Logical Conclusion

Humans think about the world.

To do so, we employ certain patterns of thinking that we call human reason.

Over the centuries, human thinkers have formalized certain types of reasoning. Four pillars of modern reason are logic, mathematics, inference and analogy.

Logic and mathematics are formalized ways of deriving conclusions from assumptions.

The rules of logic cannot be proved using logic; they must be assumed. Similarly, mathematics rests on certain fundamental definitions that must be assumed.

One noteworthy aspect of logic and mathematics is that they are human creations that have evolved over time. Neither was formalized except rather recently, with much of the work done in the past five hundred years (out of about a million years of hominid presence on the planet). Mathematics in particular still sees major new developments.

Given the strange (to human thinking) discoveries of modern theoretical physics, it is reasonable to believe that logic and mathematics imperfectly correspond to the world, and are in a continual state of evolution.

Inference and analogy are two often hidden assumptions behind human thinking. They are sometimes confused with logic. Neither inference nor analogy is a rule of logic or capable of being proved by logic; they are assumptions.

Inference can be stated as: If one type of event is usually followed by a second type, then if the second type is observed, the first type can be assumed to have happened, even if it is not directly seen.

Analogy can be stated as: If a condition holds true in one case, it is likely to be true in other similar cases.

If I assume that other human beings have a consciousness like my own, it is by analogy that I make that assumption. If I see someone smile, and assume that person is happy, it is by inference that I jump from "smile" to "happy," and by analogy that I make the jump from "I'm happy when smiling" to "That person is happy when smiling."

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