Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00717)

Jerry Schueler wrote:

>its devilishly hard, if not impossible in many cases, to tell who is "logical"
>and who isn't.  

I believe you really mean to say that it is difficult to determine the
truth of premises.  


>Any argument that begins with wrong assumptions is doomed to appear as >flawed logic, even though it stands the tests of logic and reason--the 
>conclusions derived are only as good as the assumptions (garbage in 
>equals garbage out, and so on).  

I don't see why a conclusion that stands the test of logic would appear as
flawed logic.   


>You say, "I see no room for debate about the conclusion, assuming the >premises are true."  And my response is, Ah, but how do you know for a fact >that your premises are true?  

The truth, or lack thereof, of premises, is irrelevant to whether or not
logic has been correctly used based on those premises.  I can't think of
any disagreement that cannot be categorized into errors of logic and
different premises.  It is usually clear, given these two possibilities,
why people disagree.  It is as easy to clarify errors of logic as it is to
accept that no two individuals' premises will be identical.