What is logic? What is logical? Does it mean anything? What? To whom? Why? Is even logic ever logical? It seems as if the more certain the omnipotence of logic, the less human it gets. Does logic mean inference from given premises to either falsehood or truth? If so, how come we grant so much certainty to this 'truth' when it is arrived at by such meager and fragile means - rules of inference? How can they ever guarantee any certainty about anything? Is it because we invest all our trust in certainty and solidity of given premises? As if there ever was any premises that were really given - cemented as a fact. Don't premises, these deceiving little bastards, multiply ad infinitum as soon as they are acknowledged? Isn't it at the very core of the being of premises that they are trying to fool us already from the beginning, to take them for a fact, an a priori truth in itself. Still, "truth belongs to everybody" (RHCP), I've heard. Everytime we stumble upon the facts of life we ad to them our own subjective perspective. And that's it! Some talk about the "eye of the beholder" phenomenon (Metallica). Some about how truth is but a construction, the purpose of which is no more than to alleviate the burden of being ensnared in deep shit of life: "I heard the truth was built to bend, a mechanism to suspend the guilt" (Arctic Monkeys). Then, it logically follows (I beg you all pardon for my inconsistency - but I'm a walking contradiction and I'm fine with it) that there are no premises that can ever be given as true facts - only perhaps as assumptions for the sake of the philosophical argument, but that's it. It stops right there! And that's the only logical truth about true logic because, logically speaking, with no true premises to take into this absurd equation, the only truth we're left with is that the truth is that the truth is not.
"But no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it" continues Pirsig (2006 [1974]: 87). The truth is that we kill for our truths. We die for them! No questions asked. We just do it. Because we believe. Perhaps sometimes the belief is logical through and through... other times maybe less so. But it is at all times, in some more or less absurd way, linked to some kind of logic as its defender. Does this mean now that there are as many logics as there are truths - that logic is just as multiple as truth is? Now, what's so logical about that anyway? How can we know anything about anything, really? "This heart inside me I can sense, so I conclude that it exists. This world I can touch, so I conclude that it exists. This is where all my knowledge stops, everything else is a construction" says Camus on the subject adding that "to look for the truth is not the same as to look for what's desirable (1961 [1942]: 27, 44 my translation). Now, how's that for a true fact?
Reason and logic - it seems as if they have been criticized by everybody, forever. A bit of a cliché for a revolt nowadays, really. Let's go reason-bashing - as if no one has ever done that before. And still we kill, lie, cheat, hurt, bleed in vain, cry ourselves to sleep, enjoy the excess of wealth on the others account as if we somehow deserved it, wage wars, propagate hostility and suspicion. And what's worse, we do all these things under the flag of logic and reason - our sacred religion. We refer to them to justify our dirty deeds - for ourselves and for others. What's up with that?
Well, we are human and there ain't nothing logical about that!
"His characters are truthful even when they don't know truth, even when they actively evade it."
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