Prove Reason Wrong!

[Souron]

What about the present knowledge of today as being prerequisite to reason?Must we first condition ourselves with the knowledge of the natural sciences to apply reason as the backbone for in order to make sense?

It is not induction as how to define and make sense by observing the world but it is what our knowledge that precedes it.If i was to take your statements into consequence,then the activity of science itself will never grow and change because it is true that in the past (say,an 1st century biologist for example) even some mistakes was made because the knowledge was not fully there yet(discovery of germs for example).

I thought we were talking about something else.

My respondance was of your proposition saying:"It is also possible that something have a cause while others are completely random,"which in fact does not rule other possiblities that 'others' can have there own set of cause and effect.If is possible that 'others' are absolutely random then the explanation on what causes it to be random is either left unsaid and not explained correctly or the reason of explaining why is it so,is wrong.

I'm really confused as to what you are trying to say, so I'll resort to rambling on what I said, hoping it will bring the discussion forward.
In other words it may be prudent to disregard this post and rephrase your original points.

Logic is a set of deductive statements that is general enough to be applied to almost anything.
For example logic states that "if q is a necessary condition for p, then p is a sufficient condition for q"
This can be applied to science to say:
if Organic life requires water
then where life exists water exists.
But the premise that life exists cannot be deduced logically -- it must come from observation which is ultimately based on induction.

Science can grow. Science just can never be 100% certain.

Radioactive decay was an example of something that is random and without cause. There are better examples, where it is easier to prove that there are no hidden variables, but regardless the conclusion that radioactive decay is random is pretty reasonable.

Causing random behavior, is a contradiction of terms most of the time, at least as far as physical causality. But "cause" can mean several different things.

 

[Souron]

@Souron: Yes Ive heard of the 'branes' but the fact is, its so highly speculative and unprovable, they might as well be saying the universe originated from the head butting of giant rutting cosmic rams. The string theory stuff is practically a cult.

It's elegant though, and it's our best guess thus far (no other guess is as complete).

But the reason I brought it up is that it is an example where science has allowed for "alternate universes" of sorts, without resorting to a contradiction of terms.
A 3-brane is just a three dimensional thing that is flat relative to another dimension. It is a three dimensional version of a surface. The claim is that the world as we know it exists on this "surface", but thing exist outside it. These things include other 3-branes(worlds).

"Outside our universe" doesn't make sense, "Outside our 3-brane" does.

 

[Souron]

Reason defines what's right and wrong, so reason itself can't be right or wrong.
Just don't expect to much of reason.

EDIT: What the hell does that mean?

Reason (or Logic, as I would be more apt to call it here) defines how a series of statements can lead to other equally valid statements.

EDIT2: maybe I get it. You're saying:
You can't prove reason wrong, because any kind of proof requires reason, so if reason is wrong, then reason is right, which is a paradox.

If so I agree.

 

[Perfection]

I disagree. What we call the universe is this continuum of space-time that we experience. Yes, we named it the universe, the "one-place", but we have plenty of evidence that it is expanding, and expanding at a certain rate. So it makes complete sense to ask questions like, "What is it expanding into?"

No it doesn't, space itself is expanding. It doesn't need space to expand into because it is space.

 

[CartesianFart]

I'm really confused as to what you are trying to say, so I'll resort to rambling on what I said, hoping it will bring the discussion forward.
In other words it may be prudent to disregard this post and rephrase your original points.

Please do so.:suicide:

Back to the drawing board!

Logic is a set of deductive statements that is general enough to be applied to almost anything.

I have written something like that in a different way and still was ignored by another poster who I do not want to mention.

Causing random behavior, is a contradiction of terms most of the time, at least as far as physical causality. But "cause" can mean several different things.

Yes,and i am afraid that is the reason for so much confusion in this thread.It seems to me that whenever a discourse is made by two individual,the word "cause" is expressed idiomatically by the person who utters it and that is why confusion is wrought onto another person that have a different rule on how to use it as well.

 

[angeleyes]

EDIT: What the hell does that mean?

Reason (or Logic, as I would be more apt to call it here) defines how a series of statements can lead to other equally valid statements.

EDIT2: maybe I get it. You're saying:
You can't prove reason wrong, because any kind of proof requires reason, so if reason is wrong, then reason is right, which is a paradox.

If so I agree.

(spoilt my keyboard while cleaning, have a new one now)

If i remember correctly a major subject of Hofstadter's book Godel, Escher and Bach (which i only read for 2/3), was that whatever system (here: reason) can't say anything about itself without coming into big logical problems. Intuitivily i can only agree with this: can something be true if it says something about itself? For example A says: B about itself, but now B has become a part of A so in fact B should say something about A and B etc. I'm sorry but i'm not good in elaborate discussions. Hope this makes sense.

 

[mdwh]

Obviously there are plenty of examples of things we don't understand, or examples of flawed reasoning, but that doesn't mean that something can simultaneously be correct reasoning and false.

I was being serious... I have a ghost story. It defies reason, but it happened. Is that appropriate?

If it happened, then it would have defied our reasoning, but that doesn't mean reason is wrong, it just means we don't know how it happened.

 

[mdwh]

Everything in the universe comes from something else, everythings 'recycled' including the atoms that make up our bodies. Everything except the universe itself. According to our reason, logic and science, the universe seems to have popped into existence from nothing and nowhere.

But that reasoning is flawed - because it assumes that things we observe in this universe apply to the universe itself (and it's not true anyway, things don't always come from something else).

So no, it's not true that there is correct reasoning that the Universe doesn't exist.

To me this seems like a statement of the bleeding obvious - if reasoning tells us something we know to be false, then either it isn't really false after all, or our reasoning is false. How can both be true?

You see, unlike religion, which stubbornly sticks to beliefs even if the evidence says otherwise, with science if you encounter something previously thought to be false, you modify your theories to account for it.

 

[Souron]

(spoilt my keyboard while cleaning, have a new one now)

If i remember correctly a major subject of Hofstadter's book Godel, Escher and Bach (which i only read for 2/3), was that whatever system (here: reason) can't say anything about itself without coming into big logical problems. Intuitivily i can only agree with this: can something be true if it says something about itself? For example A says: B about itself, but now B has become a part of A so in fact B should say something about A and B etc. I'm sorry but i'm not good in elaborate discussions. Hope this makes sense.

That seems kind of like taking the easy way out. Sure it makes some intuitive sence, but intuition is often wrong.

Implication can say something about implication, so in this simple case, that statement is wrong. Implecation is a statement of a form equivilant to "if A then B". Implecation can say that "for any propositions A and B, if (if A then B), then (if not B then not A)". But the responce to that would probably be that that that's not what is ment by talking about itself.

The rule of not talking about itself does solve problems like the statements "this statement is false" and possibly "'yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation' yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation." though.

Obviously there are plenty of examples of things we don't understand, or examples of flawed reasoning, but that doesn't mean that something can simultaneously be correct reasoning and false.

Except the lier paradox and Quine's paradox mentioned above. Though you could just as easily argue that they are neither.

You see, unlike religion, which stubbornly sticks to beliefs even if the evidence says otherwise, with science if you encounter something previously thought to be false, you modify your theories to account for it.

Way to bring religion into an innocent discussion. Next you'll be Bush bashing and talking about sex.

 

[Perfection]

The only limitation is that as beings living in this space-time, we cannot truly envision what it means to be outside of that space-time. We come up with analogies like the two-dimensional being living on a plane, and what that looks like to a three-dimensional being, but we cannot really understand what it would be like to be outside of this space-time.

Lame argument. Envisioning is not reasoning. We can reason the hell out of other dimensions with crap like topology.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

But that reasoning is flawed - because it assumes that things we observe in this universe apply to the universe itself (and it's not true anyway, things don't always come from something else).

Youre referring to QM right? We dont live there. We dont experience QM. A thousand or so people in the world (that would be the number of people who actually understand it, not everyone who's heard of it)tell us that theres something called QM, a magical land where things pop into existence all by themselves from nothing, and all sorts of other cool stuff happens, like non locality. Ok, thats awesome, and I have no reason to doubt it, but its really no different than assuring people that when they die theyre going to a magical land with Mountain Dew rivers and Pizza Trees. Noone will ever experience either one of those, or ever has. Neither is within the realm of Reason. We use Reason to navigate the world that we actually live in. In the world that we live in, things dont pop in out of nowhere, and people dont rise from the dead after three days. Science and logic are abstract, like religion. In the abstract, of course, anything is possible.

 

[skywalker]

Simple concept. Prove an instance in which reason/logic/science is wrong and something else is right.

Asymptotic analysis indicates that the simplex algorithm ought to take exponential time but in reality this bound has never been observed. Intuitively the bound ought to be polynomial, and in practice it is.

 

[skywalker]

Also within any meaningful logical system there are statements that can't be proven or disproven.

 

[mdwh]

Except the lier paradox and Quine's paradox mentioned above. Though you could just as easily argue that they are neither.

I would say they do not count as "correct reasoning", due to the contradiction; also they do not count as "false", the point is we cannot determine them to be either true or false.

Way to bring religion into an innocent discussion. Next you'll be Bush bashing and talking about sex.

Way to bring in non-sequitur into an innocent discussion. Given that "the universe must have come from something" argument is very much along the lines of one of the "proof"s of God, the comparison is relevant.

 

[mdwh]

Youre referring to QM right? We dont live there. We dont experience QM. A thousand or so people in the world (that would be the number of people who actually understand it, not everyone who's heard of it)tell us that theres something called QM, a magical land where things pop into existence all by themselves from nothing, and all sorts of other cool stuff happens, like non locality. Ok, thats awesome, and I have no reason to doubt it, but its really no different than assuring people that when they die theyre going to a magical land with Mountain Dew rivers and Pizza Trees. Noone will ever experience either one of those, or ever has. Neither is within the realm of Reason. We use Reason to navigate the world that we actually live in. In the world that we live in, things dont pop in out of nowhere, and people dont rise from the dead after three days. Science and logic are abstract, like religion. In the abstract, of course, anything is possible.

Except for the small matter than quantum mechanics is verifiable and testable, and supported by large amounts of evidence, sure...

And even if QM wasn't true, that was just an after-comment - your reasoning is still flawed, for the reason I gave.

 

[Souron]

Youre referring to QM right? We dont live there. We dont experience QM. A thousand or so people in the world (that would be the number of people who actually understand it, not everyone who's heard of it)tell us that theres something called QM, a magical land where things pop into existence all by themselves from nothing, and all sorts of other cool stuff happens, like non locality. Ok, thats awesome, and I have no reason to doubt it, but its really no different than assuring people that when they die theyre going to a magical land with Mountain Dew rivers and Pizza Trees. Noone will ever experience either one of those, or ever has. Neither is within the realm of Reason. We use Reason to navigate the world that we actually live in. In the world that we live in, things dont pop in out of nowhere, and people dont rise from the dead after three days. Science and logic are abstract, like religion. In the abstract, of course, anything is possible.

Ever heard of [wiki]quantum tunnelling[/wiki]. It's the same thing, only the particles have an initial energy and thus exist. The energy required really does pop out of nowhere. This effect is usefull for some transistors and [wiki]Scanning tunnelling microscope[/wiki]s.

Also, we use reason to explain everything in science. Even QM, is well rooted in mathematics, which is part of reason (math is logic with numbers).

 

[skywalker]

Youre referring to QM right? We dont live there. We dont experience QM. A thousand or so people in the world (that would be the number of people who actually understand it, not everyone who's heard of it)tell us that theres something called QM, a magical land where things pop into existence all by themselves from nothing, and all sorts of other cool stuff happens, like non locality. Ok, thats awesome, and I have no reason to doubt it, but its really no different than assuring people that when they die theyre going to a magical land with Mountain Dew rivers and Pizza Trees. Noone will ever experience either one of those, or ever has. Neither is within the realm of Reason. We use Reason to navigate the world that we actually live in. In the world that we live in, things dont pop in out of nowhere, and people dont rise from the dead after three days. Science and logic are abstract, like religion. In the abstract, of course, anything is possible.

We do experience QM. You experience it every day when the electronic devices built on its principles actually work.