What would the world be like if we lived by logic alone?

Question

No religion. Morality makes sense to have. Only purpose in life is to advance as a society. What do you think?

Answer 1

Sounds like a very simplistic and immature vision of "logic".

IF you believe that "logic" will make everyone make the "right" decision, then you will be sadly mistaken.

For instance, LOGICALLY I can reduce my driving time to work from 40 minutes to 20 minutes by merely doubling my driving speed. That makes sense to me since it's logical to conserve my time. However, it fails to take into account a near infinite number of interactions.

It is PRECISELY the presence of the "near infinite number of interactions" that will cause "logic" to fail. Logic works ONLY when all of the interactions are KNOWN and taken into consideration.

Given enough interactions, there becomes no way to apply logic.

Answer 2

The concept itself is illogical. Pure rationalism (logic), pure empiricism (observed fact), or the combination of the two can tell you many things -- how things really are and how to make them the way they you want them to be. But they can't decide, purely on their own, how things SHOULD be -- that is, they can provide ways to a goal but not the goal itself. Such a world would therefore be devoid of direction, action, and purpose.

Even advancing society is taken from outside pure logic, and logic can't define on its own what advancement is.

Thus the illogical nature of the whole concept -- we could understand by logic alone (hypothetically), but not LIVE according to logic alone.

Answer 3

Logic alone.. I would rather not live in that world. I prefer love, and passion and the emotions that accompany inspiration. I would prefer a world of tolerance and love, a world with no hate. I could not stand to live in a sterile world of logic.
Forget religion for a moment and think of human relations. Would you pick your mate (or mates) by logic or love (or lust). I want the freedom to choose how I feel, not how I exist... I don't ever want to be a robot.

Answer 4

Seems like an ideal to me. Just because we choose logic doesn't mean we must eschew the fact we do have an emotional existence, it just means we choose logical ways to express or not express it.

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Love is logical and can be proven.

As I said above, we would still have emotions, we'd just react to them a little more rationally.

Charity and kindness fall under morality, and logic does not deny morality. Without logic, there is no morality. It is religion that voids morality -- religions don't give you the tools to make choices, they tell you do this or die, don't do that or die... that's not morality, that's dogma.

Answer 5

Far worse than it currently is now.

Logic is a subset of reason -- a particular tool in the toolbox for evaluating propositions. Taking you very literally, if the world lived by logic ALONE, we'd have a very boring existence. Most of what we talk about everyday is not propositional. It is non-rational statements of feelings. (Non-rational is not the same as irrational).

For example, if I were to mention to a waiter that "I would like my steak medium-rare," that's a non-rational statement, because there's no proposition or logical proof associated with that. I'm simply reporting my feelings, which are not subject to deductive proof by anyone else.

If, however, the world lived by *reason* alone, it would be a much better place. Reason allows non-rational statements so long as they are not used as justification for rational propositions. Things like "I like my steak medium-rare, so it will be illegal for anyone to have their steak anything but medium-rare" would be thrown out immediately. Non-rational feelings cannot support rational propositions.

That would be a great world to live in.

Answer 6

Logic and religion are complimentary, not mutually exclusive. And religion is purposeful in creating an advanced society here and after. That is our main purpose in this short and imperfect life

Answer 7

I think you can't live by logic alone. Morality is important but you do not need religion or god for that.

Answer 8

The world would be unrecognisable.

The benefits of removing all of our most illogical monkey instincts - the tendency to follow leaders blindly; the notion that a country of hundreds of millions must be led by a single male, etc - would be enormous.

Just consider how much would change if we dropped all of the junk behaviour wrapped around the fact that sex causes pregnancy. In a world of perfect contraception NONE of it makes sense.

We'll never manage such a step by ourselves, alas.

CD

Answer 9

I think we need both religion and logic...It pretty much keeps everything balanced.

Answer 10

Like the planet Vulcan.