Quote A

American writer, critic, and naturalist J.W. Krutch once said “Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.” While I certainly don't believe that logic is solely the art of going wrong, I do believe that confidence is a big part of logic and that while logic may prove validity, it does not necessarily always prove truth. Over the past week or so I have learned the difference between validity and truth. Before going more in depth with the issue, i always sort of regarded validity and truth as the same thing. I now know, however, that something can be valid but not true. Deductive reasoning seems to instill confidence in people because it makes sense, but that doesn't mean it is the truth. A conclusion is drawn from two premises that are accepted as true by the reasoner based on his or her knowledge and experiences, but because the truth of these premises are based on the individual, they do not have to be true. For example there was a psych study done in which researchers tried to convince people that brushing your teeth was bad. Now, we all know that's not true, but when presented with a logical explanation and maybe some statistics, one would be surprised at the number of people who actually believed that brushing your teeth was harmful. The statement was proven to these people to be valid by logic and deductive reasoning, but it still wasn't the truth. So while confident in their logic, these people were still wrong.