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Article 2557 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: santas@inf.ethz.ch (Filippos Santas)
Subject: Re: Logic and the Dialectic of Enlightenment
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Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1992 18:17:45 GMT



In article <XcgXDB1w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson) writes:
>It has always seemed to me to be significant that logic was born
>as a distinct branch of human knowledge at the particular moment
>in history when two apparently unrelated historical movements
>happened to coincide.  The first of these movements was sophistry,
>or to use a less pejorative term, sophism. What sophism was, in
>essence, was a method of deconstructing traditional values, any
>traditional values, by dialectically questioning the implicit
>assumptions or preunderstandings upon which explicit and
>consciously articulated propositions depended.  From the start the
>motivation for this process seems to have been the delegitimation
>of hereditary privilege in the service of a new mercantile
>(bourgeois) counter- elite.  Sophism reached its logical end when
>Socrates turned its dialectical/deconstructive method on sophism
>itself and deconstructed sophism.  He seems to have done that in
>the name of preserving at least enough of those "traditional
>values" which he thought were minimally necessary for the
>maintenance of human community, although, of course, the
>likelihood that deconstruction would eventually deconstruct itself
>was as great as that a stomach without food would soon begin to
>digest itself.
>
>The second historical movement was the loss of political autonomy
>of the city-state following the establishment of Alexander's
>empire.  Alexander's empire, and the subsequent political unions

Well it seems that you forgot the wars between Athens and Sparta
and the decay of the athenian democracy.
This decay influenced Plato so much so that he proposed 
a theory closer to the spartian oligarchy than the athenian
democracy. 

>culminating in the massive Roman Empire, had two important
>consequences.   First it eliminated the self-government of the
>city-state (Polis) leaving the citizen only his "private" affairs
>to handle since "public" affairs were now in the hands of
>professional rulers.  Second, it opened the way for increased
>interaction among the heterogeneous ("different") peoples of the
>Empire.  Although when he had opened up the lines of communication
>between Greece and Iran ("Persia"), Alexander had expected them to
>be largely one way at the intellectual level, with "modern" and
>rational Hellenic ideas and practices coming in to modernize and
>rationalize the primitive and superstitious Iranian society of the
>time, in fact "Oriental" (Iranian) superstitions traveled along
>these routes as a kind of backwash and brought their "mysteries"
>to Greece itself.
>
>It was at precisely this moment in human history, at the
>intersection or convergence of these two trends, the end of
>sophism and the beginning of empire, that Aristotle created
>(invented) logic, humanity's first attempt at artificial
>intelligence or automated reasoning.  Logic came _before_ the

I can hardly believe that Aristotle was really influenced
by the situation around him. Aristotle was believing that the ideal 
state has no more than 100.000 citizens, something that
comes to a contradiction with the political facts of his days.

It is more correct to say that the emperium of Alexander
kept the ancient greek culture and civlization safe from destruction.

>creation of the great Hellenic universalisms of Stoicism and
>Epicureanism and, of course, before the Hellenic-Hebraic
>universalisms of Christianity, Islam and Marxism.  I think that
>logic has always been deeply implicated and dialectically involved
>with these later universalistic solutions to the problems of
>Enlightenment.  The reason for this is that as am "empty" (i.e.,
>content-free) formal structure of thought logic could be used to
>contain any ideological content in the form of "self-evident"
>major premises.
>
>I think Aristotle had the same kind of complex and often
>incommensurable motives that drive AI researchers today.  The
>quest for _certainty_ in the wake of the deconstruction of
>"traditional beliefs," which had had a mythical or "revealed"
>character, by sophism, the hope that an automated and "hands-off"
>reasoning uncontaminated by personal and parochial motivations
>would lead to certain truth; and the contrary quest, the quest for
>novelty and discovery and intellectual and social power that comes
>from the application of a more powerful technology of thought than
>one's competitors.

Aristotles is not responsible for the erroneous (if one considers
it as such) thinking of the AI researchers. His ideas were of great
importance for the human thinking. If philosophers and priests
were stucked on them for almost 2000 years, these persons are to be
blamed. 

>
   ... deleted interesting material ...
 
>I wonder if my analysis is as anachronistic as Marxism
>itself.
>

I tried to make some small clarifications on issues concerning
ancient greek philosophers. I hope this can make your analysis
more consistent.


Philip Santas

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email: santas@inf.ethz.ch				 Philip Santas
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