Logic Is Not a Social Contract

In the latest edition of Talk Heathen, a project of the Atheist Center of Austin (ACA), host Eric Murphy suggested in a conversation with a self-described "agnostic theist" that logic is nothing more than a useful social contract rather an inescapable feature of the world, thought, and language. As he put it (at about 1:16:30).

We're both operating on a set of assumptions. One of those assumptions is that the laws of logic hold.... I'm granting that to you in order to have this conversation and you're granting that to me in order to have this conversation. Moving from there, we can behave in a logical manner. Yes, it sucks we can't prove the laws of logic because we would need the laws of logic to prove it, but that doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater. It just means we understand and accept that we have a core set of assumptions that we're allowing each other to have in order to move forward in talking about the world.

In precise terms, that makes absolutely no sense.

By stating that the laws of logic are a "set of [presumably arbitrary] assumptions," Murphy implies that other assumptions are available, although perhaps they would not be as useful for "talking about the world." I'd like him to propose a possible, if less useful, alternative. Do we merely agree to assume for the sake of discussion that nothing can be both A and not-A at the same time in the same respect merely because it has worked so far? If so, why, have a discussion about anything? What is conversation trying to accomplish? 

Murphy claims that he and his discussant "grant" each other logic in order to "move forward in talking about the world." Were we not using logic before we did this granting? How could that be? And what would it mean not to grant it? How would one intelligibly withhold consent from this social contract, or propose other terms, if logic didn't hold independently of and prior to the contract? And how does adopting arbitrary assumptions about the world move us forward in talking about it? How much would "moving forward" be worth in that case? Or is conversation just a verbal hug?

Ironically Murphy implicitly acknowledges these points (without understanding them) when he says,"We can't prove the laws of logic because we would need the laws of logic to prove [them]." But why does that "suck"? Logic is axiomatic, that is, self-validating: to deny the law of identity--to declare it false rather than true--is to contradict oneself. But to Murphy (and his apparent mentor Matt Dillahunty) that's a bug, not a feature. Murphy concedes we couldn't converse without logic, and he's right. He just doesn't understand how right he is in this respect. Language is a social phenomenon that can't even be imagined apart from logic because the world is logical. It's not just assumed to be. Any statement one makes implies that its contradictory is not being made. Logic is no mere assumption; it is the very stuff of language and thought and the world.  

We realize something extremely important when we recognize that we'd have to use the law of identity and its corollaries excluded middle and noncontradiction in any attempt to refute them. That's not circular reasoning, as Murphy suggests; it is logic's axiomatic status on undeniable display. Have these atheists never read or read about Aristotle?

If this is how purported champions of reason insist on rebutting theism, they will fail. Bad philosophy will not help the cause. After all, the goal shouldn't be merely to encourage nonbelief in God or gods; it should be to encourage thoroughgoing rationalism (not a supposed skepticism), of which atheism is but one implication.

"Logic fills the world." We cannot even imagine a line between the logical world and something else--what?--on the "other side" because we cannot imagine or think illogically. Nothing is on the other side because there can be no other side and thus no line.