I’m in a Logic class and this seems like a really simple concept but all the explanations given are so wordy that I can’t wrap my head around it.
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Logic is, at its very core, irrefutable truth and subsequently deriving further irrefutable truths from it. But because truth can be very nuanced, It is very easy to make a statement that is only highly likely to be correct, but not definitively so. Logic is difficult, because as humans we often forget about edge cases where our statement might not be an absolute truth.
For example, I know Bob always cries when his favourite team loses. I also know his favourite team was playing today, and that he was at the stadium for the match. Bob came home crying. Therefore, his team lost.
This sounds very reasonable, but it is not ironclad logic. Maybe something else happened that made Bob sad. Maybe he saw something very sad while he was driving home. Maybe a family member died and he just got the phone call. We cannot state for the fact that Bob’s team lost just because we saw him crying, even if it is irrefutably true that Bob cries when his team loses.
However, other example: I know Bob tries when his favourite team loses. I know Bob is watching his team play. I don’t see Bob, but I do watch the match on TV and I see that his team has lost. Therefore, Bob is crying.
This follows formal logic. We first established that when his team loses, he will definitely cry. We then established that his team lost. The first statement means that the second statement means that Bob will now cry.
(I’m ignoring “clever” answers like “Bob died before the game finished so he’s not actually crying now” because this is just a simple example)
Logic is one of those things that is very difficult to get right, because humans are so innately good at approximating things that they stop to consider the tiny edge cases. We take a 99% certainty as a 100% certainty. Logic refuses to do this, instead only allowing for 100% logical validity and nothing less.
Logic mandates validity in the same sense that mathematics mandates that 3 means _precisely_ 3, not _roughly_ 3 (i.e. an approximation).
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