The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #160033 Message #3798543
Posted By: DMcG
01-Jul-16 - 02:06 AM
Thread Name: BS: Logic and the laws of science
Subject: RE: BS: Logic and the laws of science
Before we get entirely off the subject of logic, a brief word about the universal qualifiers (to use the jargon) - 'All' and its partner 'There (does not) exist'. These are the basis of solid logic in science, and the cause of much of the error and anger in informal language. If you are trying to hold a civil conversation, they need to be used with extreme care, or better still never used without appropriate qualification. We could easily be on the point of such an outbreak.
"What religionists do is take the weakest assumptions ..."
"But then the question is, whom do you classify as "religionists"? All people who practice a religious tradition?"
You see? That implicit 'All' in the first sentence immediately rubs people up the wrong way. But it is not about religion, most of the time. Much racial, sexual and other prejudice is about what 'they all' want or think. Bad laws cover 'all' situations of a specific kind, when they only intended to cover 'some'. The first company I worked for required original, potentially profitable ideas to be patented. After the lawyers had been at my first such idea, in their desperation to cover 'all' opportunities to exploit the work they ended up at a point where even I could not recognise my invention.
It is a good self-discipline, then, to watch yourself for those 'alls' and 'does not exists' and make sure you genuinely mean them.