A Philosopher's Ruminations

  The ability to distinguish right from wrong is a sign of good moral sense; the ability to distinguish good reasons from bad reasons is a sign of rationality. Our conduct in everyday life depends on the ability to distinguish what is good from what is bad; whether that be morally or rationally. We allow our thinking and our actions to be regulated by a value system where it is necessary to distinguish the good from bad in order to achieve a certain goal which in case of a theoretical inquiry is Truth. The Philosopher tries to understand the normative force behind this rational order – what is a reason, what makes a certain reason good or bad, what is Truth and can we know what is true. This investigation requires that we understand the subject and the way he experiences the world and the place of the subject within this world. Down the ages the best minds of the world have been engaged in resolving this question but with no unanimity in sight. Philosophy differs from other discipl...

  I.   PURE LOGIC   Logic is the study of validity—an inference is valid if, and only if, the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion. A deductive argument is said to be valid if and only if it takes a form that makes it impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion nevertheless to be false. Otherwise, a deductive argument is said to be invalid . A deductive argument is sound if and only if it is both valid, and all of its premises are actually true . Otherwise, a deductive argument is unsound. Logic however is concerned with validity and not soundness. The logician wants to be able to recognize truth-preserving inferences by their structure. The logician wants to be able to recognize, from the structure of one set of sentences, that the members of another set of sentences are true and how we pass from the truth of one set of sentences to the truth of other sentences or to put it in another way how is that being committed to the t...