Merely human logic?
In my decades of university teaching, I often heard students remark that the logic we covered in class was “merely human.” Such remarks usually served as an escape hatch during theological debates. “It doesn’t matter if the concept of God is logically inconsistent,” they might argue. “Logic is merely a human construct.”
Yet it’s highly doubtful that logic could be merely human. For one thing, empirical research strongly suggests that many nonhuman animals can reason logically. And as any Star Trek fan knows, Mr. Spock always credited his Vulcan side, not his human side, for his hyper-logical mindset! But beyond these examples lies a stronger, a priori reason to doubt the claim. Those who claim that logic is merely human thereby imply that if humans didn’t exist, then logic wouldn’t exist. To them, I pose this question: If humans didn’t exist, would logic still exist?
Either answer spells trouble for their claim. If they answer “Yes,” then they imply that logic isn’t merely human since it would still exist even if humans didn’t. If they answer “No,” they’re logically deducing that negative conclusion from the supposition that humans don’t exist. And why that conclusion? What stops a human-dependent logic from existing in a world without any humans? Only logic! Logic must therefore exist even in a world in which we suppose it doesn’t exist.
In short, the claim “Logic is merely human” undermines itself. We can’t even make sense of the claim unless we reject its implicit assumption that logic would vanish without us.
