Molybdenum said:
There's plenty of practical value in logic and science, which are products of western philosophy and not western philosophy itself. I dislike western philosophy as a method of discovering absolute truths about reality or god, which is the issue at hand in this dicussion. Logical systems will never do better than building useful constructs for manipulating reality, no matter how detailed and precise these constructs are. Unfortunately this issue is not particularly amenable to debate since it deals with the limits of a system that is a priori asserted to not have any. (An a priori argument at the basis of logic? Help!)
This argument is a good example of my issues with philosophy. It's a fun mental workout but it gets us no closer to reality. Perhaps it points out the futility of logic in answering certain questions. It's disappointing that so many take this stuff seriously rather than enjoying the mental gymnastics and moving on.
First off, logic is a field of study within the general area of philosophy and it was developed by western philosophers. Hence, it is part of western philosophy just like Plato's Theory of the Forms or any other work by a western philosoher. We can all thank Aristotle for the development of logic.
Second, as for disliking western philosophy for explaining the universe around us, well, good luck trying to find "truth" any other way. It is only through logic that we can "know" anything. We "know", for example, that gravity exists because of logic.
Do not forget that logic is simply the study of argumentation. Principally, to determine whether an argument is "good" or "bad". We use this study of arguments to form our own arguments, whether it is to pursuade another about a political ideal or to provide substantial evidence that M-Theory is indeed correct.
From this study of argumentation has come an unimaginable amount of knowledge from the sciences, which not only provide a better understanding about the world around us, but also provide technological breakthroughs that make our lives easier. Using the gravity example, once logic was used to "prove" gravity exists, scientists knew that some substanctial amount of force must be used to escape gravity. Hence, the rocket.
And this is but one example of how the use of logic has not only told us more about the universe around us, but provided a substantial breakthrough in technology. Plenty more exist.
Consider the flipside of logic, which is faith. Faith may bring one comfort, but will not lead to any sort of "truth" that can be experiementally verified. In other words, if you seek "ultimate truth", you will not find it through faith; you will only find it through reason and logic.