I was reading through Chuckles (Yes, we'll maintain our secret identities even though everyone knows who we are) recent rash of comments and I thought I'd address his comment about Spock.

All of us, who can even begin to claim we are nerds, surely know the scene in The Wrath of Khan where Spock claims, "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few." The question is, can you reach that conclusion through a strict application of logic? The problem to me, is, can you care about "the good" without an appeal to external sources.

I have been trying to read Russell and Wittgenstein (well, a biography of him) recently and so have a rather narrow view of logical foundations at the moment. Wittgenstein says that we probably can't even express anything about that. Actually, I don't really have a firm enough grasp of him yet to try and bring either of them into the conversation yet. I think if you can accept the idea of good you can try this experiment. I still have trouble seeing how you can logically introduce values into this discussion. Where would they come from?

Alright, there's my deep thought for the day. Have at.

At 8/13/2005 11:12 AM,  Anonymous said...

Now that I am home and reading this, instead if at work where my mind is rapidly pounded into tapioca pudding by the twin forces of the immature coworker and psychiatirist pseudogrammar, I must confess that my previous post on this topic was rather stupid. Spock always calimed to belogical and all that, but he was constantly acting like a friend and pal instead of a logic computer. I must state that I received a D+ in Logic and almost never finished a homework assignment. I guess the question really is whether logic is a tool like morality or something eternal like ethics.

 

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