From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc Mon Dec  9 10:47:51 EST 1991
Article 1843 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc
>From: rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Carlson's claim that dialectic cannot be formalized
Message-ID: <a6sDcB1w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Date: 3 Dec 91 13:39:57 GMT
References: <40026@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Lines: 84

yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
> Don't have an opinion on Churchman. I was referring to the claim that
> the dialectic was a form of non-linear system theory, and that Hofstadter's
> introspection on his, no doubt wonderous, cerebral processes could be
> likened to topology. 

Actually it was Harry Erwin's thought that the dialectic could be
formalized via topology, but since topology involves altering
"shapes" without altering underlying "structure," the more I think
about it, the less plausible it sounds for some eventual
mathematization or formalization of the dialectic.  (Or maybe
topology has some operations which merge or blend figures -- I
don't really know anything about topology.)

But if you think dialectic can indeed be formalized, and done so
in an obvious and easy way -- which is the impression you leave --
then I don't see the basis of _your_ objection.  (That topology
is self-evidently the _wrong_ mathematization?)

RC:
> >Here he seems to be saying that the dialectic is so obvious it
> >doesn't need to be studied.  Is that why analytic theorists don't
> >study it? 
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?

The one indubitable benefit I've received from the discussions in
this Newsgroup and the readings I've done as a result is to drop
what I now realize was an unconscious assumption I was making.  I
had always implicitly assumed that the "implicit" or "intuitive"
or "unconscious" (Freud would have said "preconscious") or
"informal" reasoning that caused either the next sentence to come
into our head in a discussion, or an "insight" to come into our
mind when confronted with a problem, was the result of
_unconscious algorithms_ which were in principle formalizable and
statable but were not yet explicit to the mind (presumably for
some good evolutionary reason having to do with "psychic economy"
or speed of processing -- on the analogy of the innate reflex arc
when you touch a hot stove, etc. -- something along those lines
that I never thought much about).  Clearly that is not the case.
They are not "implicit" merely because no one has taken the
trouble to make them explicit.  They are just plain _not_
algorithmic.  I think Goedel, Church and Truing have shown that if
they've shown nothing else.

So what is it?  Various posters in this Newsgroup seem to think
consciousness is involved.  Penrose draws on the split-brain
research tradition and suggests pattern recognition of some kind,
which certainly sounds "structuralist" to me.  Another candidate
is the dialectic.  That's how we reason.  We argue with ourselves
asking and answering questions.  Moreover, the new
Habermas-sounding tradition in social psychology which stresses
interpersonal communication seems to be a kind of extension of the
dialectic.

Plato did have the slogan over his Academy about knowing
mathematics as a ticket of admission, but he said in several
places that he thought that the dialectic was the "highest" [my
quotes, I don't recall the exact word Plato used or whether I
read that in a secondary source, but I've seen it several places,
I think) form of reasoning.

Maybe what is called "thinking" involves the concatenation of
several quite different processes. That _is_ what it feels like
experientially: we ask ourselves questions, answer in assertions
which we try to pare down into clear propositions, while all the
while watching our mind's eye construct visual analogues of our
thoughts, like a graphing routine in a spreadsheet.  And when we
do "grasp" something, it's like a light bulb going on in our heads,
just like a cartoon (so maybe a Klassic Kartoon contains exactly
the right metaphor for thinking after all).

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


