A. "Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence"

There are two parts of logic: truth and validity. At first glance, it seems to be more than possible to have both of these aspects; after all, there must be some statements that everyone can agree are true, and there must be a way to combine these statements that allows the creation of a new and unflinchingly true statement.

Let us start with the second aspect of logic, validity, in our examination. Aristotle created the art of syllogisms, the method of combining statements universally acknowledged to be true (premises) to establish new statements that must therefore also be acknowledged as truth. If one followed the syllogism rules he (discovered? created?), one could prove any point one wanted. This seems to make sense: If all of A is B, and all of B is C, then therefore all of A is C. If we accept the premises (all of A is B, all of B is C) of as truth, I doubt many people could successfully argue that the conclusion (all of A is C) is incorrect.

This is from where the "confidence" part of the quote comes. If your premises are correct and you follow the rules of logic, then you can confidently say that your conclusions are correct. (Hm, there seems to be a syllogism of sorts in my previous sentence... Let's hope it's not too invalid.)

So far, the possibility of logic to be right has relied on a very big "if": the ability for any premise to be universally and unequivocally true. It is a question that philosophers, theologians, scientists, and mathematicians (the names "Euclid" and "Lobachevski" ring any bells?) have grappled with for ages. Some people may think that of course there are unquestionably true premises: two parallel lines will never touch each other. They say that such statements are self evidently true, and by slowly building off of these sorts of premises all sorts of arguments may be made.

Now, these arguments may be valid and may appear to be true, but will we ever really *know* if something is true? If a statement is self evidently true, it's a statement that can't be proven, and if it can't be proven, how can we ever know for a fact that it's true? The answer is, we can't. We can only instinctually believe that they're true, and the whole point of logic is to eliminate instinctual belief in favor of hard, cold, scientific proof. There will always be a challenge to any premise, and if we can't prove a premise, how are we supposed let it go and believe that it's self evidently true? These premises are possibilities, and usually very likely ones, but we can't ever definitively know their truthfulness.

Our logical arguments may be valid, sound arguments that would be true if the premises were true. However, no premise can ever unequivocally be proven true, and therefore any logical argument may be considered (at least partly) false. An arguer can be confident, but they can't be definitively correct.

I agree with the first one that logic is the art of going wrong with confidence. With logical proofs, you can prove many things to be right, even if they are false. Things that seem logical can also be false. This is how people can argue things that they know are wrong, but can still make a logical argument. Or, how people can preform actions that seem like bad ideas to us, but to the person preforming them seem logical.

A) Logic is the art of going wrong but with confidence

I think that logic isn't a stand alone guarentee of credulity, if anything it can be a useful tool to weed out irrational errors. Basically, this istatement is saying that people instill a lot of confidence in logic, despite being wrong, because they believe that with logic there is always a final and definite answer that cannot be argued. However, although logic always has an answer, it doesn’t really consider emotional or other environmental effects as they are not definite consequences on an action. If you try to apply logical thought to things totally outside its capacity to understand, it becomes a defective thought. That’s how logic easily goes wrong. But where does the confidence part come in? Well, since logic is already drawn out for you and has a final answer that you can’t argue against, it makes one feel confident in their answer because they know, or they think they know, that it is impossible to argue and be wrong. It’s easy to feel confident and well-assured in trusting in something that cannot be argued, but what people don’t consider is that there are things “outside the box” that can defy and prove logic to be wrong.

Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence?

This is a really difficult question or quote to analyze or dissect so that it can make sense. I feel like the logic can be manipulted so that it can sway towards a persons argument. As many people posted an example of a logic that was truthful but not valid, it was formed to make the proof or logic make sense for their argument. Is manipulation a part of confidence? In aristolean geometry, probably.
But learning the truth and validity of logic you have to try and try again to make it right. That involves confidence. Confidence is a weird word for me to associate with logic, to me its like a contridiction because my definition of confindence is odd to apply here. Do you have to believe in your answer so much so that you manipulate it to make it right? To prove a proof you need to demonstrate the proper format and principles of the logic to make it right.

In all honesty i have no idea how to answer either quotes. But im trying here.

What does confidence have to do with logic?
I can see that proving something can bring confidence and learning the knowledge needed for a subject/practice that comes with it makes confidence in the knowedge. But if your wrong and you thought you were right... you would be wrong. Wounded pride? so being wrong makes you more humble than confident therefore leading the proover to be wrong until prooven right.

geez.
feel free to explain to me in class mr B.

“Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.”

I think that it is quite difficult to sayy that logic is the art of going wrong with confidence because there are many times that you can confidently use logic to make your point. Although premises are often disproved through logic, it is because the premise will not entirely relate to the argument. For example:
All cars are nissan
A honda civic is not a nissan
(therefor) A honda civic is not a Car.

This premise is not accurate because it does not include all cars, not just because the author of the premise lacks the confidence to call it a car. For a person to say that you must not have confidence if you use logic, then they are using logic that is not logical. Understand??

Logic and Truth are Not the Same

“Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.”

Logic is a very hard topic to discuss because of the difference between logic and truth. Something could be logically true but that doesn't mean that it has to be the truth. Consider this:

All dogs are black.
Ringo is a dog.
(Therefore) Ringo is black.

Now this postulate is logical, but not truthful. As humans, we know that not all dogs are black (and if you know my dog Ringo, you know he's not black), but the statement is still correct based on the "rules governing validity." This is where the logic comes in. For something to be logical, it doesn't need to be truthful, it just needs to be correct, in regards to the "rules governing validity." Relating back to the quote, this postulate or any other logical postulate (that is not truthful) is "going wrong" because its not truthful. But, it's "going wrong with confidence," because it is logically correct. Basically, it's wrong in regards to the truth but it's confident in the fact that it's logically correct. This use of deductive reasoning is helpful because it can prove a statement correct, but the problem is that the statement doesn't always need to be truthful.

Logical yet...

A.)
In today’s world logic is synonymous with truth; however, this is not always correct. Logic is very generalized and tends to never take in exceptions or details of the situation.
For instance you could have the logical statement:
1. It is illegal to run a red light.
2. Ambulances run red lights.
3. Ambulances are breaking the law.

Logic does not look at the details of the situation. Aristotle’s logic is very black and white and life is rarely black and white. In fact it is usually some shade of gray. Logic; however, does sound reasonable and so we become confident that logical statements are true. This is what J.W. Krutch meant by "going wrong with confidence”. we may be incorrect in our logical statements but we will be confident that they are true because they sound so logical. The ability to go wrong with confidence comes from logic’s ability to gain conclusions without looking at the details. What is being said sounds correct but only because it is such a general statement. The confidence that our logic is correct leads to us continuing with the incorrect logical statements. When you have one error you will keep on building on that error and then everything that comes from that original error will be untrue.