How does the aristolean system of logic work?

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Is that the system of on/off, black/white? Either/or?

You can either be dead or alive. YOu can be either existing or not existing, but not both can be true at the same time, or it will violate non-contradiction

How does this apply to ideologies? If I support SOME socialism, but also some of the tenets of other philosophies, how does that work? It doesn't seem either or. What would it be? It wouldn't be you are either a socialist or you aren't...that doesn't seem right.

[Castor Troy]

I think that's Socrates you're looking for, but I'm not too sure on that.

[Tasoth]

Lesse if I can remember my Logic class. You have four statements, IIRC, The post for all inclusive 'All Whales are Mammals', the negative for including everything 'No Virus is alive.', the positive for groups 'Some mammals are whales' and the negative for small groups 'Some birds cannot fly'. Then you get into this complex table where true and false statements make certain statements false and others true. It's complicated and I probably screwed something up in there.

[Molyneux]

Lesse if I can remember my Logic class. You have four statements, IIRC, The post for all inclusive 'All Whales are Mammals', the negative for including everything 'No Virus is alive.', the positive for groups 'Some mammals are whales' and the negative for small groups 'Some birds cannot fly'. Then you get into this complex table where true and false statements make certain statements false and others true. It's complicated and I probably screwed something up in there.

I thought it was debatable whether or not viruses are alive?

[NPComplete]

I thought it was debatable whether or not viruses are alive?

Well, whether it is or not, the point of making a logical argument (in any system of logic) is that you make certain statements, assert (or assume) that they are true, and then see what follows. If you get a contradiction, you change your assumption to false, and start again.

The *actual* truth of the statement is (almost) irrelevant, but the process of argument is the important part of logic

[Molyneux]

I thought it was debatable whether or not viruses are alive?

Well, whether it is or not, the point of making a logical argument (in any system of logic) is that you make certain statements, assert (or assume) that they are true, and then see what follows. If you get a contradiction, you change your assumption to false, and start again.

The *actual* truth of the statement is (almost) irrelevant, but the process of argument is the important part of logic

Ah...int'resting.
I'm going to start learning that soon, I think...they teach logic in engineering classes, don't they? I know they do for computer engineering, but not sure 'bout mechanical...

[Alyrium Denryle]

Lesse if I can remember my Logic class. You have four statements, IIRC, The post for all inclusive 'All Whales are Mammals', the negative for including everything 'No Virus is alive.', the positive for groups 'Some mammals are whales' and the negative for small groups 'Some birds cannot fly'. Then you get into this complex table where true and false statements make certain statements false and others true. It's complicated and I probably screwed something up in there.

I thought it was debatable whether or not viruses are alive?

No... no metabolism, they arent alive per se

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

But as in the above, you can be more than one thing, right? You are not an on/off political ideolog are you?

[Kuroneko]

(Oh, I overlooked this thread...)

Is that the system of on/off, black/white? Either/or?

Essentially, yes. The principles of non-contradiction and excluded middle that are present in the most common modern logic systems come directly from Aristotle. There is only truth and falsehood (unlike fuzzy logics, etc.), and they never mix (unlike in dialetheism, etc.). A large difference is that Aristotle treats quantifiers as parts of syllogisms (see my signature for an example and practice), with only one quantifier per premise. Another difference with the typical modern systems is that the universal quantifier pressuposed existence in Aristotelian logic, i.e., "all the persons in this room are asleep" is false in Aristotelian logics if the room contains no people, but true under the modern quantifier treatment (Frege, standard predicate calculus), mostly because duality between the universal and existential quantifiers is preferred--the sentece is taken to be logically equivalent to "there does not exist a non-sleeping person in this room."

You can either be dead or alive. YOu can be either existing or not existing, but not both can be true at the same time, or it will violate non-contradiction.

Exactly.

How does this apply to ideologies? If I support SOME socialism, but also some of the tenets of other philosophies, how does that work? It doesn't seem either or. What would it be? It wouldn't be you are either a socialist or you aren't...that doesn't seem right.

And so the bare-bones Aristotelian logic is inadequate to deal with the situation, and so it would be much more suprising if a single system was truly a one-size-fits-all solution (how many bridge engineers use quantum mechanics to see if it will hold up?). This should not be suprising; a logic system is just a tool made to reflect certain portions of reality, just the same as any scientific theory. There are two choices: (1) invent a measure of belief in regards to ideologies (it does not need to be quantitative--a purely qualitative "none/a bit/some/.../all" would work) and call a person socialist if he based on some threshold value, thus preserving the binary logic system, or (2) get another logic system that supports degrees of truth, or simply extend the existing one.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Ahh thanks. That makes so much more sense now.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Ahh thanks. That makes so much more sense now.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Ahh my browser fubared and double posted.