Logical errors. Training course. Introduction

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

From the author of the course

Dear readers, I have already devoted quite a lot of time to communicating with people and teaching them a variety of things. If you haven't read about my teaching career yet, please go here.

While building up my communication experience, I noticed that often in the reasoning of people there are logical errors, and in such an amount that it becomes already difficult to refrain from criticism. Almost all of these mistakes are NOT noticed by a person, but almost completely determine his logic of social behavior. It is not surprising that our society does not live quite the way many would like. And although the reason for this is not only logical errors in reasoning, they still play a very tangible role. One of the examples of such famous mistakes I gave in the article "Rearranging cause and effect." Read it if you haven't, and make sure that the topic is really serious, although it is described with a little humor.

Unfortunately, it is completely impossible to correct this situation, armed with only one logic. It is not always possible to inform a person about an error and strictly prove its existence. Various mechanisms come into force: from emotions to cognitive distortions and blockages of consciousness, not wanting to know the uncomfortable truth or disturb emotional comfort. Sometimes it even turns out that it is possible to show a person a mistake in logic only by committing it himself. The most primitive and crude example: go from words to forceful arguments. Sometimes it’s true, rubbing a broken nose, a person begins to listen and understand. However, I am not a supporter of such practices, I act somewhat differently …

I believe that among people there are those who are quite capable of feeling distortions in their logic, just thinking a little deeper about the "essence of being", these people need only a little help, show them the power of logic and the mistakes that they usually make (mistakes modern people are generally the same). So I will try to tackle this difficult task. What is my role?

Few people will read serious books, but such reading people do not need my help: they have the time and energy to figure everything out on their own. Most people do not have the time, the necessary information, the proper preparation and the inner will to stock up on books and figure them out on their own. It is not always their fault, often such is their difficult life, it does not give an opportunity to seriously get down to business. Such people need my help. I am sure that popular science and easy presentation of the problem of logical errors is an interesting and quite useful task. If I do it, it will help many readers become better, smarter and more convincing in their conclusions, and in some ways even change the quality of their lives for the better.

So, if you trust me, let's start a little tutorial in which you will learn almost everything the average person needs to know about logical errors. If you do not trust, please pass by, do not interfere with the rest.

There is one logical error, which I will report immediately. If a person smokes and talks about the dangers of smoking, then it does not follow that he is lying, proving the harm from smoking. It would be a mistake to question his words solely on the basis of the fact that he himself smokes. It is the same with me: I am talking about logical mistakes and their perniciousness, but I myself will commit them, because no one is perfect and cannot think with absolute precision. Do not run away from my course if you notice nonsense, do not make this logical mistake. Look at this nonsense as an opportunity to figure out on your own with what I could not cope with. Of course, I will not write nonsense on purpose.

There is one more detail that I will not do on purpose. I will not go into philosophy. Logic is closely related to philosophy, especially when questions arise: "what is truth?" or "does objective reality exist?" etc. I give an easy popular science presentation of classical academic material … Although a little bit of uncomplicated philosophy will nevertheless arise.

Introduction

What is logical error?

Wikipedia says that this is a mistake associated with a violation of the logical correctness of inferences. Great … and what is “logical correctness of reasoning”? Is the word “ right" With " truth »?

The situation becomes much more confusing after the explanations from the book of A. I. Uemov “Logical errors. How they interfere with thinking correctly”(Moscow, Gospolitizdat, 1958). He writes two definitions (p. 8):

Errors associated with untruththoughts, that is, with a distortion in thoughts of the relationship between objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality, are called actual … Errors associated with wrongthoughts, that is, with a distortion of the connections between the thoughts themselves, are logical.

Well, did this definition help you? I doubt. You know, in sociology there is such an interesting observation: you can give a person a definition of freedom, but he will not become free from it. You can give him a definition of truth, but that will not make him a bearer of truth. So let's get away from trying to somehow purely theoretically define the subject of our conversation, at least now. Let's take a closer look at examples.

Examples of

We write the equality 3 + 3 = 7. This actualan error, because it is associated with a distortion of the reality that 3 + 3 = 6. That is, here we are dealing with untrueinitial data, because the thought 3 + 3 = 7 is in conflict with reality.

"The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea, therefore, there is no talking pike." This is a logical error, it gives an erroneous connection between one (true) statement and another (also true if we refuse to engage in sophistry and demagoguery). Here we are dealing with wrongReflection: Identifies the wrong connection between different thoughts.

If a person has forgotten something or does not understand what he is talking about, then the mistake he has made cannot always be called logical. For example, a child may say that he saw a flying car (meaning a passenger car). Surely this is a mistake, but it is clear that it is not logical. He just told a lie, that is not true … Reported something that is not consistent with reality. Likewise, a student may experience a tremor during the exam, during which not so much logic as factology will be violated: historical dates, statements of theorems will be confused, and even his own surname may seem unfamiliar. The student will make a mistake and report not true: something that distorts reality or is not at all connected with it. In both examples, the errors are not logical but factual.

If a student, who has forgotten the proof of the theorem, begins to think it over himself, taking as a basis its statement and a certain basic set of logical techniques, then he may prove it. right … And if not, then his mistake will already be logicalbecause it happened as a result wrongReflections: in terms of true premises, the student will associate them in the wrong way.

And here is the task for you. One man went outside and said that he was cold. And the other went after him and said that he was warm. There is a discrepancy in reasoning, but is it caused by a logical error or factual?

Of course, there is no mistake at all. "Cold" and "warm" are subjective components of sensory perception, they reflect their own experiences or the state of a person. The truth or falsity of such conclusions or facts most often cannot be verified from the outside, and we can only believe the person, or catch him on the contradiction in some other facts. For example, a person said that he was warm, but after 5 minutes his lips turned blue, his jaw began to tremble, his fingers stopped obeying, and in addition he accidentally blurted out during the conversation that he was always cold only at below + 15 °. Knowing that it's + 5 ° outside, you do logicalthe conclusion that he is still cold. And even if you do not have complete confidence in the practical truth of your conclusion, from the point of view of pure logic, from the statements “I am always cold at below + 15 °” and “now + 5 °” exactly follows “I'm cold”. And this is an example correctreflections. But the correctness of thinking does not have to give a true conclusion, because the initial premises may be false.

So, if we are talking about subjective experiences or sensations, then here the apparatus of logic can play only an auxiliary role in determining the truth, because the initial premises are subjective, their truth or falsity depends on the subject to whom they belong. Therefore, as an additional confidence in one's innocence, one has to use indirect signs on the face and in the behavior of the interlocutor. The technique of the judicial system or interrogations, during which the investigator skillfully operates with logical methods precisely on the basis of subjective (true or false) facts obtained from both the suspect and from other sources, has succeeded especially well in this matter. To collect the entire set of initial data into a single picture, you need to have truly developed logical thinking.

Therefore, when in everyday life they talk about logic or evidence, they require precisely objective judgments based on objective components. For example, water freezes at negative temperatures. This fact does not depend on whether you are watching the water or your friend. Or maybe you won't be watching her, and then there is a chance that she will not freeze? No. It will freeze in any case, because this is the objective physics of the process. Of course, the reader will not now talk about the presence of wind that creates waves, different chemical composition of water and pressure, he also understands what I mean: I just gave an example of an objective process. And if the reader is not satisfied with the phrase "negative temperature", you can replace it with "absolute zero", then objectively everything will freeze, regardless of the chemical composition, and even more so the observer himself … who will freeze just as inevitably.

Truth and correctness - what's the difference?

So, the reader should keep two points in mind. There is "truth" and there is "correctness." Roughly speaking, truth - this is the correspondence of thoughts to the real world, and right - the correspondence of thoughts to each other, that is, their agreement with each other. You can say: "true statement", meaning the fact that the statement corresponds to the real state of affairs. You can say: "correct inference", meaning that a clear and understandable chain of reasoning has been built that connects the original thought with the conclusion from it. However, in everyday life, the words "correctness" and "truthfulness" are often used synonymously. Here, in the course of logic, we cannot apply these words as randomly.

Examples of truth and correctness (just like untruth and incorrectness) were given above. Let me remind them once again to consolidate them. 3 + 3 = 6 is a true thought. “The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea” is also a true thought. These thoughts are consistent with reality as we understand it.

However, if I say “if 3 + 3 = 6, then the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea,” this is an example of a wrong idea. There is no agreement here between the first true thought and the second true thought.

You also need to remember that the correctness of thinking does not mean the truth of inferences, because anything can be built on false assumptions. For example, taking as a basis the false fact that "a whale is a fish" and the true fact that "a fish can breathe under water" we correct logic we get false the inference that "the whale can breathe underwater." In fact, it will not last more than an hour without surfacing, or even less, because a whale is a mammal.

UPD: There is also the concept of "consistency", which reflects the situation when we derive a true conclusion from true premises by means of correct logic. In addition to the aforementioned book by Uyemov "Logical Errors …", you can specify several English-language sources. In English, the concepts "Validity" (correctness), "Truth" (truth) and "Soundness" (consistency) are used, but they are used a little differently than in Russian, although in general the general meaning coincides with our course. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (English) explains the meaning of correctness and consistency, but in a form that is more difficult for popular reading. You can also find definitions on Wikipedia: Validity and Soundness.

Outcome

A mistake in reconciling thought and reality is a factual mistake. It is based on untruth thoughts.

A mistake in coordinating thoughts with each other is a logical mistake. It is based on wrong thinking.

This is precisely what was said in a quote from Uyemov's book.

Now you know what a logical error is in the ordinary sense: it is when the connection between thoughts is distorted, or it does not exist at all, but it is asserted that it is.

Additionally, you learned that logic is usually used for objective processes and phenomena, and therefore you need to strive to collect the most objective facts for your inferences. In ordinary life, this almost never can be done, and therefore it is necessary to include subjective components in logic. This can and should be done, but it will require very large analytical skills and experience in logical thinking.

My course in logical mistakes is just designed to increase the culture of logical thinking and help you gain at least some of the necessary experience.