From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!uunet!psinntp!cmcl2!panix!mydog!gcf Tue Nov 19 11:10:10 EST 1991
Article 1324 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Is "logical analysis" worth knowing?
Summary: a story about the cultural history of logic and other privileged discourse
Keywords: 
References: <sc99aB2w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> <HFo8aB2w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Followup-To: 
Message-ID: <9111142140.18191@mydog.UUCP>
Date: 14 Nov 91 21:40:47 EST

rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson) writes:
| I have been following the thread on "informal logic" with
| considerable interest.  It seems to me that this relatively early
| post raises some questions which haven't been explicitly followed:
| ...
| Mr. Zeleny's point is that he is defending a purist notion of
| "logic" that restricts the meaning of the term to processes that
| extract valid conclusions from premises.  He excludes the kind of
| "logical empiricism" which generates knowledge that Kant would
| have called synthetic and a posteriori or that Aristotle would
| have called probable....
| 
| Mr. McCarthy makes the point that informal reasoning can be
| formalized and indeed is currently being formalized be workers
| within the AI framework, and he gives quite a few examples.  He
| proves, to my satisfaction, that reasoning can indeed be
| automated.  ...
| 
| If that is so, just how important is "logic?"  How meaningful is
| it that some thought processes contain the complete load of
| information in their premises?  Are they more meaningful in some
| ontological sense?  Is Mr. Zeleny reifying or hypostatizing some
| eternal real of Platonic-like ideas when the necessity involved in
| the inference may in fact be a trivial artifact of the definitions
| employed? ....

In awakening in the universe, "Man" finds himself surrounded by
many things, including butterflies and the Eternal.  Generally,
he seeks to stick these things on a pin and put them up on a
wall -- to get power over them by killing them.  He runs from
butterfly nets to the Crucifixion, _nailing_things_down_.

Having done so, however, he finds that his preserved objects lack
a quality of things still not on the wall -- the quality of
vitality, unpredictability, imagination, spontaneity.  What to
do?  One is to make the dead things move as if they were alive.
Hence the myths, so powerful in our time, of the golem, 
the zombie, the robot, and Frankenstein's monster.  

One of the things "Man" was able to kill was language.  Some
elements of language, like "No", have probably been around for
millions of years, and, like rock, are very stable.  Other
words could be frozen through religious discourse, especially if
backed up by violence.  Having found very stable parts of 
language, like the integers, and having killed other elements, 
it was possible to make linguistic structures that had the 
permanence of stone idols.  These could be worshiped.  However, 
like the idols made of stone, they were dead.  

Just as material things can be made to simulate the movement of
living things, so killed language can be made to simulate living
language, that is, dialectic.  At least by the time of Pythagoras, 
this project was well under way.  Arithmetic, geometry, and logic 
appeared.  Through the centuries, as each zombie failed, it was
replaced by a better and more subtle one.  Resolution....  And
meanwhile, the religious and political power of privileged speech
was not forgotten.  The zombie was said to be but obscurely
manifested on Earth, but to rule in glory from an empyrean realm;
even to create the universe as sort of degraded reflection of its 
forms.

This myth -- this Wizard-of-Oz sort of thing -- is what Mr.
Zeleny is talking about: Plato's giant talking head of wannabe
Eternity.  Needless to say, those who are actually improving 
the zombie, the nuts-and-bolts men, are less than taken with 
religious faith in the old model.  Their trust is in the 
future of their project.  (Old Plato himself, in spite of his
close acquaintance with Higher Things, was ready enough to
run off and service the tyrant of Syracuse!) 

The project, over the centuries, has managed to produce powerful 
zombies indeed.  There is an uneasy relationship between language
and the physical world, and while much of the power of the zombie
has been used to provide licenses to kill, sometimes it does the
job itself.  Thus, logic can be used to "prove" that Jews or
homosexuals are bad, and then provide the political, chemical and
mechanical technology to exterminate them.  The zombie can make a
light brighter than a thousand suns, and turn a city full of
people to dust, and less than dust, in the twinkling of an eye.

And not everything it does is killing; it serves, whether to 
destroy or (in the case of those who can pay) to heal, to build,
to count money and control the lower orders.  It serves and it is
served; it grows strong and wise.  Many flock to it.  

Who knows?  The project may yet succeed, and justify its
acolytes.  A prophet has already told them what they shall see: a
being which is so like them that they cannot tell it apart.  The
circle -- or perhaps I should say circus -- will be complete.  A 
curious thing, and perhaps well worth the price of admission to 
see; but no reason to worship it.  After all, it is only us.

--
Gordon Fitch          *        ...!mydog.panix.com!gcf
       Bx 1238 Bowling Green Station / NYC 10274
   How do you know, but every bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?


