system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why can you “prove” things through logic?

To preface: I am an individual in the academic psychology realm. My understanding of philosophy and logic through the “philosophical” lense is quite rudimentary. 

I got into a friendly argument with a friend (who is involved in philosophy academically), who was talking about logic and how it can be used to deduce things. I’m simplifying and risking sounding hackneyed but: 

 “ Ithink therefore I am, I think of God therefore he exists” 

My problem: this conclusion, although following logic, could be false. This statement does nothing to prove anything. Instead, it follows a logic thread which could ultimately be false. There is no irrefutable way to prove the existence of something. Essentially, I feel this line of logic is entirely intuitive and offers nothing substantial. Scientism is not the full answer, but by using statistical measures and utilizing basic logical decisions on validity, you can come CLOSE to determine whether there is a relationship. You are never 100% certain in science. And see I mention using logic to evaluate validity of your operationalization and such, but I am not ignorant to the fact that this could be faulty. 


TLDR: I feel philosophical logical statement insert themselves into causal links based on logical conclusions, when logic should not be the sole determiner of such robust claims. It should be a combination of repeated studies, logical design, and statistical analysis. None are perfect, but all together they can guide us in a better direction than one alone.
gpt
The whole point of logic is to establish rules of inference to go down, in your words, a “logic thread”: if x is true and x is followed by y, then y is true; if x and y are both true, then x is true, etc.

P1: All unicorns have horns.
P2: All things that have horns are horny.
C1: Therefore, all unicorns are horny.

The above argument is logically valid. Logic cannot prove whether there are unicorns, or whether all unicorns have horns, or whether all things that have horns are in fact horny. For that, you have to use your eyes, reflect on your real-world experiences, and refer to science and empirical experimentation.

Now consider:

P1: All unicorns have horns.
P2: All things that have horns are horny.
C2: Therefore, all unicorns are rainbow-coloured.

The above argument is clearly invalid. The point of logic is to prove that P1 and P2 entail C1 but not C2. Logic does not help you discover things about the world, but it helps you see that C1 is a valid conclusion but C2 is not, even if P1, P2, C1 and C2 are all true! So logic helps you to sniff out bullshit reasoning in the connections between claims, not whether the claims themselves are true.