Friday, July 01, 2022

Wesleyan philosophy 2 -- What is good thinking?

Deductive Reasoning
There is a style of logic whose official form seems to go back to Aristotle from 384-322 BC. You might call it “syllogistic logic” because it has a format that involves “syllogisms.” With syllogisms, you have premises that build to logical conclusions. If the premises are true and the logic is valid, then the conclusion must also be true.

I have never been able to imagine a scenario where this approach to truth claims would not be valid. I recognize that such logic might possibly take on a different form in a different culture. For most of us, especially in daily life, our reasoning is more intuitive and implicit. We do not usually tell our spouse, “premise 1, premise 2, conclusion.” (Some of us might from time to time, but our spouses may consider us rather weird and annoying.)

While this particular form of logic might be cultural in some sense, I cannot see where it does not reflect underlying absolute truths of this universe. Another culture might express such truths in other forms, but I consider that a difference in form rather than substance.

The moniker, “Western logic” seems a bit peculiar. Ancient Greece was a quite different world than mine. There was no Europe at that time. Ancient Greece was different from Renaissance Italy and Enlightenment Prussia too. “Western” mainly says, “not Eastern, not Africa, not Middle East, not South American," and so forth. I suppose it means a modern European perspective on Aristotelian logic that has carried over from Europe to academic philosophy in the United States.

While I believe more metaphorical and intuitive forms of logic are valid and get at the same truths, I find Aristotelian logic and its heritage to be more precise and thus more helpful at truth-processing than more impressionistic, everyday arguments or more narrative versions. The syllogism is a bit like math, and it is hard to argue that 1 + 1 does not equal 2. Accordingly, if all truth is God’s truth, then syllogistic logic is part of natural revelation and thus absolute truth in its substance. I can’t see any way around it. I find it extremely unhelpful to align it with certain people groups, except perhaps in relation to its form.

I call this sort of reason, “micro-reason.” It is not worldview reasoning or even paradigmatic reasoning. Such larger “macro-reason” is very open to question and examination. "Macro-reason" is the use of micro-reason to argue for truths. It is micro-reason in action. When our contemporaries question Wesley’s quadrilateral, they must surely be questioning macro-reason with larger assumptions and the application of micro-reason. When they do so, they are using micro-reason or fundamental logic.

Micro-reason is used in all thinking, as soon as we connect two atoms of thought together. We cannot interpret the Bible without using our micro-reasoning. [1] We cannot process a word from the Lord through the Holy Spirit without micro-reasoning. From Tertullian to Kierkegaard to Barth, these “I believe it because it is absurd” folk used micro-reason. Even Jacques Derrida, as opaque as his deconstructionist writings are, used micro-reason, although he tried very hard to obfuscate it. Micro-reason is thus foundational, underlying truth of any propositional kind, including truths we might draw from the Bible.

This sort of micro-reason or fundamental logic to the universe ultimately boils down to fundamental presuppositions. At some point, you hit basic definitions and assumptions that cannot be proved. Geometric proofs ultimately are built on the basis of fundamental axioms that cannot be proven. They are simply assumed.

One of the fundamental tests for truth is the coherence test. Does a proposed truth contradict itself? The law of non-contradiction states that a claim cannot both be true and untrue if it is stated literally. So if you find a fundamental contradiction in a collection of truth claims, at least one of your truth claims must be false in some way.

It does not seem to me that any of these understandings of logic contradict faith in general, let alone Wesleyan faith. Logic seems to be fundamental to the way God has made this universe. It is part of absolute truth. It is part of natural revelation. We cannot avoid it, not even when we are trying to listen to Scripture and interpret it.

Inductive Reasoning
Deductive reasoning starts with certain assumptions and then draws conclusions, like an upside-down V. By contrast, inductive reasoning is like a normal V. You draw in evidence and make inferences. Unlike deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning tends to be open-ended. Unless you have all the possible data, there is always the chance that the next piece of data you collect will throw the coherence test out of whack and sink your hypothesis.

The scientific method is inductive. You collect evidence. You form a hypothesis. You collect more data and test the hypothesis. You refine the hypothesis if necessary. Eventually, you have enough proven results to present a theory, and so forth. This process never strictly ends as long as there is more data to collect. Paradigms form. Paradigms shift. And so on.

A recent display at the Smithsonian declared the scientific method to be white in nature. We face a similar question to that we mentioned in relation to Aristotelian logic. In this case, we point back to Francis Bacon, who was English and lived from 1561-1626.

I consider any such designation extremely unfortunate and undesirable because of how incredibly successful the method has been. It seems to me that it describes the approach that people in all times and all places have used in one form or another for discovery. Where can we find water? Such and such suggests we might dig here. Let’s dig. No water. Let’s try over here. Water. While there may be cultural dimensions to the way the scientific method is expressed and formulated, let us strongly refrain from associating it with any ethnicity or people group. That almost begs for racist inferences of a most heinous nature.

Thus while the results of any particular scientific quest are not absolute truth, the scientific method as a model for seeking truth would seem to be part of the logic of the universe. It is sound reasoning. The results, however, are more often than not eternally tentative.

If the coherence test is a test for truth that relates to deductive reasoning, the “correspondence test” is a test that relates to inductive reasoning. Does the claim that I am making correlate with the data I have? A third test for truth is the pragmatic test. If I operate on the assumption that this hypothesis is true, does it “work” in the world? Does it get me from a to b? You may have heard the expression, “for heuristic purposes.” The idea is that I assume something to see if the hypothesis “works” without assuming it is actually true.

Logical Fallacies
Many different logical fallacies lurk and abound in our reasoning. Some are formal and relate more to deductive reasoning. Others are informal and relate more to inductive reasoning. They are fallacies because they violate the fundamental laws of logic above. Note that one’s conclusion might be true and yet poorly argued.

Below are some logical fallacies. We should point out that they are fallacies because they do not necessitate a certain conclusion. Practically speaking, sometimes this sort of reasoning turns out to point to something that proves to be true in the “real world.” By calling them logical fallacies, we mean that you cannot be certain the conclusion is true. The conclusion does not follow for certain.

  • Hasty generalization – you form a conclusion without enough evidence yet
  • Ad hominem fallacy – you attack the person rather than the argument they are making
  • Circumstantial fallacy – you assume a conclusion without direct observation but from surrounding, “circumstantial” evidence.
  • “After this, because of this” – A form of the circumstantial fallacy. Just because something followed something else chronologically doesn’t prove the first thing caused the second.
  • Genetic fallacy – The origins of a conclusion or the reasons why someone believes a conclusion neither prove nor disprove the conclusion.
  • Fallacy of diversion – basically, changing the subject
  • Fallacy of equivocation -- slipping a different meaning to your terms in mid-argument
  • False alternative – You give an "a or b" choice when there are actually other options as well.
  • Slippery slope fallacy – Once you start moving in a particular direction, it is not guaranteed that you will continue moving further in that direction.
  • Circular reasoning/begging the question – assuming your conclusion in your argument
  • Fallacies of composition and division – You assume everything in a group is a certain way because something in that group is that way. Also the opposite: because of a general trend of a group you assume everything in that group manifests that trend.
  • Appeal to ignorance – Absence of evidence does not disprove a claim
  • Appeal to the majority – something isn’t true just because most people believe it
  • Appeal to improper authority – citing someone who is not an authority on an issue does not support your case
  • Appeal to emotion – something isn’t true because it “feels so right”
  • Appeal to force – you can’t make something true by forcing people to affirm it

These basic fallacies would seem to be sound warnings. They do not indicate for certain that your conclusion is false, but they do indicate that your logic for reaching those conclusions is invalid. They are the stuff of political and religious rhetoric. We would be wise to know them well so that we can spot when our minds are potentially being manipulated.

There is nothing unWesleyan about the idea of these fallacies. This would seem to be a good thing because they would seem to be part of the absolute truth of the universe as God has created it. Their form may have cultural elements, but the underlying truth to which they point would seem to be unassailable. They are part of natural revelation.

[1] Unavoidably, micro-reason is thus logically prior to Scripture because we cannot interpret Scripture or any revelation without using it. When we speak of the priority of Scripture to reason in the quadrilateral, we are speaking of it in relation to what I am calling "macro-reason."

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