Logic Flaws

[Nightshade]

If there is one thing garenteed to irritate me about a film or book its the flaw in the logic, I may not see it at once but as I tend to play things back in my head alot they usueally start to jump out at me.
For example If you go into the future meet someone you knew in the past and find out how you died in the past which is how you end up in the future if you then go back to the past and change that then you dont end upp in the future to find the person to tell you how you died do you?

It should make sense if youve seen the Jacket.

Anyone else find some glaring problem with the logic of somthing??

[Anon22]

If there is one thing garenteed to irritate me about a film or book its the flaw in the logic, I may not see it at once but as I tend to play things back in my head alot they usueally start to jump out at me.

For example If you go into the future meet someone you knew in the past and find out how you died in the past which is how you end up in the future if you then go back to the past and change that then you dont end upp in the future to find the person to tell you how you died do you?

It should make sense if youve seen the Jacket.

Anyone else find some glaring problem with the logic of somthing??

That doesn't seem like a logic flaw though, it seems more of a... what's it called? a paradox, is it?

I think I've thought of some logic flaws but can't remember.

[Virgil]

If there is one thing garenteed to irritate me about a film or book its the flaw in the logic, I may not see it at once but as I tend to play things back in my head alot they usueally start to jump out at me.
For example If you go into the future meet someone you knew in the past and find out how you died in the past which is how you end up in the future if you then go back to the past and change that then you dont end upp in the future to find the person to tell you how you died do you?

It should make sense if youve seen the Jacket.

Anyone else find some glaring problem with the logic of somthing??

Frankly I agree. One can excuse all sorts of things, but once a logic has been established, if an author violates it, the work falls apart.

[starrwriter]

If there is one thing garenteed to irritate me about a film or book its the flaw in the logic, I may not see it at once but as I tend to play things back in my head alot they usually start to jump out at me ...

There is an entirely different type of literature that doesn't depend on logic -- in fact, goes against logic. A Zen koan is one example:

We all know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping?

Doesn't make logical sense, does it? Not suppose to.

Some of the tales in "Seven Stories" by J. D. Salinger have strange Zenlike endings. They rely on satori, a sudden flash of insight closer to an epiphany than to logic. If you can get a copy, read "Just Before The War With The Eskimos" and "Uncle Wiggly In Connecticut" to see what I mean.

The tendency you mentioned to play things back in your head touches on another goal of Zen literature. According to Zen philosophy, you have to stop the internal monlogue before you can grasp reality by intuition. The internal monologue constantly rebuilds and reinforces a logical construct of reality that may not fit all of the observed facts. Logic is a map, but the map is not the territory.

[Nightshade]

No star everything has logic to it, but not all logic is logical. Maybe I am talking about pardox. What I mean is if the author designs a world and puts it into motion (and I know there is somemathamtical name for somthing that once started cant be stopped my siuster was telling me about itrecently ). Theye cant very well reverse it and channge the rules so they get the ending they want. Its wrong, and spoils everything.
And the hands clapping makes logical sense if you think of it as a metphore for team work or coperation. There is a song in Egypt called One hand (cannot clap)
Its cheesey but its about how you need a team to get through most things in life.
And so The sound of one hand clapping isnt the point the point is you need to have 2 hands to make an impacty thats noticable.
And thats logical.
Or the logic can be That there are things people dont think about because they dont think. And yet that doesnt mean it doesnt exsist does it?
Or the even plainer logic could be This is a mind excersise so strech your imagination

[Themis]

No star everything has logic to it, but not all logic is logical.

Aww ... that's such a cute phrase.

What I mean is if the author designs a world and puts it into motion (and I know there is somemathamtical name for somthing that once started cant be stopped my siuster was telling me about itrecently ). Theye cant very well reverse it and channge the rules so they get the ending they want. Its wrong, and spoils everything.

Well, Night, if a writer invents a world, then obviously he can change it whenever he wants to since it's his. And (good) writers normally write for their own pleasure and not other people's though, of course, they want others to read their stories..

[AimusSage]

Logic and emotion don't mix, to much logic and you won't feel a thing, but to much emotion and the logic is lost.

When you get emotional about flawed logic, any attempt to analyze the flawed logic in itself will be flawed. And perhaps the logic is not flawed at all in the first placed, but needs to be viewed from a different perspective. Logic isn't just a one size fits all concept. It needs to be applied to a situation, and in the case of writers changing the rules to fit the ending, there is no ill logic.

The writer comes up with a story and sets up a certain course of events. The reader only has a limited perspective to the world that the writer created. He cannot see beyond what is written. If the writer decides that the story must end in a certain way, that, to the reader defies logic, it is his decision, as Themis mentioned. The logic in this case is not in the story, or the created world, but in the complete view of the writer who created the world, and the story, who deems it necessary to end it in a particular manner.

Nightshade, you said not all logic is logical, while partially right, it would be better to say that not all logic appears to be logical. It's a matter of perspective, and situations aren't always put in the right perspective to see the logic.

Logic is all about reasoning and analyzing a situation, using as many points of view as possible. Not everyone has the same level of logic reasoning. Some people use their right brain more, while others rely more on their left brain.

[emily655321]

I dunno. If a writer wants to write a novel based on physics, then write an ending that defies the laws thereof, naturally it's his prerogative. But it still makes him a *********.

[Virgil]

Well, Night, if a writer invents a world, then obviously he can change it whenever he wants to since it's his. ..

I disagree. If a writrer establishes a world/logic and he violates it, he's eesential broken his agreement with the reader. Take Lord of the Rings for instance. It's set in some distant mythological past. Tolkien establishes the rules of the past. If at the end he has a flying saucer come in and martians step out to save Frodo, a reader is going to say, "Bull Doody! You can't just do that." He'll throw the book aside and say that was phony. A writer can set up whatever world or logic he wants, but he's got to be consistent or the reader will feel cheated.

[starrwriter]

I disagree. If a writrer establishes a world/logic and he violates it, he's eesential broken his agreement with the reader. Take Lord of the Rings for instance. It's set in some distant mythological past. Tolkien establishes the rules of the past. If at the end he has a flying saucer come in and martians step out to save Frodo, a reader is going to say, "Bull Doody! You can't just do that." He'll throw the book aside and say that was phony. A writer can set up whatever world or logic he wants, but he's got to be consistent or the reader will feel cheated.

It's true Conan Doyle never could have written a Sherlock Holmes mystery using Zen satori rather than logic. But Shakespeare put a pendulum clock in a play set in the past before those clocks were invented and I think he did it knowingly. If the world a writer creates is non-logical, then he doesn't have to keep the storyline logical.

[Virgil]

Shakespeare put a pendulum clock in a play set in the past before those clocks were invented and I think he did it knowingly.

A pendulum clock in Shakespeare? Which play is that?
One can always excuse minor errors. I think critics have pointed out minor inconsistencies in several places of Faulkner. These are minor errors of mental lapses. Not changing a whole world or logic up side down.

If the world a writer creates is non-logical, then he doesn't have to keep the storyline logical.

I agree with you if the writer establishes the non-logical world up front. He can't just shift in mid stream.

[Nightshade]

Yes he does because at least he should be consistant in the illogicality of it.

Yes amius emotion wrecks the logic, had I created the logic, but I didnt. I am only precieving it.
Maybe I am using logic wrong its the word I would use to describe it but then I can also logicalise (is that a word??) flying pink elephants.
What I mean is the storyline should makes sense in context. If it doesnt it destroys the train of narritive and thus the story.
If you let your audiance see the cracks in the story they are lesslikley to enjoy it.
I think.

[Themis]

I disagree. If a writrer establishes a world/logic and he violates it, he's eesential broken his agreement with the reader. Take Lord of the Rings for instance. It's set in some distant mythological past. Tolkien establishes the rules of the past. If at the end he has a flying saucer come in and martians step out to save Frodo, a reader is going to say, "Bull Doody! You can't just do that." He'll throw the book aside and say that was phony. A writer can set up whatever world or logic he wants, but he's got to be consistent or the reader will feel cheated.

What I meant was that the average writer writes for himself. He creates a world of his own and for his own pleasure. Of course, there has to be certain logic which may not always be what the reader would expect. Because the reader doesn't know everything. He should, of course, know as much as possible because the writer obviously wants him to see "his" world and understand it. But it's not possible to squeez every detail about such a world into sentences and I think that what a writer does may at times seem illogical and it's not because as mentioned above the reader just doesn't see the whole 'picture'.

- Still, that's what I think because it's what I try to do when writing a story. I can't possibly know what Night's writer thought. It just would seem wrong. Sorry. I tend to defend all writers.

[AimusSage]

Ofcourse, if a writer decides to do something strange with a story, which is totaly out of context. It doesn't make it enjoyable to read, but that has little to do with logic.

And yes, it is very well possible the story of a writer is flawed logically, or perhaps was never intended to be logical. I already determinend that in my previous post. The logic is that the writer did not intend the story to be logical. The story itself becomes secondary to the explanation. The intend of the writer to write an illogical story becomes more important. Trying to logically explain an illogical story from withing the perspective of that same story is doomed to fail.

Not everything is based on logic. While logic can explain a lot, it can't explain everything on the same level, like the illogical part of the story, where another perspective is needed.

And Night, Emotion can interfere with the perception of logic. Sometimes the mind tells us that something can't possibly be right, but is it really impossible, or does your mind simply reject it based on previous experience? Experience is always linked to some form of emotion.

Of course, when everyone would perceive the world as logically as possible, without much emotion, it would be a very dull place, where we would all grow pointy ears and strange eyebrows.

Sometimes it's better to just marvel at something, and see the beauty of things, without trying to explain it.

[Nightshade]

I suppose *sigh*.

I guess what we are really talking about now is the rights of the authour vs the rights of the reader.