"Logic is crap."

Thats what I heard a young sophomore at the local university say. She was taking a course in philosophy and was glad that they had finally gotten to the "good part" of the course. She felt the first part of the course, one that deals with logic and critical thinking, was the stupidest thing she'd ever been subjected to. "After all", she sniffed, "I already know how to think. It was a complete waste of my time."

Cautiously, I engaged her in conversation about what she had said. One has to be exceedingly careful when asking the young (and pretty much anyone else) how they arrived at their conclusions. They perceive any questioning as an attempt to invalidate what they think. Also, in most cases, they have no idea how they arrived at their conclusions. They just do, duh!

Anyway, during our conversation I discovered that she placed much more value in intuitive judgements than reason or logic. She was much more comfortable with a simple "stupid/not stupid" system of classifying ideas as opposed to anything that might tend to judge the value of an idea based on objective criteria such as conformance with observed reality or compatiblity with the preponderance of the evidence. Whichever conclusion made her feel best was always the correct one, deduction, logic, reason, reality and evidence be damned. A legal drinking age of 21, parking tickets, schedules, calculus, and lab fees were all "stupid", but she was unable to explain how she reached those conclusions. Moreover, she was unable to comprehend why she would need too. Everyone just knows those things are stupid.

So, after a few minutes, I asked her the question that, to me anyway, is one of the most critical ones that we must ask ourselves; if you don't have a method of telling valid conclusions from invalid conlusions, how do you know that you can?

She looked at me like I was, well, stupid. I followed up with the example of the stereoptypical schizophrenic who believes that the CIA has developed a mind-control ray and a tinfoil hat is the only way to protect yourself. How would that person be able to determine whether or not the government had a mind control ray, whether or not they were using it, and whether or not a tinfoil hat would protect them?

She looked at me suspiciously. "Are you trying to tell me I'm crazy?"

"No", I responded. "I'm asking you how you would determine if the schizophrenic's perception was correct or incorrect?"

"Oh my god, he's a schizophrenic, he's crazy. That automatically makes anything he says crazy."

"So you can't believe anything a crazy person says?"

"Right."

I paused a second. "So how do you know that he's crazy?"

I was surprised to hear her begin to reel off the very ideas about critical thinking that she had recently been taught during the "stupid" phase of her philosophy class. I listened to her and nodded as if she was producing great pearls of wisdom the likes of which I had never imagined existed. It took her several minutes.

"So", I ventured, "if the schizophrenic could somehow be convinced to apply these principles of critical thinking to his own perceptions, he would realized that his assertions were not correct?"

She nodded at me sagely. "But a crazy person won't do that."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, because he is crazy. He would refuse to accept anything that contradicts his belief. Thats what makes him crazy."

"Yeah, I see what you mean", I said. "He would probably say...'logic is crap.'"