Quote:
Originally Posted by Herkdriver
Formal logic was invented in Classical Greece and integrated into a `system' of thought by Aristotle. It was, for him, a tool for finding truth, but it didn't keep him from making the most profound errors of thought. Nearly every argument and conclusion he made about physical science was wrong and misguided. Any tool can be misused, and in these pre-scientific days logic was misused repeatedly.So what went wrong? Aristotle understood that logic can be used to deduce true consequences from true premises. His error was his failure to realize that we have no absolutely true premises, except ones we define to be true (such as 2+2=4).
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If his mistake was in choosing premises, then don't blame logic, blame his choices. Since knowledge does not exist without premises/axioms, one must
choose the premises of ones knowledge. Naturally, if you disagree on premises, your logical deductions, i.e. beliefs, will be different as well. For instance, an empiricist's axioms would include "If I observe the occurrence X, 'I observed the occurrence X' is absolutely true." An axiom that you have chosen is that God exists. Both beliefs are by choice, not necessity, and both lead to different logical deductions.