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Thought Itself

The History of Philosophy, Logic & The Mind with Eric Gerlach

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      • Mill & Boole
      • Carroll & Alice
      • Venn & Peano
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      • Heraclitus
      • Aristotle
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      • Mozi & Xunzi
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      • Kant
      • Mill
      • Nietzsche
      • Wittgenstein
      • Fanon, hooks & Said
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      • Plato’s Republic
      • Aristotle’s Politics
      • Machiavelli
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      • Thoreau
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      • Anarchism
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    • Buddha – Phil 16
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        • Augustine
        • Dionysius
        • Eriugena
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        • Aquinas
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        • Cusanus
        • Ficino
      • Protestantism
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      • Philosophy of Furniture
      • Rue Morgue Murders
      • Marie Roget
      • Purloined Letter
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        • Jean-Paul Sartre
        • Franz Fanon
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        • Jean-Claude Levi-Strauss
        • Jacques Lacan
        • Roland Barthes
        • Michel Foucault
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        • Gilles Deleuze
        • Jean Baudrillard
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        • Immanuel Kant
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      • The Pre-Socratics
        • Pythagoras
        • Xenophanes
        • Heraclitus
        • Parmenides & Zeno
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        • Empedocles
        • Democritus
      • Socrates
      • Diogenes
      • Plato
        • The Apology
        • The Crito
        • The Meno
        • The Symposium
        • The Republic
        • The Timaeus
        • The Parmenides
        • The Theaetetus
      • Aristotle
        • Metaphysics
        • On The Soul
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        • Politics
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        • Aenesidemus
        • Sextus Empiricus
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      • Stoicism
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        • Marcus Aurelius
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      • Ptahhotep
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        • Nyaya Debate
        • 4 Sources of Knowledge
        • 3 Ways of Words
        • Forms of Proof
        • Fallacies
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      • Jainism
        • The Tirthankaras
        • 3 Points of View
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        • The Leaky Boat
        • Nonviolence
        • The Whiteclad & Skyclad
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        • The Monkey Mind
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What Is Logic & Why Talk To Anyone?

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ericgerlach79

Gerlach is German and rhymes with bear-lock. I was born and raised in the Haight Ashbury of San Francisco, moved to Berkeley for college and grad school, with an MA in History of Religion from the Graduate Theological Union of Berkeley, and now teach Philosophy and the history of human thought at Berkeley City College. I have taught Intro Philosophy, Ethics, Logic, Asian Philosophy, Greek Philosophy, Modern European Philosophy and Social & Political Philosophy there for the past several years, and it has been a joy.

Author archive Author website
February 1, 2021

Philosophy

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2 thoughts on “What Is Logic & Why Talk To Anyone?”

Add yours

  1. Warren

    February 8, 2021 at 4:24 am

    Reply

    I’m back! Quite enjoyable. I like Wittgenstein’s later idea of logic being something more culturally specific, rather than some sort of universal truth-checker. It definitely makes logic more appealing. While I did a decent chunk of truth tables in math, it never completely clicked. This approach seems more philosophical than it does ‘mathy’. This in mind, I think it’s very reasonable to assume all humans functions through a sort of pragmatic ‘math’ based map that includes more variables such as emotion, temperament, norms, etc combining to make cultural idiosyncratic ‘logic’s.

    At least, this is me attempting to paraphrase what I thought you were saying.

    Side note, with some of your comments about psychology: I used to be quite fond of the all things depth-psychology, reading much of Jung’s collected works and enjoying Lacan’s thought as well. While I don’t want to throw out the babies with the bathwater (as some of the babies are quite useful, pragmatically speaking), I am now highly skeptical of any claim to any sort of ‘unconscious’.

    I kinda of follow the thought of post-jungian James Hillam here, who thought that ideas like ‘complexes’, ‘ego’ and ‘unconscious’ were concretized and turned into a set of metaphysics that pretends to be empiricism. I mean… I don’t know about you, but I have never met an ‘ego’… (and to some extent, I think that’s what Zen might respond with to these sort of ideas)

    At best, whether its based on mirrors/language, or some convoluted claim to evolutionary platonic forms, most depth psychologies are best treated as phenomenologies.

    Well, anyway, that’s just my personal rant I make to myself some mornings.

    I will try to catch up on your logic talks, and maybe the analytic & continental lectures, but I promise nothing.

    Interested to see what you do with logic and Zen, if that should come up!

    Reply
    • ericgerlach79

      February 9, 2021 at 1:47 am

      Reply

      I’m glad you’re back. I am very into Wittgenstein’s criticism of Freud, and he would say anything unconscious is overthinking it. The self is the interweaving of several things, often the tactile sensation of being a self, which is overlooked to pay attention to anything, but also glimpses of hands, the face in the mirror (hello, Lacan!) and the sound of one’s voice, even the tactile experience of the sound of one’s voice as it overlaps with the sound, and imagining oneself occasionally. Much of the self is given in the situation, not an inner mental conception in any way, conscious or unconscious. That’s what Wittgenstein seems to say in his later work, and it fits in amazing ways with Zen. I am going to make more Zen videos tomorrow.

      Reply

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  • Courses
    • Intro – Phil 1
    • Logic – Phil 10
      • Why Talk At All?
      • Talk & Think
      • India & Gautama
      • Greece & Aristotle
      • China & Hui Shi
      • Islam & Avicenna
      • Europe & Aquinas
      • Kant & Hegel
      • Poe & Dupin
      • Mill & Boole
      • Carroll & Alice
      • Venn & Peano
      • Frege & Russell
      • Wittgenstein
      • Fallacies & Puzzles
      • Analytic & Continental
    • Ethics – Phil 31A
      • Ethics? Where?!?
      • Egypt & Babylon
      • Hindus & Jains
      • Buddha
      • Heraclitus
      • Aristotle
      • Epicurus & Stoics
      • Confucius
      • Mozi & Xunzi
      • Daoism
      • Kant
      • Mill
      • Nietzsche
      • Wittgenstein
      • Fanon, hooks & Said
    • Politics – Phil 2
      • Human Politics
      • Mencius & Mozi
      • Plato’s Republic
      • Aristotle’s Politics
      • Machiavelli
      • Hobbes
      • Locke
      • Rousseau
      • Mill
      • Thoreau
      • Socialism
      • Communism
      • Hegel & Marcuse
      • Anarchism
      • Fascism
      • Postcolonialism
      • Feminism
    • Asia – Phil 37
    • Buddha – Phil 16
    • Greece – Phil 20A
    • Europe – Phil 20B
    • Religion – Hum 40
      • Islam
      • Neo-Platonism
        • Augustine
        • Dionysius
        • Eriugena
        • Francis
        • Aquinas
        • Ockham
        • Cusanus
        • Ficino
      • Protestantism
      • New Religions
  • Americas
    • The Mayans & Aztecs
    • Edgar Allan Poe
      • Philosophy of Furniture
      • Rue Morgue Murders
      • Marie Roget
      • Purloined Letter
    • Henry David Thoreau
    • Comedy & Cynicism
      • Ambrose Bierce
      • Groucho Marx
    • Pragmatism
      • Charles Sanders Peirce
      • William James
      • John Dewey
      • Richard Rorty
      • Cornel West
  • West
    • Britannia
      • William Of Ockham
      • Thomas Hobbes
      • John Locke
      • David Hume
      • George Berkeley
      • John Stuart Mill
      • Augustus De Morgan
      • Lewis Carroll
      • Bertrand Russell
    • France
      • Rene Descartes
      • Politics
        • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
        • Henri de Saint-Simon
      • Surrealism
        • George Bataille
        • Dada & Modern Art
      • Existentialism
        • Jean-Paul Sartre
        • Franz Fanon
      • Structuralism
        • Jean-Claude Levi-Strauss
        • Jacques Lacan
        • Roland Barthes
        • Michel Foucault
      • Postmodernism
        • Jean-Francois Lyotard
        • Gilles Deleuze
        • Jean Baudrillard
        • Donna Haraway
        • Jacques Derrida
    • Germania
      • Rationalism
        • Baruch Spinoza
        • Gottfried Leibniz
        • Immanuel Kant
      • Phenomenology
        • Johann Fichte
        • Friedrich Schelling
        • Georg Hegel
      • Politics
        • Karl Marx & Communism
        • Marcuse & The New Left
      • Pessimism
        • Arthur Schopenhauer
        • Soren Kierkegaard
        • Friedrich Nietzsche
        • Martin Heidegger
      • Ludwig Wittgenstein
    • Greece
      • Poets & Epics
      • The Pre-Socratics
        • Pythagoras
        • Xenophanes
        • Heraclitus
        • Parmenides & Zeno
        • Anaxagoras
        • Empedocles
        • Democritus
      • Socrates
      • Diogenes
      • Plato
        • The Apology
        • The Crito
        • The Meno
        • The Symposium
        • The Republic
        • The Timaeus
        • The Parmenides
        • The Theaetetus
      • Aristotle
        • Metaphysics
        • On The Soul
        • Logic
        • Ethics
        • Politics
      • Skepticism
        • Pyrrho
        • Aenesidemus
        • Sextus Empiricus
      • Epicurus
      • Stoicism
        • Zeno of Citium
        • Chrysippus
        • Epictetus
        • Marcus Aurelius
  • Mid
    • Egypt
      • Hardjedef
      • Ptahhotep
      • Khun-Anup
      • Amenemopet
      • Ani the Scribe
      • Marikare
    • Babylon
      • Pessimism
      • Theodicy
    • Zoroastrianism
    • Judaism
    • Christianity
    • Islam
      • Al Kindi
      • Al Farabi
      • Avicenna
      • Al Ghazali
      • Averroes
  • East
    • India
      • Hinduism
        • The Three Paths
        • The Vedas
        • The Upanishads
        • The Epics
        • Vedanta
        • The Strivers
      • Kanada & Atoms
      • Gautama & Logic
        • Nyaya Debate
        • 4 Sources of Knowledge
        • 3 Ways of Words
        • Forms of Proof
        • Fallacies
      • The Charvakas
      • Jainism
        • The Tirthankaras
        • 3 Points of View
        • Mind Over Matter
        • The Leaky Boat
        • Nonviolence
        • The Whiteclad & Skyclad
      • Buddhism
        • Life & Desire
        • The Middle Way
        • The Monkey Mind
        • Codependent Arising
        • The Dhammapada
        • The Mid-Length Discourses
        • The Long Discourses
        • Ashoka
    • Tibet
    • China
      • The Yi Jing
      • Confucianism
        • Confucius
        • The Mean
        • Great Learning
        • Mencius
        • Xunzi
      • Daoism
        • Yin & Yang
        • Bamboo Laozi
        • Laozi
        • Zhuangzi
        • Liezi
      • Buddhism & Zen
        • Buddha in China
        • Chan (Zen)
        • Bodhidharma
        • Huineng
        • Mazu
        • Linji (Rinzai)
        • Zhaozhou (Joshu)
        • Blue Cliff Record
        • The Gateless Gate
        • Dahui
      • Sunzi & The Art Of War
      • School of Names
        • Hui Shi
        • Gongsun Long
      • Moism
    • Vietnam
    • Korea
    • Japan
      • Buddhism in Japan
      • Hakuin
      • Dogen
      • Musashi
      • Zen Stories
  • Videos
    • Alice & Aristotle
    • Poe The Detective
    • India
    • Plato’s Dialogues
    • Confucius
    • Daoism
    • Zen
    • Phenomenology
    • Existentialism
    • Postmodernism
  • Me

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  • Alice In Wonderland 11: Who Stole The Tarts?
  • Alice In Wonderland 10: The Lobster Quadrille
  • Courses
    • Intro – Phil 1
    • Logic – Phil 10
      • Why Talk At All?
      • Talk & Think
      • India & Gautama
      • Greece & Aristotle
      • China & Hui Shi
      • Islam & Avicenna
      • Europe & Aquinas
      • Kant & Hegel
      • Poe & Dupin
      • Mill & Boole
      • Carroll & Alice
      • Venn & Peano
      • Frege & Russell
      • Wittgenstein
      • Fallacies & Puzzles
      • Analytic & Continental
    • Ethics – Phil 31A
      • Ethics? Where?!?
      • Egypt & Babylon
      • Hindus & Jains
      • Buddha
      • Heraclitus
      • Aristotle
      • Epicurus & Stoics
      • Confucius
      • Mozi & Xunzi
      • Daoism
      • Kant
      • Mill
      • Nietzsche
      • Wittgenstein
      • Fanon, hooks & Said
    • Politics – Phil 2
      • Human Politics
      • Mencius & Mozi
      • Plato’s Republic
      • Aristotle’s Politics
      • Machiavelli
      • Hobbes
      • Locke
      • Rousseau
      • Mill
      • Thoreau
      • Socialism
      • Communism
      • Hegel & Marcuse
      • Anarchism
      • Fascism
      • Postcolonialism
      • Feminism
    • Asia – Phil 37
    • Buddha – Phil 16
    • Greece – Phil 20A
    • Europe – Phil 20B
    • Religion – Hum 40
      • Islam
      • Neo-Platonism
        • Augustine
        • Dionysius
        • Eriugena
        • Francis
        • Aquinas
        • Ockham
        • Cusanus
        • Ficino
      • Protestantism
      • New Religions
  • Americas
    • The Mayans & Aztecs
    • Edgar Allan Poe
      • Philosophy of Furniture
      • Rue Morgue Murders
      • Marie Roget
      • Purloined Letter
    • Henry David Thoreau
    • Comedy & Cynicism
      • Ambrose Bierce
      • Groucho Marx
    • Pragmatism
      • Charles Sanders Peirce
      • William James
      • John Dewey
      • Richard Rorty
      • Cornel West
  • West
    • Britannia
      • William Of Ockham
      • Thomas Hobbes
      • John Locke
      • David Hume
      • George Berkeley
      • John Stuart Mill
      • Augustus De Morgan
      • Lewis Carroll
      • Bertrand Russell
    • France
      • Rene Descartes
      • Politics
        • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
        • Henri de Saint-Simon
      • Surrealism
        • George Bataille
        • Dada & Modern Art
      • Existentialism
        • Jean-Paul Sartre
        • Franz Fanon
      • Structuralism
        • Jean-Claude Levi-Strauss
        • Jacques Lacan
        • Roland Barthes
        • Michel Foucault
      • Postmodernism
        • Jean-Francois Lyotard
        • Gilles Deleuze
        • Jean Baudrillard
        • Donna Haraway
        • Jacques Derrida
    • Germania
      • Rationalism
        • Baruch Spinoza
        • Gottfried Leibniz
        • Immanuel Kant
      • Phenomenology
        • Johann Fichte
        • Friedrich Schelling
        • Georg Hegel
      • Politics
        • Karl Marx & Communism
        • Marcuse & The New Left
      • Pessimism
        • Arthur Schopenhauer
        • Soren Kierkegaard
        • Friedrich Nietzsche
        • Martin Heidegger
      • Ludwig Wittgenstein
    • Greece
      • Poets & Epics
      • The Pre-Socratics
        • Pythagoras
        • Xenophanes
        • Heraclitus
        • Parmenides & Zeno
        • Anaxagoras
        • Empedocles
        • Democritus
      • Socrates
      • Diogenes
      • Plato
        • The Apology
        • The Crito
        • The Meno
        • The Symposium
        • The Republic
        • The Timaeus
        • The Parmenides
        • The Theaetetus
      • Aristotle
        • Metaphysics
        • On The Soul
        • Logic
        • Ethics
        • Politics
      • Skepticism
        • Pyrrho
        • Aenesidemus
        • Sextus Empiricus
      • Epicurus
      • Stoicism
        • Zeno of Citium
        • Chrysippus
        • Epictetus
        • Marcus Aurelius
  • Mid
    • Egypt
      • Hardjedef
      • Ptahhotep
      • Khun-Anup
      • Amenemopet
      • Ani the Scribe
      • Marikare
    • Babylon
      • Pessimism
      • Theodicy
    • Zoroastrianism
    • Judaism
    • Christianity
    • Islam
      • Al Kindi
      • Al Farabi
      • Avicenna
      • Al Ghazali
      • Averroes
  • East
    • India
      • Hinduism
        • The Three Paths
        • The Vedas
        • The Upanishads
        • The Epics
        • Vedanta
        • The Strivers
      • Kanada & Atoms
      • Gautama & Logic
        • Nyaya Debate
        • 4 Sources of Knowledge
        • 3 Ways of Words
        • Forms of Proof
        • Fallacies
      • The Charvakas
      • Jainism
        • The Tirthankaras
        • 3 Points of View
        • Mind Over Matter
        • The Leaky Boat
        • Nonviolence
        • The Whiteclad & Skyclad
      • Buddhism
        • Life & Desire
        • The Middle Way
        • The Monkey Mind
        • Codependent Arising
        • The Dhammapada
        • The Mid-Length Discourses
        • The Long Discourses
        • Ashoka
    • Tibet
    • China
      • The Yi Jing
      • Confucianism
        • Confucius
        • The Mean
        • Great Learning
        • Mencius
        • Xunzi
      • Daoism
        • Yin & Yang
        • Bamboo Laozi
        • Laozi
        • Zhuangzi
        • Liezi
      • Buddhism & Zen
        • Buddha in China
        • Chan (Zen)
        • Bodhidharma
        • Huineng
        • Mazu
        • Linji (Rinzai)
        • Zhaozhou (Joshu)
        • Blue Cliff Record
        • The Gateless Gate
        • Dahui
      • Sunzi & The Art Of War
      • School of Names
        • Hui Shi
        • Gongsun Long
      • Moism
    • Vietnam
    • Korea
    • Japan
      • Buddhism in Japan
      • Hakuin
      • Dogen
      • Musashi
      • Zen Stories
  • Videos
    • Alice & Aristotle
    • Poe The Detective
    • India
    • Plato’s Dialogues
    • Confucius
    • Daoism
    • Zen
    • Phenomenology
    • Existentialism
    • Postmodernism
  • Me

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