Logical Cap'n

That made me think ... are humans naturally inclined towards logical thinking? Or is logical thinking something that must be acquired ... a trained habit of the mind?

I'm very much with you on that it's something learned, I have seen this first hand over the last nine years and a half of my daughter growing up. There is no doubt that Santa Claus can fit down a chimney and visit all of the worlds good children in one night. And of course it's also why religions desperately seek to get to us when we are children, when disbelief is suspended and our minds can be molded, we can be told.

But what is logic? Which type are we talking about here? There is formal symbolic and mathematical logic, on which modern mathematics and computers are built and then there is the woolley philosophical logic - which is what I think we are talking about here (please correct me if I am wrong).

Both are based on axioms, but what axioms are the failures you witnessed built upon? By axioms I mean "If A then B, so if A is the case then B is the case". Are you saying that the perpetrators of anti-logic were agreeing and disagreeing with the axioms at the same time? In my opinion, this is almost ok in philosophical logic ... why do I say that? Because the axioms that philosophical logic are built upon are so woolley to begin with that they lend themselves to multiple interpretations, often depending on which way the wind is blowing. But don't be trying such axiomatic bending on formal symbolic logic please !

Thinking about it, I have a lot of disdain for philosophical logic, it's often built upon a movable feast. Spock used this type of logic all the time.