Ahh I do see, "objective" was not a great choice of words. I meant it more as "objective with respect to outside influence, as much as that is possible, if it is."
loccster on November 6th, 2007 03:10 am (UTC) During my ride home I decided..
I'd like to clarify that with an analogy and see what you think.
While a Chomskyist would say that all speakers possess an innate knowledge of internal grammar, they wouldn't claim that all people speak exactly the same. I see logic in a similar fashion, with an internal logic-potential that is shared, but with you're logic being unique from mine. While we may share the basic mathematical foundation behind our logic, we do each have a slightly different set of algorithms.
For instance, when determining which of two girls is more attractive, your logic might assign a higher coefficient to the variable that represents height. Your logical "attractiveness formula" differs from mine, and when using your formula and not mine, you are thinking for yourself.
(The argument to make would be: "we all learned our way of thinking from others.")
not in the least, since the construct of logic itself is a relatively recent invention of western thought. on the other hand, any synthesis of "knowledge" or "belief" or whatever that actually exercises some neurons is thinking, and nobody else is impelling that, so... always yes and never yes.
Yeah I mean when I'm talking about Logic, I'm not talking about some class you could take in Logic, or the computer program. I'm talking about logical thought.
No, they're unrelated. Logic is vaguely defined as a series of thoughts that make sense. 'Thinking for yourself' as a phrase is more related to making your own decisions with little influence. You could very easily think for yourself something totally illogical.
I suppose a simpler and more interesting question is "is it possible to think illogically?"