The metaphysics is old stuff, with all the flaws of idealism, so I'll leave it aside.

Let's focus on "Change my mind".

You'll believe whatever you want. From your writing style it is clear you will do so in such a way as to protect your expressed ideas. Regardless of what we say. So you will choose whatever arguments support your OP, and reject those that do not.

That's apparent in your reply to @dclements, which displays how you have closed yourself off from logic by claiming that it is evil. Hence your mind will not be changed by logical argument. You do the same with @SophistiCat's reply, demanding he address you in terms of a logic you have already rejected.

You try to make a virtue out of being adamant that you are right, while closing yourself off from rational discussion. You've taken a stance against learning anything new, against having your opinion changed. It's the attitude found in conspiracy theorists across the world. You've thrown your lot in with the irrational, and only play at rational conversation.

Change your mind? That's not our responsibility. That's up to you.

So here's a question for you: What would change your mind?

Change your mind? — Banno

It's a reddit thing. It's just an invitation to put an argument together.

It's a reddit thing. It's just an invitation to put an argument together. — frank

Of course. And it's muddle-headed.

And it's muddle-headed. — Banno

Not if you understand how to play that language game.

This is a real warning: when manipulating the universe around you - even if you do it successfully - you have not the slightest clue what you are really interacting with. — FalseIdentity

Try to live your life NOT manipulating anything. Then come back and write a report on that. Whether we know or not what we are interacting with, has no bearing on anything, until repercussions occur. Like burning fossil fuel and heating up the globe. HOWEVER. Manipulating the environment is a transferable skill, we can stop or reverse the global warming by further manipulating the environment.

This argument you present is true, but useless. It has no bearing on anything.

In this sense logic must be a prison that precludes us from seeing a lot of stuff around us. — FalseIdentity

This is true, and it's also true that we need not to see things we don't see.

Once the teacher is ready, the student appears.

The fight for survival, which renders logic to be a tool of survival, helps survival. No fight, no survival. So... those who give up the fight (logic included) perish.

Go ahead, make my day.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't actually said anything against Hoffman's work other than that it's controversial, which is actually a good thing if, like our OP here, all you know about him is that he is a scientist guy who claims to have proven something in a youtube clip. It means that he is publishing and that there are others in his field who take his work seriously enough to read and argue about. I thought it was interesting enough to look into what that "interface theory of perception" was about. Even if it's completely wrongheaded, it may be wrongheaded in an interesting way.

1. We've been told, incessantly in philosophy and science forums, that we have to change theory to fit facts and not the other way round, basically to adapt our minds to our world, for perfectly good reasons of course.

However, survey the world as it is now and exactly the opposite has occurred - we've adapted the world to our minds & bodies. The idea of terraforming (making other worlds suitable for life) is in actuality anthropoforming (making other worlds suitable for humans).

2. Free will. Given the above is true, we needn't worry about logic at all for most of the time logic forces us to a conclusion it's so that we adapt to our world (environment) but this, from how things are, is completely unnecessary. We're not at the mercy of facts, we change facts to suit our needs.

Ergo,

logic maynot be evil per se but we don't have to listen to it im the sense follow its rules to the T. We can fashion the world, as we already have, to satisfy our demands. Logic then goes out the window. We can be as illogical as we want so long as we've transformed the world to be not so inimical to illogic.

P.S.
D.D.Hoffman, M.Singh and C.Prakash: The Interface Theory of Perception (2015)
Perhaps @Isaac could say something intelligent about it.

P.P.S. In a sympathetic comment in the same issue (Esse est percipi & verum factum est) Jan Koenderink writes that the "interface theory" is "part of a minor tradition in Western intellectual history that has been around for centuries" and puts it into the perspective of life sciences, mainly in the period between 1850 and 1950.
@Joshs may also be interested in this, seeing as the ideas put phenomenology front and center.

When we do deductive logic we literally try to reduce options so that the truth (aka prey) can't escape anymore and only one option is left. — FalseIdentity

This might be true if we never reasoned hypothetically. If we held premises only absolutely, and awaited conclusions as fresh intelligence. As it is, conclusions are just premises playing a role. (Prey? Maybe.) The game of deduction teases out tensions between (all 3, in a syllogism) premises. Helps us redefine and improve them all: refine what we think they say, if they are to be kept provisionally on board.

It's not logic that is the problem, but appealing to evolutionary biology to rationalise it.

Alvin Plantinga's 'evolutionary argument against naturalism' argues that combining naturalism and evolution is self-defeating, because, under these assumptions, the probability that humans have reliable cognitive faculties is low or inscrutable (i.e. can't be determined). He claims that evolutionary naturalism seems to lead to a deep and pervasive skepticism, on account of it reducing reason to an adaptation, which undermines the 'sovereignty of reason' by subordinating it to the demands of survival. And if the activities of reason are biologically determined, then how can we have confidence in its powers? This leads to the conclusion that reason, interpreted in biological terms, cannot be trusted to produce true beliefs, as there is no criteria outside biological theory other than what is effective for survival. So Donald Hoffman is in some ways conceding this point - but then the question is, if his argument is also dependent on the same epistemological framework, then how does he know that his theory is 'true'? Why is it not subject to the same explanatory mechanism that he says is responsible for how we think in other respects?

Whilst Plantinga is a theistic philosopher, Thomas Nagel considers a similar point in his Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion from a more analytical perspective:

What does it mean to say that my practical reasonings are efforts to get the objectively right answer about what I should do, rather than manifestations of biologically selected dispositions that have no more objective validity than a taste for sugar? The idea of a harmony between thought and reality is no help here, because realism about practical reasons and ethics is not a thesis about the natural order at all, but a purely normative claim. It seems that the response to evolutionary naturalism in this domain must be almost purely negative. All one can say is that justification for actions is to be sought in the content of practical reasoning, and that evolutionary explanation of our dispositions to accept such arguments may undermine our confidence in them but cannot provide a justification for accepting them. So if evolutionary naturalism is the whole story about what we take to be practical reasoning, then there really is no such thing. — Thomas Nagel

So - I hope that changes your mind - at least about the nature of the problem.

When I raised Plantinga earlier FI said he was familiar with this argument. Did you mention at some point you were potentially doing further study on transcendental arguments and the evolutionary arguments against naturalism? Any quick essays you can suggest?

A new discovery in the science of evolution has shown that a logic developed through evolution will never seek to understand the truth, it just learns to maipulate it's environment without a deeper understanding of what it is manipulating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY&t=997s
This is a real warning: when manipulating the universe around you - even if you do it successfully - you have not the slightest clue what you are really interacting with. (I strongly reccomend watching the video in the link to understand this better) — FalseIdentity

In other words you're saying: "If you use logic you're going to find every answer that will ever be relevant to you". So who cares if there is a "deeper understanding" when that deeper understanding cannot affect us (if it did, we would have evolved to detect it). There is certainly deeper understandings than what we have right now, but point is, the use of logic will give us all the answers that can affect us. The only thing it doesn't give us access to is things that are irrelevant to us. So, who cares?

So my first complaint is that logic pretends to be something that it is not (a universal key to truth - this it is clearly not). — FalseIdentity

Logic isn't a person so it cannot pretend.

My second complaint relates to the discovery that logic is developed mainly for hunting and is hence predatory in nature — FalseIdentity

I don't see why this is a complaint really. And besides, nothing you said supports this in the first place. Logic wasn't "evolved to allow us to hunt" as you can see, it does way more than just that. This is like complaining about the invention computers because they can be used to bash someone's head in.

2. Understand things that are not relevant to survival such as what is "the good". — FalseIdentity

For someone who doesn't understand what's good you sure are convinced that logic is evil!

Again, we didn't evolve the capacity to reason purely to hunt. The capacity of reason has other uses. Including defining "the good" (and evil, as you do here). If it is as you say, and we cannot understand good, then you cannot make the argument that logic is evil. You're cutting the branch you're sitting on.

1. Understand truths that can not be chased and exploited in a physical sense (which come to mind?) — FalseIdentity

Again, the capacity of reason is not limited to be used in hunting and gathering, even if we accept that it evolved for that purpose. Just like a chair was invented for sitting, but can also be used as a weapon.

Note also this argument can be used to say ANYTHING we evolved was evil:

Are there any thought shools that attack logic? Is Nirvana for example a state beyond logic? — FalseIdentity

Why would Nirvana be any different? We evolved the capacity to experience Nirvana correct? Since we evolved it, it means it isn't necessarily pointing at truth. And supposedly you think that if we evolved a capacity, it must purely be to hunt (for some reason) making it predatory, so that's your second complaint also applying to Nirvana. And the rest follow in exactly the same way.

Did you mention at some point you were potentially doing further study on transcendental arguments and the evolutionary arguments against naturalism? Any quick essays you can suggest? — Tom Storm

That Nagel essay I mentioned is relevant, and also his book Mind and Cosmos, particularly chapter 4 'Cognition', notably because he's not necessarily arguing the case from a theistic motivation, or claims not to be. (I have Plantinga's book Where the Conflict Really Lies, but it's a pretty dry read, to be honest, never made much headway with it. There's a bunch of carefully written essays on a Christian apologetics site about the argument from reason here.)

I am very interested in the 'argument from reason', but I don't want to use it to persuade others that God exists. I think what interests me about it, is the claim that reason itself is not something that can be or ought to be explained in terms of any other factor. Whereas nowadays it is widely accepted that, because we evolved, then reason is, in some sense, just another natural faculty, like a particularly successful adaptation, something that is a consequence of an essentially unreasoning process, which is assumed by nearly all scientific philosophy.

The reason [Dennett] imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book [Breaking the Spell] is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it. — Leon Wieseltier, The God Genome

...we may be sorrrounded by objects, but even while cognizing them, reason is the origin of something that is neither reducible to, nor derives from them, in any sense. In other words, reason generates a cognition, and a cognition regarding nature is above nature. In a cognition, reason transcends nature in one of two ways: by rising above our natural cognition and making, for example, universal and necessarily claims in theoretical and practical matters not determined b nature, or by assuming an impersonal objective perspective that remains irreducible to the individual 'I'. — The Powers of Pure Reason - Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy, Alfredo Ferrarin

(I am contemplating enrolling in an M.A. stream next year at Uni Syd to study the argument from reason but haven't made up my mind yet.)

A new discovery in the science of evolution has shown that a logic developed through evolution will never seek to understand the truth, it just learns to maipulate it's environment without a deeper understanding of what it is manipulating — FalseIdentity

My understanding of logic is that it is an elaboration of the principle of identity or non-contradiction: every object is what it is and is not what it is not. This must have been true even before the humans appeared on the scene, otherwise reality would not be what it is and what is true would not be true, which would be nonsense. Humans learn this universal logic and apply it to their daily life and later also to religion, philosophy and science. It can be used for both good and evil.

So reality itself is logical, in the sense that it is what it is. And that's all that logic tells you: an object is what it is. But it doesn't tell you what the object is - that's a non-logical aspect of reality; however, this non-logical aspect of reality is inseparable from the logical aspect of reality.

I'm not sure I'm actually following the link the OP is trying to make between Hoffman and 'logic'. Hoffman's theory is all about the veridical break between perceptive features and the causes of them. What that's got to do with logic, I'm not sure.

As far as Hoffman's paper itself is concerned a good critique is here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26452374/.

Basically Hoffman sets up so high a standard of correspondence that no modelling system could ever meet it without itself being the external world. I agree with his picture of pragmatism in model selection, but I don't agree that the models he uses (the 'winning' approaches in his game theoretical competition) are, in fact, non-vericidal. It's simply inherent in the modelling process that there will be a disconnect between the hidden cause and the perceptive feature. What Hoffman brings is the idea that this disconnect is not going to be random, it's going to be subject to selective pressure. I can see that, but the fundamental function of these models is surprise reduction and that is correspondence dependant (or at least there's no reason to assume it's not). We might gain some fitness advantage from one modelling assumption over another, but they're both still modelling something. Without a causal relationship between this something and the model, we're left with a kind of ghost in the machine - what causes the models and how, if not external causes and by physical interaction.

Thanks that is exactly what I was looking for! Apparently when the Jains say that "no single, specific statement can describe the nature of existence and the absolute truth." this is similar to: the truth can't be cornered (to one option). I am sorry that the video is not to your liking, I found the story about that australian beetle very funny. There is as well a video which goes into more detail of how the mathemtical proof is actually done, but it is very long and less entertaining. — FalseIdentity

No problem. :D

It isn't that I dislike the video, it is just that I like the doctrine of Anekantavad better explaining the issue. I'm not sure whether it was just me being snobbish about it or if the video doesn't really explain it that well, but that doesn't really matter I think. What matters is that you have a grasp of what no one sidedness means and the value of such a concept; or at least I believe and hope you understand it.

The doctrine of no one sidedness more or less states that one is flawed when one believes something is either "good" or "evil" just as a blind man might think an elephant might be a snake or a tree. The words "good" and "evil" themselves are loaded with emotional context where one is stuck viewing the world through something like a microscope and not seeing the bigger picture of things. While this is 'ok' in our day to day lives, it makes it harder for us to understand the differences between personal morality and what might be objective morality. As long as you can see there is a difference between the two (and why logic itself may not be "evil" when one looks at morality through a viewpoint of objective morality instead of personal morality) then I believe you are one the right path.

I wanted to give Sophisticat credit for finally bringing forward what is his problem with Hoffman but I cheared to early: this is not him, apparently I am to fare below him to be worth his wisdom :) I can see what this paper is heading too: (unless you are a monist) all that humans ever can do is make a model of reality. So the author says it's unfair to expect humans to make more than a modell of reality, and he thinks that Hoffman is doing exactly that when designing his model and that this is the sole cause of the creatures failing inside the model. But I understand it this way that Hoffmann is citicising more than just that we make models of reality. The main thing that breaks the connection between model and reality in Hoffmanns view is that it is more important that we think time/energy efficiently than that we think true. I can explain this best with a practical example: in evolution those creatures will win that can harvest the most energy while expending the least (thought) energy on that harvesting tasks. Now that requirement can lead to serious misjudgments about the situation at hand: imagine a cat sitting before the hole of a mouse waiting for it to come out. We know that impulse controll takes up a lot of brain energy so simply staying there will cost the cat energy and she should aim to reduce that energy if she wants to survive. Now it's absolutely possible that distracting yourself costs less brain energy than true impulse controll.
At least we see a lot of people who count stuff to get through boring or stressfull situations. Imagine hence a second cat which believes that counting sheep makes mouse come out of holes so she eagerly counts sheeps while sitting there. This cat will consume less energy than the cat that holds the true believe that mouse tend to come out of holes by the descision of the mouse.The cat that holds the false believe about mice will hence be positively selected over the cat that holds true believes. Other more sad examples come to mind; for example it can give you a survival advantage to believe your neighbour is a witch (in Africa the people that killed the "witch" usually take her land and house). I furthermore need to make clear that my argument is only in a small part based on Hoffmann (this is what might have confused you). My main problem is that logic is developed for the purpose of predation and that it might work for that purpose but I don't think it works well on intelectual tasks that are not related to predatable objects. This claim is based on research on brain lateralisation in Lizards and hence fully independent of Hoffmann's logic.

An evolved predatory logic must be by it's nature remain incapable to:
1. Understand truths that can not be chased and exploited in a physical sense (which come to mind?)
2. Understand things that are not relevant to survival such as what is "the good".

In this sense logic must be a prison that precludes us from seeing a lot of stuff around us.

A further flaw is that you can only maintaint logic thinking by killing other life forms (either by killing them directly or by eating their food away).

Are there any thought shools that attack logic? Is Nirvana for example a state beyond logic? — FalseIdentity

I overlooked this part of your argument I think where you are talking about how our existence has the problem where we have to survive by killing/eating other things that are alive. I could be wrong but this problem is covered by the issue of how our world is imperfect in many ways, the issues where we may not really have free will, as well as other problems with the human condition.

On way of addressing the problem with this world is to understand the concept of Dukkha (another Jain doctrine similar to the doctrine of Anekantavad ) which states that our world is an imperfect one and our existence is filled with pain and suffering which makes us imperfect beings. Because of this it is more or less a given that any process of thought or tool we make will not be enough to fix whatever issue that causes our world to be imperfect. It is kind of odd to say this but in our minds we can create abstract worlds that do not exist using math, logic, or other mental tools and these non-existing model worlds are "perfect" in their model worlds since they are just mental construct but when building these things in the real world they will contain all the flaws of anything that exists.

If you want to know why things that don't exist have no flaws (other than perhaps the flaw we make when envisioning them) and why everything that we create does my best answer to that the mental models/abstract objects in our head don't have to account for the problems that exist in the real world and in the real world things are infinity more complicated than we think they are and and it is a given that some of these variables that we do not or can not account for undermine that is created by our hand or any other process that can create it.

In a nutshell, it is existence itself that is flawed not logic.

An evolved predatory logic must be by it's nature remain incapable to:
1. Understand truths that can not be chased and exploited in a physical sense (which come to mind?)
2. Understand things that are not relevant to survival such as what is "the good".

In this sense logic must be a prison that precludes us from seeing a lot of stuff around us.

A further flaw is that you can only maintaint logic thinking by killing other life forms (either by killing them directly or by eating their food away).

Are there any thought shools that attack logic? Is Nirvana for example a state beyond logic? — FalseIdentity

I just remembered an moral argument that might help you with you question.

Immanuel Kant believed that certain actions are wrong (such as lying) and he believed them wrong not just some of the time but all of the time. He even believed lying to a murder in order to save someone's life was wrong, which I believe is a argument that someone else posed to him.

Lying to a Murderer: Immanuel Kant (Lecture 12 & 13)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM6MaJAE3Qk

I believe if you think about this moral dilemma and come up with a answer, you will also get an answer to your question as to whether logic is 'evil'.

You are in the moment the closest to actually changing my mind at least when it comes to using the term 'evil' :) I can see how the philosophy of Jainism could actually lead to a much more peacefull world and it as well resounds with other metaphysical believes I hold. However it was sort of a blow to my ego when I finally understood that logic originally was ment for predation and only for that. I guess that is what makes the man blind in your example. So emotionally seen I still have to recover from the insight about the predatory nature of logic. Sometimes one can repurpose stuff a bit for things it was not ment for but one has to be lucky for this to work. I think that logic is very akin to your microscope perception of reality. What good predators really do is they focus hard but only on very small aspects of reality. You can even see this from the outside if you watch how the eyes of predators are build (they point to the front, prey animals can not focus well to the front but they have a wider field of vision). What a predator does is hence the opposite of holism.

Correct. I noticed that I isolated myself to much when trying to think through philosophical problems. I know I will be grilled for this confession but having company and a good intelectual conversation was one of the main reasons I started the discussion. I am a group animal I am not supposed to think alone :) I wish you all the best and thanks for the defense!

Logic is based upon a gentlemen's agreement regarding it's three fundamental principles. — James Riley

The principles of identity/non-contradiction/excluded middle are not some optional gentlemen's agreement but necessary properties of reality, without which there would be no gentlemen in the first place. Or there would but there wouldn't, if that makes sense.

The principles of identity/non-contradiction/excluded middle are not some optional gentlemen's agreement but necessary properties of reality — litewave

They are optional if you are not talking about reality. Regardless, the question I have is, are they proven with lesser proofs than simply saying "self-evident" or "can't prove a negative"?

without which there would be no gentlemen in the first place. — litewave

There are and there aren't.

Or there would but there wouldn't, if that makes sense. — litewave

Bingo! Makes perfect sense to me. And not.

We can already see how the principle of excluded middle and of identity fail in quantum mechanics — FalseIdentity

How?

↪Gnomon
I approve of good intuition as an argument in this context :) It could be from a place beyond logic. However I would love to think more about how this place could look like and why it is protected against logic. — FalseIdentity

I am currently reading Steven Pinkers' new book, Rationality. And his first step was to discuss the complementary roles of Rationality (Logic) and Irrationality (Intuition). Each is appropriate in some contexts and not in others. Ironically, the stumbling block for Intuition is Probability : conjecturing about future events and outcomes. Intuition reaches its assessment quickly, but is subject to gaps in knowledge & experience that result in erroneously biased projections. Calculating likelihood comes easily to intuition, but all too often goes astray due to Cognitive Illusions.

On the other hand, slow step-by-step reasoning is more likely to find the gaps & pitfalls, but it may not reach a conclusion in time to be useful. Fortunately, humans have developed beyond the quick intuition of their animal nature -- sufficient for the simple eat-or-be-eaten milieu of cavemen -- in order to see the invisible logical structure of reality -- necessary for the complexities of the modern urban jungle. Unfortunately, reasoning is hard mental work, and some of us are too lazy to put in the time & effort to make use of our logical faculties. Yet, others (e.g. mathematicians & analytical philosophers) are so motivated to parse the world into fine details that they can't "see the forest for the trees".

So, it seems that the "place beyond logic" (e.g. heart ; gut feelings) provides emotional rewards, by simplifying the world into knee-jerk reactions. Therefore, I would say that the Heart is protected against Logic by the shot of dopamine that gives us the satisfied feeling that we know what's-what, even when what we know is illogical. :smile:

Note -- we tend to switch between Intuition and Reason depending on the context. Intuition is better suited for concrete real-world situations, but Logic is more accurate for abstract hypotheticals.
". . . people do apply logic when the rule involves shoulds and shouldn'ts of human life rather than arbitrary symbols and tokens." quote from the book.

They are optional if you are not talking about reality. — James Riley

Ah, ok. In that case you are talking about nothing because a thing that is not identical to itself is nothing.

I wish you all the best — FalseIdentity

Right back atcha! Happy Halloween!

Ah, ok. In that case you are talking about nothing because a thing that is not identical to itself is nothing. — litewave

Not true. That's like the anecdote: Just because you can't fathom it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now, we could, if we wanted to, enter into a gentlemen's agreement that a thing that is not identical to itself is nothing. I mean, since you can't prove it, we kinda sorta have to; if we are going to limit ourselves to reality.