Logically Speaking

For everyone's benefit, let us avoid romanticizing the days when "everyone" studied some form of logic. Familiarity with the discipline has never implied its consistent or appropriate use. However, now that logic is rarely studied at all, appeals to it are for the most part either amusingly or annoyingly meaningless. Does that seem too harsh? Consider that a speaker appeals to logic; it is unlikely that he himself is familiar with the discipline in any form, and even less likely that a majority of his hearers are. Which makes his appeal to logic about as substantive as an appeal to nano-computation.

But the funny thing about logic is, as much as it is spurned in study, it still retains powerful emotional ties to the popular mind. This emotional tug of logic on the nous of the populace is explicable by a lingering affection for reason; it is ironic, though, since rigorous rationality is the last thing the poster [post-everything] mind desires. Logic is the bomb-shell ex that you sometimes remember fondly but can't stand in person.

More ironic than the poster's incantation of logic in an affectionate though meaningless manner is what he means when he says "logic" or "logical." Even a brief examination of a popular address in which some form of the noun "logic" occurs will reveal that the speaker most likely intends something along the lines of "this makes sense to me." Thus, "This is the only logical way of looking at x" becomes intelligible as "This is the only way of looking at x that makes sense to me." The poster mind has even succeeded in vaporizing logic via the narcissistic ego.

Of course, logic is not yet as arcane a discipline as, say, Latin. The academy still occasionally seeks to implement it--usually in philosophical or theological papers. However, outside scholarly writing, the appeal to logic is usually just a "red herring" on the way to another non sequitur.