Logic vs. Logical Fundamentalism (Part 2)

Logical Mastery

A master of logic knows both its power and its limits. As we saw in the last part, to assume that logic alone is sufficient for forming all our beliefs is absurd, because then we would need no other techniques.  On the contrary, it is manifest that a true master of logic would have many diverse forms of knowledge, in order to use the techniques and premises most useful for the question at hand. And since no human has the time to learn all disciplines, a true master of logic must be acquainted with the most general and important disciplines.

In other words, the best logicians are more than logicians. The domain of logic itself is rather narrow. It consists of simple-yet-thorny problems, which would confuse if they were not laid out explicitly. Some of these problems are more central than others. What is 12 times 15? Most of us don't know this immediately. Even people who can do it quickly in their heads reason something like this: 4 times 15 is 60. Since 12 divided by 4 is 3, this is the same as 3 times 60, which is 180. This is how I personally do the problem, and in most cases I can do it in about 3 or 4 seconds. But I haven't been entirely logical yet, and perhaps you didn't follow. To clarify, let me use arithmetic which is essentially the logical formalism of numbers:

12 x 15 = A

(3 x 4) x 15 = A           factorization of 12

3 x (4 x 15) = A           associativity

3 x 60 = A                   4 x 15 = 60

180 = A

It's probably taken you more time to understand my reasoning here than it would have to simply use a calculator, or to use long-multiplication as you learned in school. In fact, you might wonder why I chose to do it this way when I could have used the usual way of writing multiplication problems. I was attempting to explain a mental trick I use in multiplying numbers. In most cases it helps me calculate much quicker, and I've been using it for so many years it often happens largely beneath my consciousness. Where did I get the trick? Why is it faster? You should also wonder: why is it important?

This example has shown several uses of logic, as well as weaknesses. Logic is useful for well-defined problems. It is useful for explaining our thoughts more clearly. It is also useful for analyzing and teaching methods of thought that can speed up thinking. Logic is not useful for vaguely-defined problems. The question of how to find good tricks for doing math in your head is not a question of logic, but of experimentation and play. Logic can clarify, but only at the cost of using more words and symbols to explain. I could have stopped with "12 times 15 is obviously the same as 3 times 60, which is 180," because that's normally how I think about it. But it is not a fully logical argument because it might not be obvious to you why it is the case.

Humans only rarely use pure logic. When a lot of pure logic must be done, we give it to computers, which are much faster at it. Among scientists and philosophers, sometimes the use of logic is considered to bestow a greater deal of certainty and authority. This is often unwarranted – even professional papers in physics usually contain more verbal passages than they do mathematical equations. Putting more equations in a paper does not necessarily make the paper as a whole more certain. Logical or mathematical reasoning is always based on assumptions, and these assumptions, along with the fidelity of the reasoning, will generally determine the soundness of the conclusion. Rather than comparing the number of mathematical symbols being used, it is best to treat each written argument on its own terms. The practice of judging a subject based on how logical it appears is a major source of our bias against the humanities and in favor of physics and mathematics.

Logic is fidelity. By making our reasoning explicit, we make sure that nothing is lost or misunderstood. Mathematical knowledge is precise, so it requires a precise symbolism. Learning to use this symbolism carefully and with fidelity helps us to express ourselves clearly. Fidelity is also important when using the English language. The vast majority of our reasoning is in our native tongue. There is no master mathematics that can encompass everything we must say, therefore it is a special challenge to express logical arguments in words. How do you explain your logic fully when you are bound to use words that do not have perfectly precise meanings? In the universities, this is known as "informal logic," but it is taught so narrowly as to be inadequate to what we need it for.

Logic itself is easy. If it is raining, there are clouds. It is raining. Therefore, there are clouds. When you have rules and you know how to apply them, there is no problem. When you're given a set of math problems and all you have to do is follow a mechanical set of rules, it quickly becomes tedious. What is hard is expressing complex logic informally, in words. It is difficult to take a tough new problem and express it logically when you have no formalism. And this is the way it is with most real-life logical problems we run into. Is abortion right or wrong? Two novices can easily spend hours debating whether this question can even be parsed into logic.

Logic is a tool. That something is a logical question does not automatically make it important. The question of how to multiply 12 and 15 was merely an example, and we did not go as deeply into it as we might have. A true master of logic does not get caught up in less relevant details. On the contrary, a master of logic knows what is relevant and develops tools for thinking about the most relevant details.

Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, is perhaps the most all-round capable logician who has ever written a book. Everything he wrote was in Greek, not in equations (as modern logicians strive to do), yet it is so clearly and carefully thought-out and argued, that even where he is mistaken you can tell exactly where his error crept in. Ultimately, this is why logic is important. If we can lay out our ideas clearly and explicitly, then we have done something useful for future generations even if it is wrong. Let's take a look at his discussion of it means to be wise:

[W]e must inquire of what kind are the causes and the principles, the knowledge of which is Wisdom. If one were to take the notions we have about the wise man, this might perhaps make the answer more evident. We suppose first, then, that the wise man knows all things, as far as possible, although he has not knowledge of each of them in detail; secondly, that he who can learn things that are difficult, and not easy for a man to know, is wise (sense-perception is common to all, and therefore easy and no mark of Wisdom); again, that he who is more exact and more capable of teaching the causes is wiser, in every branch of knowledge; and that of the sciences, also, that which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of Wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results, and the superior science in more of the nature of Wisdom than the ancillary; for the wise man must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 2, 982a, W.D. Ross translation).

The context for Aristotle's discussion is an introduction to the principles of metaphysics, which for him are the first principles of what exists, applicable in all fields of knowledge. He equates knowledge of metaphysics with Wisdom itself, which is the broadest and most divine science. As he does at the beginning of all his books, Aristotle clearly and succinctly lays out the goal of his work and his method of approach. The first task, then, is to determine what "causes and principles" the wise man must understand to be wise. This passage is only preliminary, but it begins with "what notions we have about the wise man," including (1) that he has general (if not detailed) knowledge about every field, (2) that he has knowledge about difficult subjects, (3) he is a capable teacher, (4) he knows subjects which are more theoretical and primary.

Just in stating these aspects of wisdom, which are generally taken for granted and left as unconscious assumptions, even today, Aristotle has given an explicit, logical definition of philosophy that is as perfect as can be desired. (Incidentally, the art of making definitions is an essential branch of logic that is nevertheless neglected in most modern courses on the subject.) The relevance of his definition today can be seen simply by asking who we moderns consider wise and determine whether they satisfy it. Scientists are usually called the wisests among us, and among scientists, physicists, such as Albert Einstein, are held in the highest esteem. Other people, who oppose putting mathematics on a pedestal, most commonly name novelists like James Joyce or perhaps analytic philosophers, like Wittgenstein, or postmodern philosophers, like Derrida, as the wisest. So let's consider these four categories of modern thinkers – physicists, novelists, analytic philosophers, and postmodern philosophers – in terms of Aristotle's criteria.

Physicists fail, in general, to satisfy criterion (1). They do not have knowledge of every field, but are relatively untrained in philosophy, the humanities, and "soft sciences" such as the humanities. Most modern physicists are encouraged to specialize even further in a particular field, such as astrophysics, solid state physics, quantum field theory, etc. They are far indeed from being trained in politics, ethics, or mysticism. Physicists do, however, often satisfy criterion (2). Their subject involves extremely difficult mathematics, so difficult that professional physicists tend to score better on mathematical aptitude tests than mathematicians themselves. Some physicists do satisfy criterion (3), being good teachers. My experience as an undergrad at Caltech was that most physicists, however, prefer to focus on research. Physicists are rarely excited about teaching their theories to those outside their field, and when they are good at making their ideas accessible, the way Stephen Hawking or Brian Greene are, their books fail to address the broadest range of human concerns, however excellent they are in other respects. Theoretical physicists satisfy criterion (4), knowledge of what is theoretical and primary, but experimental and applied physicists do not. Therefore, even theoretical physicists only satisfy 2 out 4 of Aristotle's criteria, and are thus not Wise under his definition. This conclusion holds up when compared to the role physics plays in practice – physics is indeed too specialized and too insular to provide people with what you would call wisdom, and is usually more useful in technical engineering contexts.

Novelists often do satisfy criterion (1). Science fiction authors, especially, often display an impressive range of knowledge, including moral, aesthetic, social, and scientific aspects of human life. Writing good, publishable fiction is indeed difficult, so we can give them criterion (2) as well. Are novelists capable teachers? In a few ways they are, because they can inspire people to think and question. But on a person-to-person basis, you wouldn't generally go to novel or novelist to learn a particular subject. Aristotle's criterion, more specifically, is that "he who is more exact and more capable of teaching the causes is wiser." Novelists can't be exact in novel writing, because their stories become boring. Nor do they focus on causes, but on human drama. So they do not sastisfy criterion (3). Do they know subjects which are more theoretical? Often they do, but this is not essential to being a novelist, so we cannot say they satisfy criterion (4) either. Once again, we have a class of thinkers that satisfy only 2 out of 4 criteria.

Postmodern philosophy does not stress ability in mathematics or science, though it does encourage its students to investigate a broad range of fields. At their best, postmodern philosophers do have broad-enough knowledge to satisfy (1). Being a successful postmodern writer is certainly not easy (any kind of writing career is difficult), so we can say that they have knowledge of difficult subjects (2). When it comes to causes and exactness, postmodern philosophers are not trained to teach clearly (3). It is unclear whether postmodern philosophy is properly theoretical, or simply claims to be, but even if we give it the benefit of the doubt on (4), it still only scores 3/4.

	Physics	Literature	Postmodern Philosophy	Analytic Philosophy
1) Broad?	No	Yes	Yes	No
2) Difficult?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
3) Teach causes well?	No	No	No	Yes
4) Primary?	Yes	No	Yes	Yes

Analytic philosophers generally do not satisfy condition (1). They are often untrained in literature, religion, and aesthetics, though most respected ones have at least some knowledge in these fields. They do satisfy condition (2), since analytic philosophy is a very difficult subject, in terms of the complexity of the language and logical reasoning used. They generally score even higher than English professors on language aptitude tests. The best analytic philosophers are good teachers and mentors, and write clear popular accounts of their philosophy. They treat causation and reason as exactly as can be expected, so they satisfy (3). Analytic philosophy is also entirely theoretical, which means they satisfy (4) and score 3/4 on Aristotle's test.

In other blog posts (for example this series) I have argued that analytic philosophy is too narrow to be considered the heir to classical Western philosophy. Aristotle would have agreed that analytic philosophers are not philosophers in the truest sense. Let's take a look at the passage almost immediately following his definition of wisdom:

"[T]he science which knows to what end each thing must be done is the most authoritative of the sciences, and more authoritative than any ancillary science; and this end is the good of that thing, and in general the supreme good in the whole of nature. Judged by all the tests we have mentioned, then, the name in question falls to the same science [metaphysics]; this must be a science that investigates the first principles and causes; for the good, i.e. the end, is one of the causes." (Metaphysics 2, 982b)

Why is the study of the supreme good or end necessarily the most authoritative science, according to Aristotle? He states the reason at the end of his definition of Wisdom: "for the wise man must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him." Whatever knowledge deals with the supreme good, or the ultimate goal, is necessarily the one that determines how the rest of our knowledge is organized or applied. Whatever project one works on, the first question is always, "to what end?" If a project does not have a goal it is not a project at all but mere play. Modern analytic philosophy is mere play because it does not have a supreme goal or aim, which is Aristotle's first requirement for a science to be central. So let us augment Aristotle's definition of Wisdom to take into account the other assumptions that he originally left implicit. (Making them explicit is, once again, a practice in verbal logic):

1.      A wise person has general knowledge of all major fields and their ends.

2.      A wise person can learn difficult and important subjects.

3.      A wise person is more exact and capable of teaching causes and purposes in every major branch of knowledge.

4.      A wise person is more knowledgeable about fields that are primary in the sense of being more theoretical and which concern central or superior ends or purposes.

According to this more exact definition, which is closer to what Aristotle really meant, analytic philosophy fails to satisfy any of these criteria because the ends or purposes of its abstract linguistic systems are rarely made explicit, nor are they stressed in university courses. It is generally assumed – usually implicitly – that because science drives societal progress, and analytic philosophy is the study of science, analytic philosophy is directed toward the ultimate goal of civilization. However, as I argue in my recent book, it is far from obvious that progress is occurring at all, nor does it appear that the so-called "advances" of Western civilization are sustainable. At the very least, these bedrock assumptions warrant investigation. No field of study can be called "wise" which ignores the open question of the ultimate goal of civilization.

Aristotle is the master of logic, and it is thanks to his fidelity – which, again, is the essence of logic – that the modern world is acquainted with the views of his opponents. Even Plato's system of metaphysics is made clearer in Aristotle's writings than they are in Plato's own dialogues. The strength of a philosophical tradition lies in the fidelity of its logic. Without clear explanation, the basic ideas of a system of thought cannot be transmitted faithfully to future generations. Nor can the weaknesses of a way of thought be uncovered, analyzed, or overcome. 

Review of "Ultrasociety" by Peter Turchin

For a brief pop science book, Ultrasociety goes very deep, and it’s rich in historical and theoretical insight. Like Guns, Germs, and Steel, it’s a good introduction to the history of civilization, and will have plenty for even an expert to chew on. But like most popularizations, Ultrasociety tends to overstate the success and generality of its theories, and to gloss over any aspects of history that fall outside its scope.

To his credit, Turchin dismantles a number of popular misconceptions about cultural evolution. For example, he challenges the (already absurd) idea that complex civilization is the accidental result of selfish genes that dispose us to kindness toward relatives. Rather, he points out that group selection on culture is a more plausible explanation and better supported by the evidence. He also disputes the idea that religion is a memetic virus that does little more than cause violence. The evidence again shows the opposite—more religious cultures tend to show less internal violence and more cooperation and prosperity. He has many insights like this scattered throughout, and they make the book well worth reading.

Nevertheless, Ultrasociety falls short of its stated aim, to explain the evolution of enormously complex and large societies like our own. It focuses on the time period between 5000 BC and 1500 AD, and only occassionally discusses cultural evolution following the advent of gunpowder and the printing press. In fact he admits the gap and promises a more thorough analysis of modern civilization in his next book. But the blind spot here is huge. Between 0 AD and 1500 AD, you saw the collapse of the Roman Empire and arguably no significant decrease of violence in Europe. So his main thesis, that cultural selection tends to create larger and more cooperative civilizations through war, is left without convincing support for the last 2000 years of history. Not only has the trend toward larger civilizations not been uniform, but the last 500 years has involved powerful forces aside from war. Turchin admits the shift from violent to nonviolent means of conquest over the last century, but seems to see it as a victory for his view. True, this would seem to be a positive development, but he does little to show how his theory can account for it.

The problem is that the scope of his explanation is too vast. Nobody can ever explain in complete detail why and how human civilization evolved. When tackling any question so large, oversimplification is inevitable. Sure, war was essential to the evolution of modern society. He makes an excellent case that you cannot explain the development of large empires and nation-states without war. He is correct that agricultural advances, urbanization, and far-flung trade networks can all happen in the absence of a state, and that a state’s main purpose, at least until modern times, has always been the waging of war. But the fact that war has proven essential does not imply that it is sufficient. He discusses the importance of religion, too, but seems to assume that unless it helps a nation wage war it serves no function. He makes the same sort of assumption about every element of culture he discusses: horses, wheels, farming, and even cooperation itself. The ultimate utility of all these innovations is in waging war, he claims. But it does not follow that just because the primary function of states is warfare, that the primary function of all the rest of culture is warfare. Life is more complex than that. There have always been plenty of selective forces aside from war.

Finally, Turchin falls into the trap of projecting recent “progress” indefinitely into the future. In an early chapter, he is quick to criticize the progressive view of human history, correctly pointing out that evolution need not lead to improvement. Bafflingly, the rest of his book seems to assume the opposite. States will continue to get larger, encompassing the entire world. Cooperation will become more and more prevalent, he claims. He seconds Pinker’s prediction that violence will continue to decrease.

But modern civilization is very far from sustainable. None of our advances can be counted on to last, not while 90% of our energy comes from nonrenewable resources, not while inequalities continue to rise, and especially not when every major civilization before ours has eventually declined and collapsed due the same kinds of unsustainability.

I’m sure Turchin would admit all of this. But like Jared Diamond and other popularizers, he knows what people want to hear. So he is careful to provide a happy ending, one that leaves all our progressive illusions intact, and enthrones science as our savior. Near the end of the book he writes, “What we need to do now is develop the science of cooperation to the point where we can use it to improve people’s lives.” (After all these decades it’s still not at that point?) And elsewhere: “This, then, is the great hope for humanity: that war can finally fade away, displaced by more obviously constructive contests.” (Good luck.)

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Turchin, Peter. Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth. Beresta Books. Kindle Edition.

Logic vs. Logical Fundamentalism (Part 1)

Modern Confusion about Logic

My first day as a college-level logic instructor for gifted 7^th-10^th graders (read the story here), I gave my new students a questionnaire. One of the questions was the usual “What do you hope to learn from this course?” A surprising number of students wrote something like, “I want to learn logic so I can apply it to big decisions, like what career to choose.” The first time a student volunteered such an answer, I stammered something about how logic might be slightly useful for such things, but is normally used in subjects like science and law. By the end of the course, I had trained myself to respond to such hopes with a carefully intoned “maybe.” But the idea stuck with me, especially as I dipped back into the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Wasn’t that where philosophy had begun, with the determination of Socrates to apply reasoning to the most important questions in life? What had happened to that original philosophical spirit? Had we lost faith in it for any good reason? Or was it just me that had lost faith in logic?

In one sense, modern professors, intellectuals, skeptics, and atheists have become too fanatical about the importance of logic. Skeptics and atheists claim that it is the only viable source of truth, and that we should give no quarter to intuition, emotion, faith, or anything unscientific. Professors and intellectuals credit logic with giving rise to modern technology, science, industry, and progress. This reverence for logic, and mathematics in particular, has made scientists and mathematicians perhaps overly revered, and overly arrogant. Scientists are now expected to be experts even in fields where the relevance of mathematics is slight, such as human psychology, sociology, and political science. A pre-occupation with statistics – which is virtually the only branch of mathematics that is widely applicable in these fields – has plagued us with countless quantitative studies that rarely give us a deeper or broader view of human nature.

Philosophy itself, once a fertile discipline that connected art, science, practical living, ethics, and religion, has become divided into two camps: those who believe that we should use logic to resolve all philosophical disagreements (positivists and philosophers of science), and those who shun logic as a mechanical, soul-deadening, culture-destroying practice (postmodern and continental philosophers).

Those philosophers who still believe in logic can, for the most part, be subdivided into two main groups, positivists and pragmatists. Positivists see logic as a set of mathematical rules that can provide an unshakable foundation for thought, and they believe that some day all human thinking will become mathematical. Pragmatists admit that not all thought can be made mathematical, but claim that the rest of thinking is based on heuristics. But heuristics are simply imprecise logical rules. Ultimately pragmatism amounts to a form of positivism that simply grants logic more room for imprecision. The over-emphasis on logic remains.

Such views, which have dominated Western philosophy for 100 years, have obscured our understanding of what logic ideally should be.

Logic, as understood prior to positivism, is clear, careful thinking. When you need to figure something out, and you spend time determining all the details, that is logic. If you are being rushed, or if the problem is too complex to be explained in all its detail, then we are no longer talking about logic. Logic is the practice of bringing all of your thoughts on a problem to consciousness. You can do this using math, words, or images. If anything is left to subconscious intuition, you are not being entirely logical.

Bringing your thoughts to consciousness is the essential nature of logic that has been lost amidst the pure mathematics championed by modern professors. It is the kind of logic that you can and should apply to your major life decisions. Logic is no specific set of rules, as taught in a university logic class. There are an infinite number of rules you might choose, and none of them are correct by default. What rules you use depends on what you are thinking about. “Logic” is simply making things clear, whether by means of rules, calculations, pictures, or any other form of expression. When you tell someone they are being illogical or need to use logic, all you mean is that you want them to clarify what they are thinking so they can see what is wrong with it.

We all use logic every day. When we draw up a schedule or written plan, that’s logic. Any sort of in-depth discussion, where you hammer out contradictions or disagreements, is logic. Counting is a kind of logic. All mathematics is logic. Any time you consciously use a rule, whether moral or scientific, it is logic.

Just as you can train your bodily movements in fine motor skills and precise hand-eye-coordination, you can train your mind to reason clearly and precisely. Practicing mathematics is a great way to do this. However, mathematics alone does not give one a broader view of how logic fits in to the rest of human thought and living.

Logical Fundamentalism

Postmodern philosophers often criticize scientific philosophers for “logo-centrism,” arguing that the imperial drive to order all knowledge logically is a mirror of, and contributor to, the imperial dominance of the West over other cultures. It is difficult to argue with postmoderns, however, when their more lucid prose looks like this:

The annals of official philosophy are populated by “bureaucrats of pure reason” who speak in “the shadow of the despot” and are in historical complicity with the State. They invent a “properly spiritual . . . absolute State that . . . effectively functions in the mind.” (Brian Massumi, “Translator’s Foreword” to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus.”)

It seems best to follow Ludwig Wittgenstein’s advice and pass over such claims in silence.

Nevertheless, there appear to be a few reasons to worry that perhaps we are becoming too logic-centric in certain ways. Arts and humanities departments are being cut across the country, while the government continues to pour additional funds into math, science, and economics departments. The supposed justification for this is that literature and art are ‘just for pleasure,’ and that the true measure of a nation’s worth is its economic strength and expertise in science. In a time when we need less industry and more sustainability, less wealth and more self-sufficiency, these values should be reversed. People should be taught to treasure what is beautiful and natural again, and to devalue the industry-building that has done so much damage to the environment. Yet our bureaucrats and top scientists continue to champion scientific logic above all else. As a result of our logic-centered focus, most schools and universities have taken on a more mechanical, almost factory-system-like character. Opposed to these trends, a diverse and fertile home-schooling movement has sprung up (see Homeschooling for Excellence, by David and Micki Colfax; and A Thomas Jefferson Education, by Oliver DeMille).

The term “science” is often used to refer to logic. This is imprecise. Science traditionally means the same as knowledge. Today, it more specifically means specialized knowledge. The “scientific method” is a modern term for the logic of science, but positivism, which holds that we can pin down a single method to be used in all sciences, has created a great deal of confusion, and few philosophers of science agree on what, exactly, is meant by the scientific method. If it were acknowledged that no single method is useful in all cases, much of this confusion could be dispelled.

The terms “reason” and “rationality” can rightly be used as synonyms for logic. Etymologically they come from the Latin word rationem, which meant “reckoning.” However, as with logic, these terms have increasingly been forced into specialized meanings. This is especially true of rationality. Scientists now frequently discuss “rational agents” or “rational decision theory” as if we all agreed to precise and universal definitions of these terms. But there is no universal theory of rationality.

For instance, an online community called LessWrong defines rationality as a two-fold art: (1) “the art of obtaining beliefs that correspond to reality,” and (2) “the art of steering the future toward outcomes [you prefer].” Notice that it is impossible to give a definition of any more universal art. Everything we believe, we believe to be real. Everything we do, we do to achieve outcomes we prefer. If we could master this kind of “rationality,” of gaining all knowledge and reaching all aims, no other art would be necessary to human life, which is absurd.

If we acknowledge, on the other hand, that logic is simply the art of bringing our assumptions to awareness for inspection and discussion, an art that is sometimes useful and sometimes not useful or possible, then the absurdity vanishes.

Logical fundamentalism is ultimately illogical. There are no grounds for certainty that all thought must or should be made logical. The brain is too complex to make all thinking completely explicit. The modern Skeptic movement is another popular example of logical fundamentalism that tends to be over-critical of any idea that does not wear the quantitative trappings of science.

Let’s take a look at the article on skeptic.com, “Motorcycle Maintenance Without the Zen,” by Chris Edwards. He claims to be criticizing Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on logical grounds, which is already a questionable exercise given that the book is a novel. In particular, Edwards criticizes this passage from Zen:

Phaedrus felt that […] scientific materialism was by far the easiest to cut to ribbons. [...] He went after it […] using the reductio ad absurdum. [...] Let’s examine, he said, what follows from the premise that anything not composed of mass-energy is unreal or unimportant.

He showed the absurdity of trying to derive zero from any form of mass-energy, and then asked, rhetorically, if that meant the number zero was “unscientific.” If so, did that mean that digital computers, which function exclusively in terms of ones and zeros, should be limited to just ones for scientific work?

Edwards responds in this way:

Modern mathematics, far from being a hard objective “thing” is instead a mish-mash of concepts that arose from a process of cultural synthesis (almost entirely in Eurasia, where cultures were easily able to intermesh because of war and trade). The Greeks contributed geometry, the Gupta Indians the numbers 0–9 and the decimal system, the Muslims gave us Al-Jabr, the English gave us physics, calculus, and the Germans contributed the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Each time, a culture’s language was adopted and added not because they were “right” but because they were more descriptive of objective phenomena and therefore a “better” language.

This response – which is supposed to uphold logic – in fact commits the logical fallacy of missing the point. Pirsig’s argument was supposed to show that scientific materialism isn’t adequate to determine what concepts are useful, or even what concepts belong in science. Pirsig’s definition of scientific materialism is the belief that every concept must correspond to something material. He challenged this view in order to defend his interest in “Quality” a concept that can neither be seen nor touched. Edwards actually appears to be agreeing with Pirsig’s conclusion, when he denies that mathematics is a “hard objective ‘thing.’” If numbers are concepts that are neither right nor wrong, but are merely a more useful language, doesn’t that support Pirsig’s stance that Quality may be useful despite having no material correlate? Indeed, Plato himself used mathematics as an example of something which might be useful to think about despite being immaterial, and in this way defended his belief in the idea of a higher Good.

In modern times we tend to forget three things about logic:

1.      A will or desire to be logical does not suffice for logic. Pirsig was attempting to show the limitations of logic, yet his argument was more logical than that of Edwards, which champions logic as the only way to think. The LessWrong community seeks “systematic methods for obtaining truth and winning,” yet this very definition suffers from a logically absurd over-generality.

2.      Logic has its limitations. Because many mathematical concepts like “zero” have no material correlate, they cannot be derived logically. That does not prevent us from using them in a logical way once they are established, but it does prevent us from developing a single logical system that can encompass all truths. In fact, as Edwards admits, zero was unknown to the Greeks despite the fact that they invented formal mathematics.

3.      These two points together show that logic is not the secret to truth. Sometimes people who believe they are being logical are in fact mistaken. It is always possible that we do not possess the right conceptual tools for the problem at hand, or that the problem is simply too complex to be grasped in the conscious mind. For these reasons, logical fanaticism is unwarranted and harmful to healthy thinking.

GO TO PART II

Related posts:

• Education, Logic, and Values: Part I
• Education, Logic, and Values: Part II
• Education, Logic, and Values: Part III
• The World’s Best Education Costs Almost Nothing

My Book is Launched!

For the next five days you can get a free promotional copy.

The Story of "Progress Debunked"

The release date is only two weeks away, and I think its fitting to tell the story here of how my book came to be and why it has been such an important part of my life. Much of this story can already be found scattered among my posts on this blog. But I'd like to bring it together.

The story begins with myself as a very unsatisfied philosophy grad student. Why exactly I was unsatisfied was a mystery even to myself. Though I loved reading the great philosophers, from Plato to Nietzsche, modern academic philosophy seemed to have become generally pointless. It was merely an ever-growing collection of terminology-heavy articles each trying to prove certain other articles wrong. It was a giant game of "You must be wrong about X and Y because of Z," and "Ah but Z must wrong because of Q and R," and nobody knew where it was going and nobody seemed to care. Something was wrong, but what exactly?

At the time I thought that the problem was a kind of religion that had been erected, one worshiping Reason, or maybe Rationality, or Logic, Math, Science, something like that. Or all of the above. Of course my notion that Reason was a Religion was nothing new, and is called "Postmodernism." Stereotypically, postmodernists hate rationality. That wasn't exactly where I was coming from. I was ready to admit that logic and reason are good things, tools for finding truth. But still: why worship a tool?

And here was one of the great mysteries I wrestled with. How had we come to build this giant institution -- the University -- whose one department devoted to finding the meaning of life -- Philosophy -- does little more than worship a tool, reason?

I spent many long walks in the park, asking myself things like: If science has become a religion, why? How do religions start? Why is it not like any other religion?

The obvious answer, of course, and the whole reason I had studied physics as an undergrad, and was now studying the philosophy of science, was that Science had produced Progress.

The more I thought about this, the more it made sense. Our worship of science was essentially the same as our worship of "progress." The entire soul-deadening boringness of academic philosophy (and much of academia as whole ... and much of modern life!) was due to this obsession with incrementally making the entire world a better place. Hence big, bureaucratic science was the meaning of life. Hence big, bureaucratic politics and the United Nations, and their goals of world peace and solving world hunger -- these were the only things that were supposed to matter -- and in the grand scheme of things adventure, romance, poetry, faith, courage, and all the things that used to make life wondrous were now deemed: worthless.

This is to state in extremely mundane terms a powerful set of emotions that already made me spend several hours a day writing poetry and aphorisms and stories trying to make them clear to others. It seemed to me, even at these early stages, that ultimately it was fiction and poetry that was capable of expressing the vim, vitality, and vigor of life as it should be, close to nature and lived for life-and-death stakes. (Why then, was I never a soldier? I guess because I've always seen myself as a mental or spiritual soldier. To understand the sort of emotion that often drives me, you might watch Ken Burns's Civil War documentary, start to finish, so well evoked that when the veteran Civil War reenactors around the year 1900 say they love the enemy soldiers they fought at Gettysburg, and are eternal friends with them, and wish to die and go to Valhalla with them and live it all again and again, it makes perfect sense. At the same time, I must say that war is not the meaning of life, especially modern war, which tends to be either police action, or to occur at such a large scale that the individual soldier is little more than a robot in a vast, honorless machine. Feudalism is closer to what I mean, more as an ideal to balance all the opposite excesses of modern ideals than as any sort of utopian goal.)

It was in this day-to-day mood back in 2006, reading articles on human genetics for a philosophy seminar called "Genes and Behavior," that it finally hit me. I came up with a good logical argument that progress is ultimately self-defeating, that things will always come back to a balance. I'm not going to try to explain the theory here. I summarize it elsewhere on this blog, and to explain it in detail is the purpose of my 200-page book. For the purposes of our story, all you need to understand is that I had stumbled on a logically-tight argument that progress is impossible. Armed with this, a lot of things started to come together. The following semester, as luck would have it, I took a seminar on the development of Darwin's theory of evolution. It turned out that Malthus's theory of population was a huge influence on Darwin. Reading Malthus's original Essay for the first time, the logical structure of a more general argument against progress now formed in my mind.  I felt ready, even back in 2006, to write up an article debunking progress.

If progress was an illusion, then there was no reason to worship science. And there was no reason to think that philosophy should be modeled on science. Academic philosophy might seem to be slowly converging to the truth, but even this sort of progress would be meaningless unless it actually made people's lives better in the long run. And this was impossible.

And now the real philosophical work began. Not on my book -- I wouldn't try my hand at a draft for another 2 years. But on the only real question for a philosopher -- the meaning of life. If life is not about saving the world from poverty, what then was it about?

At the time I did believe in God, but I had no idea how to form a relationship with Him. I knew that there was something meaningful beyond Reason to live for, that life was an adventure of some sort, but wasn't quite sure how to visualize it, let alone pursue it. The story of this post-progress journey is told largely on this blog. And I will not try to summarize it here. Suffice it to say it changed everything. I developed a relationship with God, I started a family, and I finally left academia to take up independent scholarship and writing.

But before all this, in 2008, I took a leave of absence from grad school to write my argument up as a book. I had already written down the meat of it in a paper for a seminar, but the professor had given me an A- because it was not very relevant to the course material. I had also brought up my argument to professors and friends at the bar or at parties, but they uniformly dismissed it, whether as "eugenics" or as "the old idea that people will get stupider and lazier under socialism" or as "a recap of the Bell Curve."

My argument, I maintain, is none of these things. I have spent years reading the literature on human heredity and population growth, and, aside from Malthus, I've never encountered anything like it. All the eugenicists, anti-socialists, and Social Darwinists want progress more than anyone--they just think we need to sacrifice much more to achieve it. But I'm not saying progress is harder than we thought. I'm saying it's impossible.

And so I spent two years living on rice and eggs in a tiny apartment, floor scattered with books, reading and writing up draft-after-draft explaining why natural selection is an ineliminable part of human life. None of these drafts seemed to come out just how I wanted them. Looking back, I think I was too obsessed with making the argument as theoretical and mathematical as possible. It became so abstract that it kept becoming unclear, even to myself, how it was relevant to anything. The anxiety that had been caused by being dismissed as a eugenicist was getting the better of me. I wrote hundreds of pages of notes and drafts simply trying to debunk eugenics, to prove that even eugenics could not produce progress.

And as I delved deeper into these dark schemes, even darker schemes for progress came to me that would have to be debunked. ... So maybe we can't afford to genetically engineer all new babies in the world. But maybe some world dictator might decide to nuke the majority of the world's population and re-engineer it from scratch, creating a new Adam and Eve genetically programmed never to mutate in any way that would destabilize their own DNA ... or maybe an endless solar-powered virtual reality simulation where a fixed population could experience all the pleasures they wanted and even experience adventures and death, only to be reborn ...

Thus forcing the theory to become still more abstract. I had to apply my theory not only to biological evolution but extend it to cultural evolution as well.

In the end, none of this would be in vain. The theory was refined and deepened by these dark meditations, and now the book as it will be published is brief, yet quite general and theoretical, only focusing on those few schemes for progress (birth control, eugenics, transhumanism, AI) that people already take seriously. But the structure is all there, I believe, to attack nearly any ridiculous, dark, or even pink and fluffy scheme for progress that might be thrown at it. Of course, only posterity will really be able to judge this.

Anyway, when I returned to my philosophy department in 2010 with my manuscript, the professors did not seem very interested, and what was worse, I was not very confident in my most final draft. I felt it had been rushed, even after two years, and I was afraid of coming across as "cranky." I was afraid, furthermore, that they really wouldn't consider it to be "philosophy," since it doesn't talk about any of the narrowly technical topics that modern academic philosophy is usually about.

I gave them parts of it to read, and they were indifferent. And I realized that I didn't care if they cared anyway, as the whole modern philosophical institution was, provably in my view, pointless anyway. The only sensible thing to do was leave, and so I did, beginning my career in IT back in 2011 at a menial call-center help-desk job.

At the time I believed that you needed a PhD to publish a nonfiction book, so I decided to establish a career in fiction first. So up until 2016 I had been working on fiction writing, and have a small body of work to show for it, mostly science fiction, and I hope to publish much of it in the next couple of years.

But in early 2016 someone asked me why I didn't finally publish my philosophy book. They pointed out that nonfiction writers are scarce, and nonfiction readers plentiful and voracious. Everyone wants to write a novel -- that market is saturated. Why not start with my nonfiction?

I realized that my plan was all backwards. In the modern publishing world, largely dominated by independent authors, a PhD is no longer necessary to establish yourself in nonfiction.

And so I wrote up my final draft, and after all those years of meditating on progress and practicing my writing, it came out easily, flows well (I think), and now it is ready. It will be available on Amazon starting September 15.

How to Stay Motivated, Learn New Things, and Complete Projects

My answer to the question: "How can I stay motivated ... and practice every day."

“Progress Debunked” is Six Weeks from Publication, and Other Updates

If you don’t know the story behind Progress Debunked, you can read this post. I’ve spent the last few weeks finalizing the interior of the book for both print and ebook versions. I am nearly done. In about two weeks I’ll be sending out review copies. If you’d like a free copy so you can be one of the first to review on Amazon, let me know. (You can use the contact form on the lower right if you don’t have my email address.)

Publishing has been taking up most of my spare time, but I have made some conceptual progress on a few of my other projects, primarily on The First King of Montana and my fantasy computer game, tentatively retitled Sagas of Orthadel.

Last week I took my family on a road trip through Montana. We all had a great time. It was the kids’ first real road trip out of state, and my wife’s first time that far north. And it gave me, as a novelist, the chance to get a feel for the place, the people, the landscape, and its ecology. The experience has given me some fantastic notes and images to work with. For example, I knew Montana was big, but just looking at maps and photos and satellite images doesn’t really give you a good feeling for how big. And we traversed it in our van. Riding across it on horseback would be an entirely different story. It also gave me a better feeling for the towns, cities, and ranches. Even the largest cities there feel pretty isolated. Their post-apocalyptic versions would be even more so. Let alone the ranches way out in those central-Montana valleys, where a single saloon will draw in regulars from 50 miles around. We saw cattle grazing in wetlands by little creeks you could jump across, surrounded by hills and mountains of parched desert and fragile, desertified pine forest as far as you could see.

And there’s a lot of local pride in Montana. People up there love where they are, and in parts they’ve done an incredible job of preserving the primal forests. Much of the state is natural or man-made (overgrazed) desert, but there’s also true wilderness there. Up north they connect with the endless untamed Canadian wilds. Wolves and grizzlies, and tall, thick forests to the horizon, black within. To meditate on them is to fill your spirit with a beautiful and holy kind of terror.

I realized for the first time on that roadtrip that to write a novel about Montana, let alone the first king of Montana, is to promise something awfully huge. I’m not sure how else to put it. It’s a big task. The place has a big spirit. I will have to put everything I have into my novel if I am going to even come close to doing it justice.

Sagas of Orthadel, the Tolkienesque fantasy computer game I’m working on, is also shaping up to be a big task, if doable. It will be a real-time strategy with some role-playing elements, based on my board game Bloodline of the Eldar. Each player guides a handful of characters possessing both hereditary powers and learned skills. Players can either cooperate against outside foes or vie for political dominance. Characters can marry, have children, teach each other skills, die, create artifacts, and exploit or heal the natural (simulated) ecosystems around them. Most of the basic rules have been playtested in board-game form, but it will likely take several years to finish the computer version.

The basic reason for this is fundamentally the same as with my novel: the subject matter is huge. In this case, though, it’s not a real place. Rather, I’m trying to capture an ideal, an ideal that goes beyond what any philosophical essay or novel, or even series of novels, could really capture.

Modern novels have lost the ability to investigate consequences. Of course, novels have never been interactive. But before the modern era this was not important. Life was interactive enough. Novels were used to express lived experience, and thus carried experiential knowledge. But you can’t trust novels to do this anymore—novel-writing has become a craft that is more dependent on style than on content to satisfy a reader. It’s all illusion, it’s all surface now.

Today, books don’t teach you anything. They have no message.

Modern authors are even proud to have no message.

And the most “literary” novels today are the worst. Magical realism? Post modernism? You can’t trust them not to frivolously negate their own reason for being, if that makes any sense to anyone without a graduate degree in the humanities.

The modern novel (and movie, too) has given us—has indoctrinated us with—a false version of reality. It is false because it can be false. It is anchored to nothing but popular opinion. And popular opinion has run away with itself.

What I am saying is probably still far from clear. So let’s take a specific example. Female heroes in modern storytelling. What’s the first image that pops into your mind? Is it:

(a) a warrior

    or

(b) a mother

Yeah, okay, you say, it was (a), but so what? Can’t women be warriors too?

Sure they can. But is it healthy for a culture to focus on teaching women to be warriors when in reality they will more often be mothers? How many popular movies or novels can you think of where the hero was a mother and her heroism consisted of doing really well as a mother?

And if you think I’m just making a point about “gender issues” here, let’s talk about men. How often are male heroes heroic as warriors rather than fathers? Even here we see an unhealthy tendency toward pure fantasy in our modern entertainment. Fathers are much more common that warriors. In fact they should be just as common as mothers.

Which, again, isn’t to say that there are no differences between men and women and their respective duties in a culture. The very idea that there are or should be no differences between men and women is another example of the veil modern storytelling has pulled over our eyes. Our fictions have come to sacrifice reality for the sake of popular political messages. But to champion a popular political message is to champion no message at all, but merely to flatter the prejudices of one’s own age. It’s to say, “Yeah, those [republicans/democrats] are crazy and you really need to vote [conservative/liberal] because they’ll fix things.” But this sort of binary message is utterly worthless. It’s pure propaganda. A vote is just a millionth of a decision. What about how people live their lives? The only respectable task for a novel, the only worthy task, is to teach people how to live better.

The same goes for a computer game. The example about fathers and mothers and warriors above is in fact right on point when it comes to the game I’m writing. Characters can be father, mothers, warriors, rulers, teachers, craftsmen, and farmers. Balancing these roles is a major part of the game. And the right balance isn’t some arbitrary percentage decided by how liberal or conservative I, the author, am. It’s determined by the ecology of the rules of the game. You can see what happens if you make all your females into warriors and none of your males care about teaching the next generation. Sound complicated? It’s not. At least not as a game. It will take a lot of work to code, as any game does, but the gameplay itself won’t be much more complicated than in most popular computer games. I am designing it not simply to be beautiful and fun but also—if all goes well—to mirror something important about reality. It will go against the modern tendency: it will be designed to teach future generations.