From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc Mon Dec 16 11:00:47 EST 1991
Article 2004 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: <quwocB2w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Date: 9 Dec 91 13:33:37 GMT
References: <40287@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Lines: 93

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

> Sounds  more like car-sickness than anything else. I still don't see
> what there is valuable in  "the dialectic" that is not present in standard
> common sense and rational thought. It appears to my as if you are
> mystifying something rather elementary and straightforward. And it appears
> to me that if you removed the mystification from EGB, youo would have
> a rather slim volume.

 There are three misconceptions in that little paragraph.  You say
that there is nothing present in the dialectic that is "not
present in standard common sense and rational thought."  Only you
say it as if it were a revelation.  It was precisely my point that
when we talk of "reason" (as in the Age of Reason, or discursive
reason, or "Let us reason together") we are _not_ talking about
"logic" or poetry or rhetoric or anything else _but_ the
dialectic.  The second misconception is that I am an expert on
the dialectic.  I have _tried_ to be, but there is no _Journal of
Dialectical Logic_, as there is one on symbolic logic, there are
no courses taught in dialectical logic, nor are many books
published on it outside of the Marxist tradition.  (I found an
interesting book by the Swedish Marxist Joachim Israel, _The
Language of Dialectics and the Dialectics of Language_, but it is
too involved with the minutiae of Marxist theory to be as general
as I would like.)  So as much as I would _like_ the status of
being the resident dialectician, I can't claim the status because
I don't know enough.  The last misconception has to do with
Hofstadter's Eternal Golden Braid.  I cited him as an example of
an "unconscious dialectician." His book is so Hegelian it could
have been written by old G.W.F. himself if he could have come
through a time machine with his central tenets intact, but
Hofstadter doesn't seem to know it!  (A kind of mini-Chinese room
in which Hofstadter applies dialectical logic to the problems of
contemporary science but does not know that these are dialectical
routines -- can he be said to be a dialectician?) So, the weaker
question,  is he a good example for you to cite as an exemplar
of the dialectic?  (One of the "founders" of analytic philosophy,
Whitehead, also became essentially dialectical and Hegelian in
later years and apparently accepted that identity.)

RC:
> >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.

VY:
> I think you confuse "scientific thought" with crude reductionism. 
> There are countless examples of scientific and mathematical discourse
> in which the reduction of an object to its constituent parts is not 
> of great interest. One example of what you might consider "dialectical
> thought" is in dual geometric and algebraic representations of mathematical
> objects --- it is rare that anyone will claim that one representation is
> more basic than the other and jumping back and forth between representations
> is often quite useful.

Those were, of course, metaphorical gears, wheels and pulley's.  I
know that 20th century science has advanced to the point where its
constructs are no longer common-sensical, although they are still
anchored in observations.  I know that an electron can't be
visualized and that it's not really a "point" or a "cloud."  To
say nothing of quarks and gluons!  Notions like Bohr's
complementarity and the alternative ways of looking at geometry,
which go back to Descartes, certainly have a dialectical flavor.
But what I had in mind was the "philosophy" or "ideology" that
sits on top of science and guides theory-construction.  E.g.,
Lakoff's creation of the dialectical opposition between the
"objectivists" (now seen as old-fashioned) and his constructivist
point of vies (now seen as the modern way of looking at things).
It, of course, fits into an ancient schema which pits the "New
LIghts" against the "Aulde Lights," or, more generally, the
"Reformers" against the "Traditionalists" (whatever the
"tradition" happens to be).

But the dialectic doesn't have to follow any predicted course.
There needn't be a synthesis or sublation. I.e., one side can win
and the other side lose.  Isn't that what happened in the
dialectical movement that involved the Electragonists vs. the
Chemagonists?  Didn't the Electragonists lose completely and their
view that the nerve impulse jumped the synapse the way electrical
currents jump a gap in a wire become completely discredited?  (I
think anyone who was an Electragonist in the 50s, when it was
still marginally viable, now probably denies it!) But that was my
point all the time.  The outcome of dialectical reasoning can't be
predicted in advance.

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


