On the separation of syntax
and semantics and the issue of (real time) pragmatics à
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Communicated to The Institute for Defense
Analysis and The Arlington Institute
On the issue of
inhibition by Incumbent Group Think
Sowa and Majumdar delineate the difference between analogical reasoning and deductive reasoning in the 2002 paper, Analogical Reasoning. Please read his exposition in Section 2, “Logical and Analogical Reasoning”, in that paper.
In particular look at Figure 1 in that section.
Figure from Sowa and Majumdar (2003)
The topic that I wish to introduce is a difficult one for two sets of reasons. The first set of reasons is related to the observation that our educational system does not prepare us for this type of thinking. This is why we need a National Project to develop a K-12 curriculum that helps our citizens think about these issues. The second set of reasons has to do with the subtlety of those physical processes that are involved in human memory, perception, awareness, cognition and anticipation.
It might not be necessary to have the background in neuropsychology and quantum physics that I do in order to have a sense that there is something to appreciate regarding the natures of human memory, perception, awareness, cognition and anticipation. And Sowa’s work approaches the same appreciation from an entirely different perspective than I do, i.e. from a broad examination of the history of logic. The problem of induction, for example can be examined outside of the rigid scholarship that we regard as the history of Western philosophy. Please bear with me on my presentation.
I am skirting the cultural bias that is built up regarding Aristotle’s logic and the traditions that follow from this logic. This must be done because almost no progress can be made within this tradition without some higher authority making foundational corrections to what is deemed proper to talk about. This higher authority must be experimental complexity science, including experimental results on how the brain and social systems actually use physical reality to produce human memory, perception, awareness, cognition and anticipation.
The problem we face in talking about the nature of logic is that logical positivism (the belief that there is a rational explanation for everything) is a form of fundamentalism.
Moreover, what Dawkins (“The Selfish Gene”) calls a “meme” or mimicing mechanism has been for many centuries attached to those ways of thinking that are most precisely encapsulated as the British logical positivism of the early twentieth century. Not everyone is familiar with this tradition. I ask that reader to think about the abbreviated description that I am giving here that logical positivism is “the belief that there is a rational explanation for everything”.
I am not trying to fool anyone with this abbreviated description. Things are simple here, and simply put; Western philosophical traditions made a deep error in how the concept of human memory, perception, awareness, cognition and anticipation is developed in philosophy.
The natural sciences and the foundations of mathematics points this error out, but the memetic re-enforcements etched during centuries of cultural evolution are still dominant, and still protects the error from cultural discovery. The structure of our language and the cultural re-enforcement of Western philosophy work together to disallow the natural evolution and acceptance of natural science and the precise results from the foundational work by Godel, Turing, Church and others. Some references to this discussion can be found in my on-line book, Foundations for Knowledge Sciences, but these are very incomplete.
Over centuries, many scholars worked on the notion that the foundations of logic and mathematics were to be firmly established as a single consistent theory of how thought follows. This work lead to Godel’s theorem and to other foundational work that should have set aside logical positivism as a theory of how the real physical world is organized. But the memetic replication of the social constructions related to this notion persists. It is for this reason that a National Project is needed to develop curriculum that teaches our children about a more complex world and teaches that human cognition is not a mere mechanism that can be precisely reproduced by a silicon chip running a set of binary instructions.
Very briefly I wish to address why a more complex understanding of human memory, perception, awareness, cognition and anticipation is important to me.
1) A viewpoint is expressed in native cultures, particularly Native American “Old Way” and Hispanic culture in the Southwest. In these viewpoints, a deeper appreciation of the forces of nature is found within the culture, but not within the school system ! The school curriculums can be slightly modified so that an understanding of natural systems from the perspective of small closed form ecosystem production units within a Hydrogen economy and pharmaceutical farming perspective. This modification is what is supported in the BCNGroup’s concept of the Rural American Safe Net.
2) A viewpoint is expressed in terms of the dysfunction of an American intelligence community’s technology and organizational design. This technology and this design are based on a hard form of artificial intelligence and “cognitive engineering”. The dysfunction separates information gathering from information analysis and separates information analysis from the ability to act. Thus this intelligence technology and organizational design is precisely consistent with the incorrect worldview of logical positivism. The strengths of logical positivism are:
a. The memetic support hides ALL arguments that this worldview has been side aside by the best natural science. Government funding mechanisms have supported this incorrect worldview at the tune of tens of billions in direct funding and have inhibited alternative viewpoints in several specific ways, including denial of funding and direct ridicule.
b. A mimicing linkage within a capital economy where centralized control takes responsibility away from the individual and aggregates wealth into the hands of a very few.
I must say that I know that much of what I have spoken about in this bead is not well received by many others. My own un-employment and current economic crisis is directly attributed to these views expressed here. I am not alone is my financial poverty.
Paul Prueitt
Chantilly Virginia