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Article 1859 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Carlson's claim that dialectic cannot be formalized
Message-ID: <5785@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 4 Dec 91 18:10:54 GMT
References: <rreiner.691528965@yorku.ca> <ZB50BB1w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 25

In article <ZB50BB1w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson) writes:
>RC:
>>I watched a discussion between psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove, the
>>host of PBS's _Thinking Allowed_ and a biologist named Rupert
>>Sheldrake.  Sheldrake argued that "creativity" involved the
>>"synthesis" of "opposing" "ideas."  Hmm, I thought, another
>>scientist reinventing the dialectic.)
>
>VY:
>>Well, it's not a particularly deep concept, is it? It's not like
>>he stumbled on Lagrange's theorem or quicksort or  the infield fly rule
>>or anything else that you need a minute or two of work to comprehend.
>
>Here he seems to be saying that the dialectic is so obvious it
>doesn't need to be studied.  

The "not particularly deep concept" is that "`creativity' involved the
`synthesis' of `opposing' ideas".  If that's all there is to the
dialectic (according to you), then you're the one who's saying it's
trivial.

>Is that why analytic theorists don't study it? 

If they studied everything under the sun, they wouldn't be
analytic theorists, or any other kind of specialist.


