All Worldviews Cope with Life’s Absurdity

Existentialism levels the cultural playing field

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Is a perfectly rational worldview or culture even possible? Or is the suggestion that reason (logic and science) could or should dictate our core convictions wrongheaded? Perhaps our admiration for science and corporate efficiencies in the business world traps us into revering reason, as John Ralston Saul argued in Voltaire’s Bastards.

Can reason answer all our meaningful questions, especially the fundamental ones that matter most, or do we deceive ourselves into thinking we could ever be hyper-rational?

Logic is mainly for evaluating the forms of arguments. Logic can tell us whether an argument is valid or not, and it can also help us analyze concepts such as possibility (modal logic), probability (probabilistic logic), coherence (paraconsistent logic), duty (deontic logic), nuance (multi-valued logic), and time (temporal logic). Logic is the essence of critical thinking, which is what we do when we’re concerned with a statement’s reliability. We adhere to principles to minimize arbitrariness, and we train ourselves to avoid fallacies that lead us astray.

When dealing with arguments or complicated concepts that call for rigorous analyses, logic is the tool of choice.