musing on "sanity" and "being right"

[kengr]

While reading something I got to thinking.

An old description some author had came to mind. "Reasoning psychotic" was his term for someone who used reason and logic, but to attain insane goals.

Which lead me to consider that just because someone is using reason and logic doesn't mean that their conclusions are correct. Nor does the *lack* of reason or logic in an argument mean that the conclusion is automatically wrong.

Both are things that people need to keep in mind.

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I've known people who could use logic and reason perfectly well, but their postulates were totally off! Even good logic proceeding from a bad beginning produces bad (although self-consistent) answers.

A "correct" answer reached without benefit of logic is unsupported, and therefore unstable and vulnerable.