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Old 11-21-2007, 06:45 AM
willie24 willie24 is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 726
Default Re: these debates remind me of...

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And one can make logical or illogical arguments, but logic is an absolute term, there are no varying degrees of it...

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right. this is essentially what i'm trying to say. (edit: after writing this post, i realize that what i was trying to say is more like: knowledge of truth is knowledge of truth, there are no varying degrees of it - but yes, the statement applies to logic also.) i know i've confused the ideas of logic and evidence. in my scenario, good logic based on bad evidence = bad logic. that is probably technically incorrect. but isn't it true that it is roughly equivalent to bad logic, for practical purposes?

maybe it isn't. for instance, if my information is 5% complete, and i have perfect logic, i should be able to do somewhat better than 50% on a true/false question. if my information is complete, but wrong, then whether or not i'm right is completely dependant on how my wrong info relates to the truth. i don't think it is something that a probability can be put on. hmmm

then the differences of opinion between logical people regarding a yes/no question with a definite answer (that is unknown) must be due to different perceptions of the evidence, or actual inconsistencies in the evidence itself.

thus, rather than being at the mercy of limited logic, we are at the mercy of limited information!

the two ideas are similar, but not the same. with no logical ability, we do have a 50% chance on a yes/no question. with poor information, we cannot have a definite probability! our answer is completely correlated with our information. we obtain information through perception...

if i know that my perception is uninfluenced by reality, is it 50% to match reality on a yes/no question? i guess it would be, if there were a definite separation between perception and reality, but is there? what is reality beyond my perception of it? what now?
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