is a big generalization, of course) and "reason" for things we choose or decide. Understandably, if there is no choice or decision -- if one adopts a hardcore physicalism or determinism -- then the distinction rather collapses.