[benkahuna]

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How does one validate logic if he or she believes they are a product of chance?

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I don't think living systems are about chance at all. I think they are highly ordered systems that follow set principles in order to survive. There's nothing random about how life develops sense organs and the ability to pursue sustenance and favorable environmental conditions. It's the very opposite of chance. This process results from selective pressures that drive the trend that is natural selection.

I don't think humans are necessarily logical. It's more that:

1. We have develop in accordance with the outside world, shaping our nervous system to respond to information in a meaningful way.
2. We are very adapative and creative enabling us to better survive than our nearest living relatives (specieswise).
3. Our abilities result in certain trial and error type behaviors. Such behaviors occur in plenty of other animals (pretty much all with a cortex, capable of learning), we're just way better at them.
4. We work in such a way that we'll have meaningful and accurate interactions with the outside world. Such interactions increase our chances of suriving to reproduce fertile offspring.


I think it's a huge misnomer to conceptualize humans as the first logical living systems or the first emergence of rationality from a sea of randomness.
Everything about humans suggests we're just following one evolutionary trend resulting in:

1. Higher brain:body ratio
2. Great descending control of autonomic function (conscious control of heartbeat, etc.)
3. Great physical coordination in hands
4. A more sophisticated visual system and greater proportions of the brain related to vision
5. Movement toward upright bipedalism

Humans are not unique in either consciousness or self-awareness either. We do, however, appear to be unique in the sophistication of our ability to use language and the ability to consider many abstract concepts like justice, society, etc. The trends I mention are merely one set of trends toward one niche. I'm not suggesting we're some sort of idealized evolutionary endpoint. There's absolutely no reason to believe that we are.