📚 Being Logical by D.Q. McInery
by Ohbeeppodcast@ · 28 things on NewTwos
- PREFACE
- p. ix - "Logic is about clear and effective thinking"
- Preparing the mind for logic
- Be attentive (p3)
- Pay attention to my situation.
- All situations are unique - even if the seem familiar.
- this reminds me of falling asleep at the wheel. we will often get to the end of a familiar journey and not remember the details of it. hence falling asleep at the wheel.
- Thinkk of the term "pay attention". Suggests attention costs us something. We have to be invested in the act of paying attention.
- Not possible to be passive and attentive
- Don't just look, see. Don't just hear, listen. Train yourself to focus on details. The little things are not to be ignored, for it is just the little things that lead us to the big things.
- Get the facts straight (p4)
- Two types of objective facts
- Things -
- This is an actual existing entity (such as a car, animal, human).
- To dertermine a "thing" as a fact, you can go and observe it.
- You may also decide secondary evidence is sufficient (a trustworthy source, photos)
- Events -
- These are made up of a number of "things".
- You can have a drive in the car, but this can't be a fact if the car doesn't exist.
- The event being factual is reliant upon the "thing" or a numbers of "things" to exist.
- To satisfy ourselves that an event that occured was a fact we would have to refer to a collection of reliable things. The birth of a distant relative you never met. A birth certificate is good verification of their birth, Or an obituary, gravestone etc.
- We must gather reliable evidence to establish an event as a fact - this relies on the authenticy and reliableness of our sources
- Facts can be subjective or objective (things and events are both the latter)
- Subjective facts -
- Limited to the person experiencing it. Suffering mental illness is an example of a subjective fact. Because I am the sufferer, then I have evidence of its factualness.
- However, it is possible that I am dilluding myself or rationalising what is happening I could be wrong about a fact about myself.
- A subjective fact relating to another person is harder to verify. It comes down to establishing their trustworthiness.
- Ideas and the objects of ideas (p7)