From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!caen!garbo.ucc.umass.edu!dime!chelm.cs.umass.edu!yodaiken Mon Dec 16 11:00:51 EST 1991
Article 2011 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!caen!garbo.ucc.umass.edu!dime!chelm.cs.umass.edu!yodaiken
>From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Carlson's claim that dialectic cannot be formalized
Message-ID: <40425@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 91 13:29:14 GMT
References: <40287@dime.cs.umass.edu> <quwocB2w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Sender: news@dime.cs.umass.edu
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Lines: 53

In article <quwocB2w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson) writes:
>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.

There seems little point in pursuing this further. You advance something
you call "dialectic" as a framework for reasoning, and you puport to
find examples of this "dialectic" in the infamous Eternal Golden Braid.
To my untutored eye, this "dialectic" seems like either triviality or
mystification.  You have not advanced any reasons which would cause me
to change my opinion.

>  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

This is one of the reasons why I find yours, and others, claims of
the virtues of dialectical reasoning so unconvincing. Hofstadter seems
to be trying to find some mystical key which will unlock the secrets
of the behavior of complex systems without requiring all that tedious
work that attends regular science. I'm suspicious of such grand schemes, and
I don't see any results other than book sales. 

>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).

Pehaps it's my own lack of discernment here, but this seems like pure
fluff.



