Talk:Law of thought

message: Jon Awbrey 22:16, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Notes & Queries

message: Where does the following statement in the first paragraph come from?
"...which collectively prescribe how a rational mind must think. To break any of the laws of thought (for example, to contradict oneself) is to be irrational."
"Law of thought" is a misnomer, in the first place, because the 3 "laws" listed are just parts of an axiom-system (= set of Assumptions), and not valid as general "laws of human thinking", since it is easy to demonstrate, by example, natural language statements that violate "law of noncontradiction" and/or "law of excluded middle", such as: "This statement is false." We can clearly grasp the meaning of it, but still, it is neither true nor false.
So it should be made clear that these "laws of thought" are not that (much less "laws of rational minds"), but just an axiom-system of assumptions. 83.177.13.93 (talk) 16:16, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Heaven forbid that there should be a relation between laws of thought and psychology. That would be the most mortal of all sins. We are here talking about logic and logic alone, that is, mere abstract, disembodied forms. It must be intuitively obvious to any thinking person that thinking does not require a brain or mind in order to occur.Lestrade (talk) 14:47, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Formal logic is NOT "how we think"

message: This article should be called "Laws of Thought," not "Law of Thought."  The George Boole article should be called "Laws of Thought (Book)."Lestrade 19:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I renamed the article on Boole's book and I heartily agree with User:Lestrade's comment about the improper naming of this article.  Academic philosophers speak of the laws of thought as a group.  The term is standard.  I think this page should be moved back to laws of thought.  Perhaps this question should be put to a survey on this talk page. - WikiPedant 05:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Hello JA -- I can understand why you want to adhere closely to WP standards, but the fact is that the WP standards are more flexible and complex than you say.  The guidelines do</U> allow plural article names in cases just like this one, where the article is about the whole set of things (that is, the things considered as a collective) and where the collective term is itself standard usage.  See Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(plurals) which recognizes exceptions to the use of singular names, such as "articles on groups of specific things" (for example, articles on particular language families, such as Romance languages and Afro-Asiatic languages). See also Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions/archive5#SOME_article_titles_should_be_plural.  Furthermore, the list of exemplary featured articles contains a number of plural titles, including Médecins Sans Frontières,€2 commemorative coins, Microsoft Data Access Components, Black Seminoles, Domestic AC power plugs and sockets, National parks of England and Wales, Three Laws of Robotics, The Beatles, The Supremes, The Temptations, The Waterboys, End times, Shakers, Olympic Games, Indian Railways.  And specifically with respect to history and philosophy articles, the list of good articles includes Zeno's paradoxes, Khazars, and Knights Hospitaller.  So there is (a) good reason, (b) allowance within the wiki guidelines, and (c) precedent for changing the name of this article back to Laws of thought. - WikiPedant 05:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Sensible Titles

message: Leibniz's assertion of the Identity of indiscernibles is not a law of thought. The article is mistaken by including Leibniz's assertion as one of the laws of thought.69.19.14.33 17:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree, and the classic Aristotelian law of identity is missing.  I addressed this (diplomatically) in my edit today. - WikiPedant 05:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Leibniz's Assertion

message: JA: I reverted the following addition to the lead because it lends itself a bit too easily to a purely psychological reading, whereas it needs to be made more clear that logical laws are normative principles.
The laws of thought are the traditional, fundamental rules which collectively define how a rational mind must think.  To break any of the laws of thought (for example, to contradict oneself) is to be irrational.
JA: Given the proper explanation beforehand, though, it looks like it would be pretty easy to fix it.  Jon Awbrey 13:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Who was it that first judged that the laws of thought are not related in any way to dreaded psychology and its description of brains or minds and their acts of thinking? Was he the same man who claimed that the laws of thought are pure logical principles that would exist somewhere separately even if there were no humans who had thoughts running through their heads? 69.19.14.36 02:57, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Hell yeah I do! If it’s worth the effort. I don’t use mathematical symbolism, since when you use descriptive identifiers, you can be much more efficient in processing things. But I use cold hard logic to reason, and can usually spot every logical failure my dialog partners’ use. (Even when I don’t go all the way myself.) I became this way, because I grew up with people that were infected by religious schizophrenia, and had to *properly* prove (for myself anyway) what was ultimately right. But I think, if you don’t use proper logic in your reasoning, you’re a retard and unworthy of vocalizing any arguments (since they wouldn’t actually be arguments). Of course, the ultimate problem is, that without a proper set of common paradigms, you would have to have such a long string of arguments, that they could go right down to explaining the beginning of the big bang. I can do that, nowadays, due to a deep understanding for physics, logic and psychology. But usually it’s just not worth it, since your parter wouldn’t even remotely be able to comprehend what it means. So in a way, you may still be right in that it’s not very common. ;) I guess(!) most people are just “cattle” anyway. — 88.77.154.76 (talk) 06:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: A large part of the problem is that we are not sure what we mean by the ambiguous word "thought." Does "thought" mean any brain activity or any mental activity? Does thought mean "unspoken language"? If all thought is discursively related to words, then it is related to grammar and what can be said. This would include the laws of identity, contradiction, excluded middle, sufficient reason, etc. In this way, all thought is connected to verbal judgments, propositions, and Kantian Categories. If all thought, however, is intuitively related to imagination, willing, emotion, sensation, etc., then it may not be related to those laws. We can then ask, with Rosa Lichtenstein, "Does anyone seriously think that people actually cogitate in syllogisms, or that they use the formal calculi found in Principia Mathematica when they reason?" She assumes here that all thought is equivalent to cogitation and reasoning.Lestrade (talk) 03:33, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

text: This interesting blog attempts to trace the history of the Law of Identity. Apparently, the Law was discovered in the Middle Ages. BlueMist (talk) 20:01, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

text:  Do you think that the history of the Law of Identity would be different coming from a self-confessed communist? BlueMist (talk) 20:38, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

text:  You are raising interesting points for discussion that can't adequately be addressed in the context of Wikipedia. Try posting at one of the mathematical logic or philosophy forums. BlueMist (talk) 20:38, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems

message: The article lacks the single most important thing it could contain: An explanation for why exacly these and no others are the rules that be. Instead they are presented as unquestioned, and even unquestionable. Adding “long tradition” as a filler term typical for things that nobody actually thinks about (which usually are bullshit) does not make it better.
— 88.77.154.76 (talk) 06:26, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You are trying to apply the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which is the Fourth Law of Thought, to the Laws of Thought. This is circular.Lestrade (talk) 17:30, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lacking the core thing! 

message: So the rationale section of the article seems to be implying that the second and third laws are corollaries of the first. The article doesn't actually use the word 'corollary' though; it leaves the reader confused as to weather the second and third laws can be inferred from the first or not.
I think this needs clearing up. I'm not sure exactly what the edit should be, so I'm hoping an expert in the area can help out.
Nicholias Samuels 2058 4 June 2012  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.243.95.179 (talk) 11:00, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  2nd & 3rd corollaries of the first?? 

message: The article begins by asserting:
'The laws of thought are fundamental axiomatic rules upon which rational discourse itself is based.'
As a mere layperson who has no wish to get into an edit-war against actual or alleged experts, I am reluctant to correct what nevertheless seems to me to be a common abuse of language in that statement (which seems acceptable in everyday speech but arguably not in an encyclopedia article about logic), namely the use of the word 'rational' when one means 'logical'.
For instance self-delusion through wishful thinking is illogical, in that it violates rules of logic, but it may well be perfectly 'rational' if it fulfils the person's rational desire to remain happy or to become happier, or even it doesn't but if the person mistakenly thinks that it will, or hopes that it might, or whatever. Discourse intended to achieve such a rational objective is then arguably 'rational discourse', no matter how much it violates rules of logic.
Much the same can probably also often be said of much discourse in pursuit of a rational motive to deceive others (which arguably means something like almost half of all discourses in almost any debate on almost any subject).
I may eventually amend the text myself (if I remember), but first I'd prefer to wait and see if somebody with more expertise than me can amend it better. Tlhslobus (talk) 13:22, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rational or Logical ? 

message: The article begins by asserting:
'The laws of thought are fundamental axiomatic rules upon which rational discourse itself is based.'
It seems to me that it should be prominently stated that the real world arguably doesn't work like that, and that a whole branch of computer science called Fuzzy Logic has been created in a partial attempt to deal with this problem. In computing, Fuzzy Logic uses Truth values between 0 and 1 to reflect this, in effect saying statements can be 'truish' (or, for instance, '87% true and 13% false') and 'falsish' and 'in-betweeenish' as well as 'true' and 'false'. For example 'that thing is big' can be true relative to some things and false relative to other things. And 'I am tlhslobus' is true in some senses, and false in other senses (because tlhslobus is obviously only a pen-name). 'There's no such person as Santa Claus' seems true until you consider that there's one in every major department store in the run-up to Christmas, let alone how many might 'exist' in dreams and/or might exist in any parallel subuniverses that the universe may contain if it is in fact a Multiverse. 'This chair is solid' - well, yes, I'm sitting on it, but it's basically almost nothing but empty space from the perspective of the zillions of neutrinos passing through it every second (at least if science is to be believed). And so on ad infinitum.
I may eventually try to amend the text myself (if I remember), but first I'd prefer to wait and see if somebody with more expertise than me can amend it better. Tlhslobus (talk) 13:22, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need for some mention of Fuzzy Logic and/or of the real world 

message: This section is overly opinionated (non-neutral) and lacking references to back up it claims. It seems, furthermore, to be the product of own research by a user with IP 24.137.101.129 who made several edits to this page in March. Although that user's comments may have improved parts of the page, too much of what has been inserted seems to reflect that person's opinions and research, and much of the page needs to be rewritten in a more neutral tone. The "The Three Classical Laws" is the worst in this sense (i.e. by Wikipedia standards), but I also have my doubts about (the neutrality of) the section "Contemporary developments". Lajib (talk) 00:56, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not seeing where Russell and Whitehead aka "Principa Mathematica" assert "For any proposition A: A = A". Russell alone, in his philosophical text 1912:72, is quoted as stating "whatever is, is". Here's a specific example: Given the proposition "this dog is black": "this dog is black" is identical to "this dog is black". Is this false? Thus when extended over all propositions, the sentence "For any proposition A: A = A" does not seem incorrect; for why, see the section titled "Tarski (1946): Leibniz's Law" and then sub-section titled "Law of identity (Leibniz's Law, equality" where the matter of "equality" -- "identical in all respects" --  is discussed in detail; here the exact, formal definition of equality (identicality over all assertions (functions)) from PM is quoted. BillWvbailey (talk) 15:52, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: about the "The Three Classical Laws" section; and the quality of this page in general

message: The Third Law of Rational Thought is given as a direct quote that reads incredibly poorly in English, strewn with double negatives and run-ons.  I imagine this amounts to a bad translation of a valid idea.  Either way, cleaning that bit up would be beneficial.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.111.23.221 (talk) 22:12, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Convoluted quote without clarification

message: I feel the section "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_thought#Indian_logic" as currently written is misleading: not only does it not adequately present the history of how the rational discourse of Russel and early 20th century logicians differ from historical systems of Indian logic/tetralemma logics (or most recently paraconsistent logic)- it makes the implication that these early systems contained the same ideas.  
While I'm not an expert, reading on this leads me to think simply stating this idea was present in older system may be accurate from the references, but it misrepresents the situation.  The Law of Thought, derived from the three traditional laws are much more recent, much stronger in their logical power, but constrain the applicability to rationally consistent outcomes.  The "Indian logic" systems with four-fold states instead of two-fold states produced results wholly different, and supported inconsistent outcomes.  It wasn't until much later in the late 1970's and after that these became formalized and studied in the west. 192.235.78.16 (talk) 06:44, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contrast to fourfold/tetralemma logics 

message: this should be removed from the text: "as I have said," 2A02:2149:8B8D:A500:F8EB:7B5:F565:4A87 (talk) 16:33, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  inappropriate phrase