Illative force only has force in a conversation within the world of words. The will is outside that world except the part which is necessary to form & think words & carry out the conversation!

I acknowledge that from your point of view there is no force in words. Alternatively, I would suggest that the words illative force must mean something - it is used quite often [google illative force], <- 10,900 times . I submit that the force in illative force is that which is described by formal logic.  "because we can say anything" from my point of view does not contradict that the logical processes, the metamorphosis of attention from input to output via logic is a subtle force - certainly forcing the conclusion. One can deny the conclusion or hate it but it is still there at the end of a chain of reasoning if your logical faculties are intact. The haggle point in most argumentation surrounds figuring out exactly what you are talking about.

Well yes if you somehow actually follow the rules of formal logic and if every time you use a symbol you use it to refer to exactly the same thing, then the symbolic conclusion about the world is forced ... except of course where there are still choices to be made in logical methadology.  However human attention rarely, if ever, actually metamorphosis in that manner.  Don't forget that the rules for formal logic are a relatively recent invention which emerged in our culture in just the past 3 millienia.  The processess of "metamorphosis of our attention" evolved over millions of years and is now burned into our biology* and habitual behaviors in our culture.  The two different processes have very little, if anything, to do with each other.  People do not think in FOPL.

* If you don't want to accept evolution, then a similar observation could be made from a thelogical perspective ... as such it would have the same effect.

well i suspect that pattern recognition is a biological process that has a "aha!" feeling to it. But i remain skeptical of a biological basis associated with "having a sense when right elements" are present.  My problem there being, of course, that pesky word "right".  I suspect that you do recognize when things match a particular pattern that might occur usually in some context.  But me thinks your attributation of "right" to it must be something you learned from your personal experiences ... other people might not experience the same usualness or associate it with what you would refer to as a "rightness".  Iow, not only is the pattern subjective but also the feeling of rightness is subjective.  You are not forced by your biology here, you are forced by your history ... different history different patterns, different rightnesses.

It seems to me, you are talking about three different things here: (1) logic - which is just a set of rules for manipulating signs to preserve their relationsip to their signans, mathematics being one variety of those rules (2) some alleged biological (or spiritual) sense of truth and or what is right, and (3) why math, physics, and the scientific method works. To me those are three different topics which are only marginally related.  Tackeling all of them in one short paragraph is difficult, but, ... lol ... i'll take a stab at it. 

Physics works because the processess of the world are regular.  Events can be predictued by mathematics, logic, and physics, just because things in the world keep happening the same regualr way. Civilization has developed a bag of tricks for making predictions and controlling events based upon those regularities.  That bag of tricks has been developed by trial and error (the scientific method) over several thousands of years.  Mathmatics and physics works because trial and error works.  There was no innate sense of truth (or logic) necessary.  There is no mystical coincidence necessary either.  The mistakes that were made did not get preserved.  But when intentions were satisfied by doing things that worked, those were repeated over and over again.  Eventually we got to where we are today. 

It is interesting to note that lower animals function by instinct.  They do have an innate sense of right and wrong ... they always just do what it is right for them to do.  One thing about them, however, they do not develop culture ... they are frozen patterns of behavior within a   particular ecology which can sustain them.  Me thinks that is all you get with your "beloved" innate sense of truth. 

I guess that if you go back all the way to the meaning of the word logos & In the Beginning was the word (John 1,1) then you might understand why the lament.
Some say that keeping one's word is god-like; see [item 4532].

 I wonder what it would be like if our words become this powerful again.

Some light may be thrown on the subject (illative force) by this commentary on hex#23 line 1 - link is here.

This must have been written in the 80's when i was in the back house working on CyberMind and he was workin on Fermat ... notice the mention of Semantic Network.  I like how he says "Mathmatics helps in the persuit of 'Truth' only if it can break out of any self-imposed prision  [Semantic Network]", notwithstading that it was a strange sentence for a Mathmatician to have written.  But in the end he acknowledges that the nature of Illative Force is Empirical ... experience, and I agree. 

Yep, I liked the whole discourse. It moves from axioms to self-evident, to evidence to proof & somewhere in there truth! Very nice!

BTW, somewhere near that page is some mention of Bozo's Lemma!

Yeah those are the people who deny common sense and choose their opinions based on partisan talking points. 

That would be you DUDE! This wasn't a partisan item until you arrived! (It was sexist)