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Question about philosophy and carrying an ideal out to its logical conclusion

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dustyjames

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Hey everybody this is my first post.

I don't know how or when I figured it out, but at some point I learned to be consistent with my logic. If I state an ideal, then I must be able to carry that idea out to its logical conclusion and be able to defend that. To me, that's a fundamental characteristic of any true philosophy (even bad ones).

Rand Paul recently did this with Bernie Sanders who constantly says people have a "right" to health care, etc. He explained that saying people have a right to health care is basically saying you believe in slavery and think you should be able to force someone to perform labor on your behalf, etc.

My question is, I don't know where I learned this (but it probably wasn't until I was well into my 20s). And I wonder if there's a book that teaches how to be logically consistent in this way with philosophy. For most people, they cannot grasp how to do this.

Thanks.

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Textbooks on logic are easy to find. With help, you can discover what follows or not from a set of statements, and from there you can go on to apply it to the statements you come across in conversation or in the news. David Kelley is an Objectivist, so his textbook might be a good place to start.

A technique I've learned (but can't really teach) is to ask, when somebody makes an asserition (typically about ethics or politics), what the principle behind it is. If your interlocutor can't or won't, then the assertion isn't worth taking seriously. If he does, use your book learning to spin out the consequences.

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Logical consistency is something important to many cultures, even if Romans (and Christianity evolving out of Roman values of reason and none of its values of eudaimonia and personal well-being on Earth) were explicit about it. Ancient China was as powerful as Ancient Rome, if not more powerful than Rome. This would not be possible unless reasoning was important to the Chinese.

Dustyjames, the best thing to do is practice. Read arguments from good philosophers and bad philosophers. Challenge people on their arguments. Read some books on reasoning. Most of all, always ask why.

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10 hours ago, Eiuol said:

This would not be possible unless reasoning was important to the Chinese.

That really doesn't follow. Also, the standard being discussed here is logical consistency, not "power". Logical consistency is not something eastern cultures are known for. They prefer "both-and" to "either-or".

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1 hour ago, epistemologue said:

Logical consistency is not something eastern cultures are known for. They prefer "both-and" to "either-or".

No, that's just primarily Buddhism and Taoism as far as I know that advocate "both-and". Christianity has some of that, too.

Power being technological advancement. That takes reasoning, which takes logic.

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