From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc Mon Dec  9 10:48:23 EST 1991
Article 1899 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Carlson's claim that dialectic cannot be formalized
Message-ID: <JFeHcB1w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Date: 5 Dec 91 12:12:30 GMT
References: <40141@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Lines: 102

yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

> In article <a6sDcB1w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richa
> >VY:
> >> Don't have an opinion on the motives of analytic theorists. Resolving
> >> contradictions is something that should be familiar to every scientist
> >> and automobile mechanic. Perhaps I'm just too dense, but when I read
> >> the "dialectical" arguments of such lumineries as Hofstadter  the point
> >> eludes me.  
> >
> >Why does it elude you?  Too simple?  Wrong tack?  Too
> >complicated?
> 
> No content. One of the components of learning is constructing or
> recognizing patterns. One of the ways in which complex systems are
> constructed,both by humans and by nature, is by connecting a lot of
> simpler systems. Sometimes we get more insight out of studying systems
> as coherent wholes, rather than as collections of parts (e.g., slugs as
> slugs instead of slugs as molecule clumps).  Sometimes we perceive
> contradictions or randomness where further understanding will show us 
> consistency or patterns.
> Did I miss something?

Yes, you did.  Dialectical thought isn't primarily "scientific"
thought. It is "philosophical" or "dogmatic" or "verbal" or
"ideological" (I think the current preferred term is
"interpretive") and occurs in the context of two competing
discourses (presumably in general representing some real
interests, either material or relating to identity or
self-definition).  You are taking it as a model or guide for
studying reality in a scientific sense.  (Hegel and Marx saw
"dialectical processes" working themselves out in human history. I
think what they saw were dialectical-_like_ processes where the
dialectical model helped a little in categorizing and
understanding what was going on.)

I think that the dialectical thought, by sharpening up the edges
of a notion or theory, may serve to give structure or guidance to
more precise scientific work which, of course, takes the form of
describing the object under study as if it were a mechanism
comprised of parts -- gears, wheels, pulleys, etc. -- which work
together.  However, I think dialectical thought can serve as a
rough model of the thing itself, which is the way Harry Erwin
seems to use it.  He says:

>In Levins and Lewontin, the Dialectical Biologist, Harvard University
>Press, 1985, a series of dialectical principles are listed. (I have other
>background in this area, but the relationship to non-linear dynamics is
>most obvious in LL.)
>
>1. The whole is a relation of heterogeneous parts that have no prior
>independent existence _as parts_.
>
>2. In general, the properties of parts have no prior alienated existence
>but are acquired by being parts of a particular whole.
>
>3. The interpenetration of parts and wholes is a consequence of the
>interchangeability of subject and object, of cause and effect.
>
>These principles result in a pair of assertions:
>
>1. There is no basement (no basic units).
>
>2. We are directed toward an explanation of change in terms of the
>opposing processes united within each object.
>
>My experience is that these principles are linked to principles of
>non-linear systems analysis, and then (by going to topological models) to
>bifurcation theory. Principles 1 and 2 are statements of the underlying
>non-linearity of the system and the relative strength of the interactions
>between subsystems of the system. Principle 3 reflects a duality in those
>systems between a description of subsystems by function performed and a
>description by data state transformations. Assertion 1 describes a
>heterogenity that is common in real non-linear systems, and Assertion
>2 directs us towards understanding the dynamics of the subsystem
>in terms of the opposing forces that cause it to converge to a fixed
>point, limit cycle, or strange attractor.


Here I think he is finding the dialectic useful because it
foregrounds the reciprocal, back and forth, interaction of part
and whole which a _conceptually_ mechanistic meta-model seems to
downplay.  (Ultimately there must be a description in mechanistic
terms or we don't have a "science," but an "interpretive system.")
The dialectical way of thinking is also non-foundational (i.e.,
there is no basement) but a series of more and more egg-like
chickens and chicken-like eggs until the question of which came
first seems unimportant.

Hmm, as I reread this I see that I violated all the Usenet
guidelines on how to write  articles.  I quoted more lines than I
wrote.  However, I couldn't extract one or two lines from Harry
Erwin's post to juxtapose with Victor Yodaiken's.  The "thought"
was in the whole and couldn't' be presented as a single
proposition.  I guess that's an example of a dialectical-like,
gestalt-like, continental-like movement of thought.

--
Richard Carlson        |    rc@depsych.gwinnett.COM
Midtown Medical Center |    {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc
Atlanta, Georgia       |
(404) 881-6877         |


