Is an illogical world madness or wisdom?

Tal: You said that “A=A” is a good starting point to think about logic. But why should I care about logic?

Mu: Logic? Another mess! Our life is full of confused people.

Tal: Messy business here? I do not believe you. It is probably a boring topic.

Mu: Imagine a world where the laws of logic are invalid and tell me about the consequences.

Tal: Ok, in the absence of the identity law A = Not A. Things would not be equal to themselves. A cow would be a cow no more and a dollar suddently has not value. What an identity crisis!

Mu: What about the law of contradiction?

Tal: Aristotle said, "One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time." If, in that world, we could see that something is and it is not simultaneously, then we ended up again into another huge identity crisis. No way of figuring out head from tail.

Mu: What about law of the excluded middle?

Tal: It states that every proposition is either true or false. In this case, we could not separated true from false. This is a deep knowledge crisis; we would be paralized because learning and actions would null. -It feels even as we would have a moral crisis because how to distinguish right from wrong. How come I feel that true and false belong to the same network that right and wrong belong to?

Mu: What is this telling us?

Tal: That in a world that lacks logic all things would dissolve into themselves. This world would be covered by ignorance. Clearly, the first two tell us that our world would not be possible and the second, that we would not be possible either. We live neccessarily in a logical universe.

Mu: It seems that logic tell us a lot about the world and us. We live in a world that to us appear logical. In other words, a world that makes sense to us because an illogical world is really unthinkable. We cannot even think much about such a world. If you find yourself surprised with paradoxes or illogical views, you better consider that maybe you are confused and need more clarity. Maybe you better stop drinking.

Tal: To be illogical is either a sign of madness or of confusion. A point in case is Meister Eckhart when he says, “All things are contained in the One, by virtue of the fact that it is one. For all multiplicity is one, and is one thing, and is in and through the One. . . The One is not distinct from all things. Therefore all things in the fullness of being are in the One by virtue of its indistinction and unity.” [Sermon LW XXIX]

Mu: What a theological mess running around logic! The many is the one and the one is the many…I’d better hold my wallet.