Can there be amateurs in logic?
Yes. Clearly. Undoubtedly. Emphatically.
It may be correct to advocate careful (professional) analysis to develop a theory of logic, but if that analysis does not conclude that logic must, to be logical, square with what is good, it is not logical.
And I believe it is not wrong to suggest that a remark attributed to Jesus is apt. It is the suggestion that little children are preeminent when it comes to logic.
Logic cannot be divorced from either ethics or aesthetics. It is a utility along with reason (with which it is nearly synonymous) in the quiver of human beings as we navigate reality to arrive at consciousness and the possibility of thinking that is logical because it tends to goodness which, at long last, can be substantiated.
How. By our analysis of the effects of our expressions and actions according to their capacity for good or evil.
It will be seen that the long arm of Triadic Philosophy reaches into the realm of logic and looks into its eye and says, “You are useful, a utility, and nothing more.”
At which point, we begin the long and arduous project of separating the utilities we use and require from their past mooring as binary absolutes and put them in their place — the utility box.
The ultimate is finally something which we see as what it is and conclude on the basis of experience what it asks of us.
This is the ground of Triadic Philosophy.
Peirce: CP 2.8 Cross-Ref:††
§2. OF MINUTE ACCURACY
8. How shall the theory of right reasoning be investigated? … Am I wrong in thinking I catch a whisper from good sense, that, for one item of the reply, a theory should be investigated carefully and minutely? … It might seem to behoove every man who has occasion to lay down principles of reasoning in a grave scientific discussion to be more than an amateur in logic. Voluminous writers, however, on logic there are who deliberately adopt vague substitutes for any definite method of establishing principles of reasoning.
Ω
