Topics Logic

Question There is a simple reasoning. Which is better, bread or love? It seems love is better than nothing. For sure bread is better than nothing. So bread is better than love. Of course this is a wrong reasoning. But I wonder whatever logical mistake is made here?

Accepted:
May 12, 2011

Comments

There are two problems here. First, let's look at an argument about sports teams that's similar to yours but different in a simple way:

The Lions are better than the Tigers
The Bears are better than the Tigers.
Therefore, the Bears are better than the Lions

This is flat-out fallacious. The premises give us no more reason to think the Bears are better than the Lions than that the Lions are better than the Bears. But the structure -- X is better than Z; Y is better than Z; therefore Y is better than X -- is the one I think you were thinking of.

I'm guessing that what you really had in mind was some variation on this old chestnut:

Bread is better than nothing.
Nothing is better than God.
Therefore, bread is better than God

This at least looks as though it could be valid; the form seems to be: X is better than Y; Y is better than Z; therefore X is better than Z. If we take as given that "better than" is transitive, as logicians would say, then the form will lead us to a true conclusion if it's applied to true premises. But now we have a different problem: the superficial grammar of the premises doesn't get at the underlying logic. The premise about bread is a way of saying "It's better to have bread than to have no food at all." The premise about God is a way of saying "God is better than every other thing." When we put the premises that way, we aren't even tempted to conclude that bread is better than God.

Digging a bit deeper: "Bread is better than nothing" isn't really like "Bread is better than oatmeal." The second compares two kinds of things. But the word "nothing" doesn't refer to a kind of thing. It does a more complicated logical job, and the job it does depends on how it fits into the sentence. The way we spelled out the premises about bread, love and God illustrates the point. And the moral of the story is that the surface look of a sentence isn't always a good guide to the underlying logic.

Question There is a simple reasoning. Which is better, bread or love? It seems love is better than nothing. For sure bread is better than nothing. So bread is better than love. Of course this is a wrong reasoning. But I wonder whatever logical mistake is made here? Accepted:May 12, 2011

Question There is a simple reasoning. Which is better, bread or love? It seems love is better than nothing. For sure bread is better than nothing. So bread is better than love. Of course this is a wrong reasoning. But I wonder whatever logical mistake is made here?

Accepted:
May 12, 2011