I guess this point is where some of the tensions begin. Isn’t the point of higher awareness and contemplative traditions about stepping outside, if not beyond?
I’m assuming your response to that might be similar to what you already wrote here:
So we have
Perhaps these observations put us in a position to see some problems with the questions asked in the OP.
This phrase ought to give us pause. We have seen that we cannot step outside our representations of the world. If that is so, then there can be no “structure of reality itself”, but only a structure within some representation.
Given that we can choose from amongst many logics, yes, it is a tool, used to model how things are. Logic governs validity, forming a grammar in which we can talk coherently about how things are. Our ontology is not entirely fixed, but not just any model will do. Some inferences will be invalid.
Really? What work does that word do here? We cannot step outside of our representations in order to achieve a “really”. What we can look for is coherence and agreement in our representations. They are far from arbitrary.
Those who cannot abide having a choice of logics sometimes insist that one true logic was handed down by god. It’s a pretty poor position. If nothing else, it seems to place undue limits on what god is capable of.
Our logic and language are inherently part of the world; which is to say again that the world is what imposes constraints on our words - but more, on what we can and cannot do. What we say about the world is part of what we do in the world. One way or another, it is enacted.
Why does a Philips head fit so well into a Philips screw? Not just because of design, but because the one makes no sense without the other. We can only do what is available to us to do. The very idea of an unconceptualised structure is incoherent. What looks like a map is also the territory.
All of the above is pretentious shit, of course. It’s what we do that is important.
Coming back to this. As a non-philosopher with no expertise in logic or metaphysics what would you say to me is the most truthful way to understand logic?
Sure.
But if you step outside, then you can’t say anything.
That’s the error made so often here - to pretend to talk about the ineffable.
And the purpose of pointing to what we do. What cannot be said can be done, and so shown.
Good. I am not committed to anything in the OP, I’m just restating views I encounter.
See my previous reply to you. I like how you put it. When I use the term reality I guess I mean by this the reality we seem to experience. Which is, perhaps a structure within some representation. Your view is obviously that it is futile to look for an exit?
Shit. There’s another whole thread in this alone. I get constraints, I get representations. But isn’t it a kind of “giving up” not trying to work to push metaphysics further? Not that I can do this. I’m also still curious are the laws of logic for you part of a language game?
Yes, because we are not actually in anything to begin with if there is no out.
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The process of explanation, like the process of doubt, depends on a background that is already understood. Something must be taken as certain.
But it need not - ought not - be the very same thing in all cases. What we hold to be the case can change as we do different things.
The selected logic is the formal structure of the language game; or if you like it’s an explication of its coherence (or lack thereof). It doesn’t ground the game from the outside. Again, that “a bishop is no more than that piece which moves only diagonally” only makes sense within the game. There is no bishop-in-itself, and no diagonal without the board.
Husserl’s method is to trace every abstract object of thought back to concrete constituting processes within subjectivity. Rather than taking logical universals as irreducible a priori’s, he begins with the question ‘how are pure idealities, which are the same for everyone despite variations in psychological circumstances, synthesized in my consciousness’?
To answer this question , he brackets and reduces these universal idealities to more fundamental constituting processes in subjective consciousness. Just as the subject constitutes the idea of a self-identical spatial object, he constitutes in consciousness that which can be repeated identically again and again. Logical ideality doesnt drop into the subject’s lap, it is formed in order to achieve specific goals. It isnt logic which is fundamental, it is associative synthesis.
I think that feeling the need for grounds is a very human thing. It seems obvious to me that we have our (evolutionary) foundations in the pre-conceptual world of perception and judgement. A different question is whether we can find grounds, in the sense of intellectual justifications, for our beliefs there, and I think no unequivocal answer to that is possible.
I say “unequivocal” because any answer will be an argument based on premises which are not themselves grounded by the argument. This is the Gödelian problem in a nutshell. An argument cannot be consistent and complete, or as I would rephrase it in the present context “consistent and globally unambiguous”.
I do find enactivist ideas attractive, within certain limits. The idea that the subject constructs or enacts the world for me has some truth, but then I think the world is left out. I would say everything, including the subject is enacted by the world. We don’t consciously construct the world, but the whole process of world and embodiment is really not separable, except in abstraction.
In one sense it is much ado about nothing, and in another sense it is absolutely central to everything human. There’s that wonderful ambiguity again―where would we be without it?
Nice. So logic is the “result” and gets mistaken as foundational.
I agree with this but would add that “associative synthesis” is not fundamental or foundational either, in that it cannot stand alone. Essentially I’m saying that if anything is fundamental then everything or nothing or no-thing is fundamental, and even it is not unambiguously so.
“Constraints” and “representations” are themselves highly ambiguous, and the idea that we cannot get outside of them even more so. I think you know I have long argued that metaphysics is not a determinable activity with determinate results, yet it doesn’t follow that it is a waste of time. We “push it further” not by means of empirical or formal logic, but by abandoning those “lifejackets” (or straitjackets) and swimming in the refreshing waters of allusion, allegory and metaphor. Metaphysics is more akin to poetry than to science or mathematics.
Yep. Derrida gives a sense of what sorts of prior constructions are being ignored when logic is taken as fundamental.
“… only “composed” logical notions can be defined without referring to psychological genesis; these notions are mediate and hence insufficient. They are already constituted, and their originary sense escapes us. They suppose elementary concepts like “quality,” “intensity,” “place,” “time," and so on, whose definition cannot, in Husserl’s eyes, remain specifically logical. These concepts are correlative to the act of a subject. The concepts of equality, identity, of whole and of part, of plurality and of unity are not understood., in the last analysis, through terms of formal logic.
If these concepts were a priori pure ideal forms, they would not lend themselves to any definition; every definition supposes in fact a concrete determination. This determination cannot be pro-vided except by the act of actual constitution of this formal logic. Thus, we must turn toward concrete psychological life, toward perception, starting from which, abstraction and formalization take place. An already constituted logical form" cannot be rigorously defined without unveiling the whole intentional history of its constitution.
If such a history is not implied by all the logical concepts, these become unintelligible in themselves and unusable in concrete operations. Thus, Husserl maintains against Frege that one has no right to reproach a mathematician with describing the historical and psychological journey that leads to the concept of number, One cannot “begin" with a logical definition of number. The very act of this defi-nition and its possibility would be inexplicable. Thus, all that can be asked of a mathematician is to begin with a concrete description of the genesis of the notions they use and thus to bring to light the sense of these notions for a consciousness.” (Derrida, The Problem of Genesis)
Is there more to what @Joshs is saying than that logic is always a logic of something, always embedded in a language game?
If so, then I’ll go along with them.
But I’ve no clear idea what an “associative synthesis” might be.
I’m looking for as broad a range of ideas as possible. I just wish I had more expertise so I could be of more use.
I’m assuming logic is the synthesis or result of our sense making process , creating regularities.
Do we create regularities or discover them?
I’ll try to pull back on the critique then.
I really do get that - but it points towards a more modern and more refined understanding of the role of ‘eidos’.
Husserl called his position “transcendental” phenomenology, and Tieszen makes sense of this by claiming that it can be seen as an extension of Kant’s transcendental idealism. The act of cognition constitutes its content as objective. Once we recognize the distinctive givenness of essences in our experience, we can extend Kant’s realism about empirical objects grounded in sensible intuition to a broader realism that encompasses objects grounded in categorial intuition, including mathematical objects.
The view is very much like what Kant has to say about empirical objects and empirical realism, except that now it is also applied to mathematical experience. On the object side of his analysis Husserl can still claim to be a kind of realist about mathematical objects, for mathematical objects are not our own ideas (p. 57f.).
This view, Tieszen points out, can preserve all the advantages of Platonism with none of its pitfalls. We can maintain that mathematical objects are mind-independent, self-subsistent and in every sense real, and we can also explain how we are cognitively related to them: they are invariants in our experience, given fulfillments of mathematical intentions. The evidence that justifies our mathematical knowledge is of the same kind as the evidence available for empirical knowledge claims: we are given these objects. And, since they are given, not subjectively constructed, fictionalism, conventionalism, and similar compromise views turn out to be unnecessarily permissive. The only twist we add to a Platonic realism is that ideal objects are transcendentally constituted.
We can evidently say, for example, that mathematical objects are mind-independent and unchanging, but now we always add that they are constituted in consciousness in this manner, or that they are constituted by consciousness as having this sense … . They are constituted in consciousness, nonarbitrarily, in such a way that it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions for them or that there ever be awareness of them. (p. 13).
Phenomenology, Logic and the Philosophy of Mathematics, Richard Tieszen (reviewed).
So that ‘associative synthesis’ still culminates in the grasping of something which is not in itself constructed. So while you say ‘he brackets and reduces these universal idealities to more fundamental constituting processes in subjective consciousness’, I say it’s more than just subjective, in the sense of pertaining to an individual. They are necessary structures within consicousness itself, not yours or mine. Which is why it is still a form of transcendental idealism.
I cannot see any more warrant for talking about “necessary structures of consciousness” than I can of talking about “structures of the perceived world”. Or even any warrant, in that consciousness as a “no-thing” does not seem to be anything it would be appropriate to speak of in terms of “necessary structures”.
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Hmm, you can definitely see it when political leaders or governments try to enforce a law or policy that doesn’t make any sense. They will be swimming upstream, and the strength of the current will depend on how illogical the policy is. Giving concrete examples risks creating tangents in the thread, but a relatively uncontroversial example might be the Soviet Union’s claim that they had created a kind of utopia within the country. Given the actual state of affairs, such a claim contravened the law of non-contradiction and could not be sustained over time.
You can also see it when individuals try to maintain a highly illogical position or double standard within their life. It will take a toll on their social relationships, their ability to think clearly, and their mental health. Trying to live out a contradiction exacts a high price, and no one seems to escape that sort of situation unscathed.
I think Aristotle was right. For Aristotle the paradigm of logic isn’t self-grounding. So if “grounded” is defined as “logically grounded” then logic would not be “grounded.”
Among good philosophers it isn’t controversial to say that logic doesn’t ground itself, so you’re right to ask about what the state of logic is with regard to groundedness. If you search the old forum for “Stromberg” you will find an Aristotelian answer to that puzzle.
But could we simply say that logic is ungrounded and leave it at that? I don’t think so, and this is because those who are concerned with logic are concerned with groundedness. To be concerned with logic while simultaneously being unconcerned with the grounding of logic would be like an engineer who is concerned with the structural integrity of bridges, but who is indifferent to the manner in which bridges are anchored into the ground. This does not make sense, because the purpose of a bridge is to stand firm, and a bridge that is not anchored into the ground cannot stand firm.
(Note that the variety of Analytic who is only concerned with axioms and disregards all questions of first principles is like the engineer who cares not about anchors into the ground.)