I would like to start this article respectfully saluting my steemian followers and all steemit.com members.👋 👋
Today I've chosen to talk about, as the title obviously suggests it, the Laws of Thought. And I will still try to keep, as much as possible, the phylosofic perspective you already got used to, as I did with my last few posts. I hope you'll find it interesting and you will enjoy this reading!
the Laws of Thought
The word "truth" indicates the direction of logic, as "beautiful" and "good" indicate the directions of aesthetics and ethics. Of course, all science has the objective of truth; but logic deals with it in a totally different way. Her relation with the truth is similar to the relation that physics has with weight or heat.
The discovery of truth is the task of all sciences: logic is the task of finding the "truth" laws. The word "law" is used in two ways:
When we talk about moral or state laws, we have in mind recommendations that must be followed, but not always what is happening is in agreement with them.
Nature's laws give the general rules for what happens in nature, and events are always in line with them.
The latter sense is closer to what I call the law of truth. However, in the latter case, it is not something that happens, but it's about something true. From the "truth" laws, there are recommendations for determining the value of truth, thinking, judgment, and deduction; and that's the reason why we often talk about laws of thought.
Here we risk to confuse things that are different between them. The expression "law of thought" could be considered as "natural law" as far as we refer to the general, present in the mental act of thought. In this sense, a law of thought would be a psychological law, and it would come to the conclusion that logically we deal with the mental process of thought and its psychological laws. It would mean, however, that I would not understand the logic's mission, because in this case the truth would not get the status it deserves. Mistake and superstition have their causes, just as the right knowledge has on her own.
When something true is considered to be true, it happens in accordance with psychological laws, same way as, when something that is false is considered to be true. If a deduction or explanation concludes on a truth from the laws of the mental process, these laws replace a logical manifestation of truth.
But aren't logical laws involved in this phychic processes?
I do not want to contest this, but when it comes to the truth, we can't thank ourselves with a simple possibility. It is, incidentally, possible that something nonlogical has occurred and that we have turned away from the road to truth.
However, this will only be possible after we have discovered the laws of truth. At this point we will probably be able to miss the deduction or explanation of the mental process, when what we are interested in is to decide whether the truth of the conclusion is justified or not.
In order to exclude misunderstandings and to avoid the deletion of the boundaries between psychology and logic, I entrust the logic with the task of discovering the laws of truth and not those through which something is considered true or those of thought. The "truth" laws will be what will reveal the meaning of the word "true."
And that was my point of view on the Laws of Thought. As usual I'm going to give the proper credit to my sources and I let you know that I got inspired to write about this topic after studying a fantastic work called "Logical Research" by Friederich Ludwig Gottlob Frege that offered me a fresh point of view on this subject. I hope you will find to be a good read and feel free to expresps your opinion in the comments section.
Until next time, happy Steem, my steemian friends!👍