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Comment by spenuke | Hacker News Reader

Understanding that "life can't be reduced to some axiomatic system" is a really important part of being a well-rounded human.

But I quibble on calling it a logical fallacy. It is emphatically not a logical fallacy. That's the whole point you're trying to make - which is that logic itself is limited in its ability to capture the totality of human experience.

Other philosophers call this the limits of Reason (capital R) or the failure of the Enlightenment. But calling it 'Logical Fallacy #1' undermines the very lesson you are trying to impart.

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I think the OP used 'logical fallacy' ironically.

But maybe not: Consider this. Many, many formal systems describe behavior and not some underlying truth. The question of whether reality can even be reduced to a formal system is still open.

From the above axioms, we can reasonably conclude that what formal systems prove is provably true only insofar as the axioms reflect underlying reality exactly.

In 'social' formal systems like the one that describes logical fallacies, it is clear that context is inherently lacking, that the axioms are approximations, and that the system cannot be expected to accurately describe reality.

Thus, we can formally conclude that logical fallacies are, well, approximations.

Well, I might be too dense to grasp what you're saying, but I don't really understand it. I'm not sure, for starters, which axioms you're referring to.

It seems worth noting, however, that there is, and there should be, a distinction between formal logical fallacies and informal logical fallacies. The latter are what I have in mind when you use the term "social formal systems".

Mistaking ad hominem, or argument from authority, etc., for a formal fallacy is a huge mistake - the one OP seems to be referring to.

All I'm trying to say here to you is that there is no need to resort to formal systems theory, because the taxonomy of informal fallacies never was meant to be considered illogical in the same way that Affirming the Consequent (a formal fallacy)is.

Well, OP is saying that fallacies in logic are really only fallacies if the assumptions that constitute the definition of that fallacy actually apply to a particular situation. Because situations differ so much, context is critical, and OP is saying that people often incorrectly define real-world social situations as instances of logical fallacies.

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