It was all just a beautiful lie...?

Question

wittgenstein suggests that logic is without substance and does not inform our basic understandings of language. some philosophers condsider logic, however, to be the basic form of language.

hemingway, describes the word, the goal of the writer and the written text, to be "the most true statement" [a moveable feast].

my question is this,"is logic our most true statement created from philosophy?"

Answer 1

Philosophy is learned, context is based on experience, and truth is not an absolute; it is relative to what our minds will accept.  The truth is that there are UFOs in the world.  I've seen several.  I can't identify every flying object I've seen, so they're UFOs.  Some people have redefined a UFO to be a spacecraft, but I haven't, so am I telling the truth?  Would those who have redefined UFO to mean spacecraft think I was telling the truth?  Language is a living tool which the speakers and writers alter to suit their purposes when faced with something new.  Which brand of logic are they referring to?  Socratic?  Aristotelian?  or some other?

Answer 2

Logic in its purest form is basically math.  For logic to be a "most true statement" about reality, the terms on which it operates must be well defined, reflective of that reality, and relatively universally accepted.  In other words, it must have a semantic context.

Computer programs are capable of generating language samples based on grammatical rules, but the results are often semantically void.  This is due to a failure to establish a meaningful context.

Some elements of philosophy endeavor to get the definitions and the semantics right, but as Ken Wilbur pointed out, these definitions and semantics only relate to reality in the sense and to the extent that we agree they do, and we use language (part logic, part meaning, part learned and agreed contexts) to express that agreement.

Kurt Godel established that no system is fully capable of definining / expressing itself (in computer science this is called the Halting Problem).  So we have to agree as best we can about the definitions and semantics and hope for a logic that expresses the "most true statement" about reality.

Most of us would agree when it does it -- for we agree that such statements are "meaningless".

Hope this helps.

P.S.  Wittgenstein was kind of screwed up... never finished his own work -- it was all just rambling statements.  And as I recall, he was an interesting bloke: a jet engine designer (yes, really!) by trade, and a philosopher second.  And he had a bit of a temper.

Most true statement indeed!

Answer 3

IMO, it is reason.

Answer 4

no comen sense