To each question there are a million answers, and nobody can know which ones are right, so everyone has to find their own answer.
Logical questions are kind of boring since logical boundaries are set in a way that there is only one answer that is logically right. Let's take math as an example, which relies heavily on logic.

1+1=2? Not neccessarily. Only with common assumptions this is true. Without making assumptions one can not know if this is true, even if your assumption is as trivial as "1+1=2". You can not know if 1+1=2 is true, because since everything it stands upon is just an assumption. We assume it is true because it has been proven usefull to assume it is true. It's kind of ironic that math tries to be non-empirical and prove everything through logic, when in itself, it is still empirical (so it cannot be non-empirical, logically speaking)

Logic makes the world simpler than it is through assumming 'trivial' thinghs.
When you go into the quantum level of physics, 'normal' logic does not apply anymore. Everytime you observe something you change it, since to observe it you must in some way touch it (and even seeing it means 'touching' it, because to be seen, photons have to crash into your observed particle and get rebounded from it, therefore changing its current state.) Without observing one cannot know the state of the particle, but with observing one cannot know if the state is true. So all observations are merely what they are - observations, assumptions of the world.

How can anyone know the truth? I am not the one who will give you the answers, i only ask questions, and you have to find your answers for yourself, just as i find my own answers.

TheJan--

Gilbert Ryle put it best when he remarked that

"The world neither observes nor flouts the rules of inference any more than it observes or flouts the rules of bridge, prosody or viticulture. The stars in their courses do not commit or avoid fallacies any more than they revoke or follow suit."

You're also making mathematics sound like a matter of intuition, as if we magically apprehend an expression, and want to know if our expression magically corresponds to anything. If anything, mathematics is about writing up deductive proofs. For example, are there infinitely many Mersenne primes? Sure, you can make your own answer, make your own truth, but that doesn't mean it is true. Nobody can count an infinite amount of things, so we need to be clever and use thought. At this time in 2010, no one has proven the conjecture about Mersenne primes true or false. No one knows yet.

Mathematics is not in any sense empirical. It isn't like I can observe 5 organisms on the left side of a slide under a microscope, and then count 7 organisms on the right side of the slide, and recount them all and find 13, and thereby prove that 5+7=13. That's a category mistake, an application of induction where induction does not apply.

Induction in contrast does involve a lot of guesswork. Take the theory of evolution. Sure, it is logically possible that creationism may be a true theory. The evidence though shows that the geographical distribution of existing organisms isn't uniform, it shows homologous structures in different species, and it shows sequence as opposed to randomness in the fossil record. That existing species are survivors from earlier species explains the most particulars with the least theory, so it has a high probability. While something like 911 conspiracy theories, where we need a lot of theories to explain a few particulars, is probably false.

Shave your mind with Ockham's Razor. Practice good mental hygiene, yo!

Oh, i am sorry if it sounded like that, and i admit that it is possible to interpret it like that.

I am not in any way disregarding the concept of logic and mathmathmatics. Empirical... is the wrong word in the wrong context. At the very base level, there are axioms, which are by definition "thinghs you don't doubt and don't have to be proven". And that is what all other thinghs build upon.
I meant that you can not prove it is 'right' because at the base level there are assumptions(definitions), therefore, if those assumptions (or definitions) are false, mathmatics in its whole would be false. Since those are definitons, we can neither prove them right or wrong, therefore we cannot prove if mathmatics as a whole is 'true' or 'false'.
Because mathmatics has proved usefull, we use it. It works and is practical (and it works because in it's whole, it is logical. If those few definitions at the base level are right, then the rest is true too). That's what i meant with 'empirical'. It has proven usefull over time because it has been used many times (and worked), and therefore we use it.

Let's assume there is a tea pot out in space, and noone can observe it, because it is so far away that no telescopes can spot it. Is it there? Most people would say no, because you obviously can't prove it, and since they are not used to a tea pot in space so they think it is higly improbable. But once somebody questions for example the existence of a "greater force" (God) or the essence of mathmatics, there is an uproar and people get opinionated.
Why is that so? Because the 'internal order' of most people does not depend on if a tea pot out in space exists (So it's no problem if you doubt it). Many people believe in god, and questioning god would be questioning their own beliefs, which most people are not comfortable with. So is questioning mathmatics, since so many people rely on it.

I was pointing out that nothing can ever be truly known. Which is why i cannot give you any answers, if the answers have to be true.
We can make assumptions and act practically. There is no right and wrong, really. There is practical and impractical, usefull and unusefull, probable and improbable.
I am more comfortable with doubting something than with believing something that is put under my nose just because somebody tells me it is right. Because that is what i call freedom. To be able to think what you think is right. Not because someone tells you to believe it.

For example, are there infinitely many Mersenne primes? Sure, you can make your own answer, make your own truth, but that doesn't mean it is true. Nobody can count an infinite amount of things, so we need to be clever and use thought. At this time in 2010, no one has proven the conjecture about Mersenne primes true or false. No one knows yet.

TheJan--

How you sound makes no difference to me. *What* you're saying implies that I don't know that I'm a man. That I don't know the Bulls play in Chicago. That I don't know that more government health care recently passed in the United States. That I don't know how to solve first order differential equations. All useful delusions, right?

Ah, yet usefulness is not truth, and truth is not usefulness. Counterexamples are easy to provide. I can give false information to the enemy during war, which is a useful falsehood. And some truths are completely useless, like the number of Mersenne primes, which has a unique albeit unknown answer.

I'll give you credit for being a good student though. What you're repeating is standard teaching from our intellectual authorities-- reality is a myth, and reason is a superstition. Everything is determined by prior factors-- race, class, gender, whatever-- our assumptions. With this ethos, we can never say, p implies q. That is imperialistic, racist, sexist, logocentric, and mean. Rather, we say that given conceptual scheme A, p implies q. Or-- according to decision A, p implies q. Or we can just scarequote a success word -- p "implies" q. We "know" that q "follows" from p. These are symptoms not only of cultural senility, but diseased thought. It is what David Stove called logical sabotage by epistemic embedding (whose perspective?) or logical sabotage by volitional embedding (who decides?) We ask non-questions, and derive non-answers from them.

We witness the same thing when it is told that induction presupposes that the past resembles the future, or it presupposes that casual laws are invariant, or that it presupposes observables resemble unobservables. The obvious mistake? These are conclusions of induction, not presuppositions of it, whatever a presupposition might mean.

The irony is that the relativist stuff goes out the window during the most routine tasks, but is believed with vigor during the most dangerous. Weird, I know. For example, no one is a relativist when we're refueling our automobiles, or wiping our asses. But if bloodthirsty jihadists are threatening to destroy us-- oh, who is to judge? How do we really know if they really want to harm us? Can't we see things from their perspective? What if we are really the bad guys? That makes no sense to me, because relativism would suggest that self-preservation would kick in at some point, not self-paralysis. We'd hope relativists would be at least a little bit self-serving, since they think there is no truth. Am I right? Am I right? How can we explain this?

Ah, here's the answer. Our culture is getting feminized-- more apologetic, more submissive, more needy, more sensitive, more accomodating, more compassionate, more sharing, more tolerant, more cooperative, and more deferential toward others. This is why naked self-interest is frowned upon, just as naked logic is frowned upon. It might make others feel uncomfortable! Oh noes!

You're thinking we can deliver ontological consequences from epistemological rules, or vice versa. Can't do this-- this is the entire point of Hume's philosophy.

How you sound makes no difference to me. *What* you're saying implies that I don't know that I'm a man. That I don't know the Bulls play in Chicago. That I don't know that more government health care recently passed in the United States. That I don't know how to solve first order differential equations. All useful delusions, right?

'll give you credit for being a good student though. What you're repeating is standard teaching from our intellectual authorities-- reality is a myth, and reason is a superstition.

Everything is determined by prior factors-- race, class, gender, whatever-- our assumptions. With this ethos, we can never say, p implies q. That is imperialistic, racist, sexist, logocentric, and mean. Rather, we say that given conceptual scheme A, p implies q. Or-- according to decision A, p implies q. Or we can just scarequote a success word -- p "implies" q. We "know" that q "follows" from p. These are symptoms not only of cultural senility, but diseased thought. It is what David Stove called logical sabotage by epistemic embedding (whose perspective?) or logical sabotage by volitional embedding (who decides?) We ask non-questions, and derive non-answers from them.

We witness the same thing when it is told that induction presupposes that the past resembles the future, or it presupposes that casual laws are invariant, or that it presupposes observables resemble unobservables. The obvious mistake? These are conclusions of induction, not presuppositions of it, whatever a presupposition might mean.

The irony is that the relativist stuff goes out the window during the most routine tasks, but is believed with vigor during the most dangerous. For example, no one is a relativist when we're refueling our automobiles, or wiping our asses

That makes no sense to me, because relativism would suggest that self-preservation would kick in at some point, not self-paralysis. We'd hope relativists would be at least a little bit self-serving, since they think there is no truth. Am I right? Am I right? How can we explain this?

Ah, here's the answer. Our culture is getting feminized-- more apologetic, more submissive, more needy, more sensitive, more accomodating, more compassionate, more sharing, more tolerant, more cooperative, and more deferential toward others. This is why naked self-interest is frowned upon, just as naked logic is frowned upon. It might make others feel uncomfortable! Oh noes!

I don't think i believe anything anymore, though... i am weird.

How you sound makes no difference to me. *What* you're saying implies that I don't know that I'm a man. That I don't know the Bulls play in Chicago. That I don't know that more government health care recently passed in the United States. That I don't know how to solve first order differential equations. All useful delusions, right?

But i agree that all this theorethical stuff is not much use in everyday life. Knowing that nothing can be really known is not something that brings you forward much in life - we have to make assumptions and believe they are right (have to make our own little axioms), otherwise we cannot make decisions.
Also, doubting everything can be really tiring over time. I do it this way: In the present moment, i do not think very much (I like to follow the "flow of actions"), but I sometimes reflect over what i did on that day, if i was satisfied with my decisions, what i think of those thinghs i did observe. Sometimes i come up with the weirdest thinghs... I used to not go over red lights because... they were red lights. After reflecting and noticing this, i began to go over red lights if there was no car in sight. I wouldn't drive over red lights with a car or a motorbike if i can avoid it.

In the circumstances that life presents me, my decisions can be right or wrong, but not on a global level. A global level would be like a dogma, like you say "lying is wrong", and that is always true, in every situation, at all times, and on every place in the whole universum.
Since i cannot know the future, and therefore cannot know the consequences of my actions, the best way to live... is to live.
In the end, i will take responsibility for my actions, may they be morally right or wrong. Everything comes back somehow, one way or another, sometimes now, sometimes in the future. No action has no effect and every action affects not only the object, but the subject too. I call this rule the rule of actio and reactio - Newton stated it for objects turning forces against each other - each force triggers an 'antiforce' that goes into the opposite direction and is equally strong as the 'original force'. If you shoot a shotgun, the force can throw you backwards. I extend it to people too. Every action you take leaves a mark, like a shadow of your action, in you. Some choices can leave a deep wound in you, and you will always have a scar. Because of that it is important to do what you think is right.

Actually, i hate to always have to explain my actions and decisions to everyone. Everyone seems to want to know why i did those thinghs. I always have to justify myself, and i hate it. I am bad at explaining why i do thinghs. And they won't take a "I felt like doing it." or "It seemed like a good idea at the time" as an answer. I am better at actually doing thinghs. Why can't they just let me live?

TheJan--

There was a time where I struggled with these issues. I've been in this discussion many, many times, and have poured many hours of thought into it. Even Monty Python had fun with it:



The problems enter because we haven't asked ourselves what is a question, or what is a doubt.

What is a doubt? Is it just flapping our flips, merely making the sound, "I doubt it?" For example, someone says 2+2=4. "No it doesn't!" The Earth has one moon. "Not true!" The chemical composition of water is H2O. "That's what YOU think!" I'm sure we agree that all of these are denials. But are they doubts?

As Wittgenstein remarked someplace, a genuine doubt presupposes a way of removing the doubt. Otherwise we're just making sounds, or typing symbols, without requesting anything from the other party or ourselves. C.S. Peirce independently made the same observation when comparing rational doubt with sham doubt, or "paper" doubt.

Questions are the same way-- every question is a seeking. When we ask questions, we suppose there is some way of providing an answer, even if the answer is unknown. As Rumsfeld worded it once, there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. The number of Mersenne primes is a known unknown, for example. We know what proofs are, we know what Mersenne primes are, but we haven't discovered a proof which demonstrates their exact number.

In contrast, if there is no way to answer a question, we're not asking a question at all. For example, what has a greater density, water or lead? We can set up experiments and find out. But if someone asks "why is there something rather than nothing?" like Heidegger, or "How is nature possible?" like Kant, we will not deliver answers, because we're not asking genuine questions. People used to ask Bertrand Russell, "what is the meaning of life?" He'd respond with, "what is the meaning of, "the meaning of life?"" Philosophical problems usually arise, to quote Wittgenstein again, when "language goes on a holiday." Don't get lost in the words!

Saul--

Logic applies to performers, not to inanimate objects. Thinking logically is like scoring a touchdown-- it is by definition a success. It is not a process-- it is not like we can say, "I tried deduce q from p, but didn't finish." We can't deduce fallaciously, or know untruthfully, for these are contradictions in terms.

Logical necessities imply nothing about the world. And vice versa: events can be effects, but they cannot be implications. I can’t pin a ‘therefore’ on an avalanche. I can’t flag a cough with a Q.E.D.

TheJan rightly suspects skepticism is circular-- a country with no coinage cannot have counterfeiters. Historicism is in worse shape. Here's the dilemma. Is it always true that our behavior is culturally determined? If no, then sometimes we're predetermined, and at others we're free, which contradicts historicism. On the other hand, if we're always determined, then we're affirming something eternal and time-independent, which is the negation of historicism. Historicism is necessarily incoherent.

Logic applies to performers, not to inanimate objects. Thinking logically is like scoring a touchdown-- it is by definition a success. It is not a process-- it is not like we can say, "I tried deduce q from p, but didn't finish." We can't deduce fallaciously, or know untruthfully, for these are contradictions in terms.

Logical necessities imply nothing about the world. And vice versa: events can be effects, but they cannot be implications. I can’t pin a ‘therefore’ on an avalanche. I can’t flag a cough with a Q.E.D.