[soc.religion.islam] Logic, Preferences, & Belief

kilroy@mimsy.umd.edu (Nancy's Sweetie) (03/06/90)

Basalat Ali Raja writes:
>
>For me, the Quran is a *fact*.  It is a truth.  Think of the Quran as a
>collection of statements, as a subset of a universe of statements.  Using
>the basic rules of logic, we can arrive at a closure of this subset; this
>will be all the statements that can be logically derived from the Quran.

Does the Quran itself lay out a system of logic that is to be used, or is
any humanly-derived logic system considered valid?  If the Quran does not
specify a logic system, then it would appear that the overall teachings
can vary dependent upon the philosophical framework of its readers, and
that _any of these is equally valid_.  Is that a correct interpretation
of what you are saying?  If not, what logic is to be used?  How is this
determined?


>Statements which are in the Quranic subset, I feel to be the truth.
>Statements which are not in the Quranic subset, I consider to be 
>incorrect.  Statements which are not in either of the two, I decide
>on the basis of other factors, usually personal preferences etc.

This has come up in other groups, and I've always wondered if it means
what it says.  Do you actually determine the truth or falsehood of a
statement based upon whether you would prefer it to be true?  How?


kilroy@cs.umd.edu          Darren F. Provine          ...uunet!mimsy!kilroy
"There's a lot to be said for brevity." -- Kasey S. Osborn

gwydion@Dyved.csc.ti.com (Basalat Ali Raja) (03/13/90)

In article <4772@accuvax.nwu.edu> Nancy's Sweetie <kilroy@mimsy.umd.edu> writes:

>Does the Quran itself lay out a system of logic that is to be used, or is
>any humanly-derived logic system considered valid?  If the Quran does not
>specify a logic system, then it would appear that the overall teachings
>can vary dependent upon the philosophical framework of its readers, and
>that _any of these is equally valid_.  Is that a correct interpretation
>of what you are saying?  If not, what logic is to be used?  How is this
>determined?

When I used the term logic, I did not mean it in the technical sense that
is currently used today.  Consider what a man on the street would usually
call "logical".  That is what I meant as logical.  I agree that it is a 
fuzzy definition.  This is intentional.  If you prefer, you might use the
words "reason" and "reasonable" instead of "logic" and "logical".

me>Statements which are in the Quranic subset, I feel to be the truth.
me>Statements which are not in the Quranic subset, I consider to be 
me>incorrect.  Statements which are not in either of the two, I decide
me>on the basis of other factors, usually personal preferences etc.

>This has come up in other groups, and I've always wondered if it means
>what it says.  Do you actually determine the truth or falsehood of a
>statement based upon whether you would prefer it to be true?  

Yes.  Such is obvious.

>How?

A premise *cannot* be proved.  It is absolutely a matter of personal 
preference as to what I accept to be a premise or not.  Based on my
preferences, and a few other logical predicates which carry out various
transformations and combinations on the premises that I accept.  To 
prove me wrong, one has to prove that the universe of statements that
I accept is self-contradictary.

Anyways, ss you say, this has come up in other groups; there is little
need to expound on this much further unless you profess yourself 
dissatisfied with my answer.