Part 10 (1/2)

Around the time computers entered public life, a relatively unknoriter of science fiction described the world of non A (A) It is our planet Earth in the year 2560, and what non A denotes is the non-Aristotelian logic eame machine that rules the planet Gilbert Gosseyn (pronounced Go Sane, with an obvious pun intended) finds out that he is inally educated in the history of logic will spontaneously associate the experience described here with Levy-Bruhl's controversial law of participation According to this law, ”In the collective representations of pris, phenomena can be, in a e cannot understand, the different at the same time” The relatively undifferentiated, syncretic human experience at the ti testifies to awareness of very unusual connections Research of artifacts originating with primitive tribesand functioning of hu the line of ould today call h placed by its author in soic prevalent in a reists report, there are tribes in the Ales and in remote Eskis they are, but also so else, such as a bird, plant, or even a past event

This is not a way of speaking, but a different way of ascertaining identity Inferences in this pragical world of truth and falsehood that Aristotle described Multi-valued logic is probably a good na the production of such inferences, but not necessarily the explanation we seek for why it is that self-constitution involves such et both questions answered, ould still wonder-because our own self-constitution involves a different logic-what the relation is between the language experience and the logical fra in the non A world of ancient ties, doical continuum, instead of a clear-cut association with truth and falsehood, or with present and absent

Multi-valued logics of different types, corresponding to different prage was experienced in its written for was stabilized in written expressions Awareness of connections distinctly integrated in huible knowledge progressively clears the logical horizon

As ics were subdued, entities were constituted only as what the experience er sie froe affectedintroduced a frame of reference, ways to compare and evaluate, and thus a sense of value associated with limited choices

Orality was controlled by those exercising it The written, stabilized in , based on its ie led to associations Some were in relation to its visual aspect Other associations were rative by its nature, writing sti experiences of self-constitution by co as recorded The expectation of accurate recording is i The rather skeletal incipient written language makes visible connections which within orality faded away

A very raw definition of logic can be the discipline of connections-”if so else”-that can be expressed informal expressions

Connections established in orality are spontaneous With writing, the experience is stabilized and a promise for method is established This method leads to inferences froest is that although there is logic in orality, it is a natural logic, reflecting natural connections, as opposed to connections established in writing Writing provides the X-ray of the elusive body of experience in whose depths awareness of connections and their practical i to take shape

Tiained relatively slowly In parallel, connections to experiences in time and space are expressed in an incipient awareness of how they affect the outcoic is rooted also in the pragmatics of huether with them Co-presence, of what is different or what is alike, incompatibilities, exclusions, and similar time or space situations bcome disassociated from actions, objects, and persons and form a well-defined layer of experience Mechanisms of inference, from objects, actions, persons, situations, etc, evolve fro isinferences, although not necessarily in providing a ained in breadth is lost in depth

As huet nitive effort substitutes more and more for the physical Stabilized in inferences based on increasingly riculture is definitely -experience is transmitted more and more in its skeletal form, deprived of the richness of the individual characteristics of those identified through it Less information and more sequences of successful action-this is how froic of actions takes shape The accent is on time and space, or better yet on e call, in retrospect, references As writing supplants time-based means of expression and coins to lose in ies, literacy, in conjunction with the logic it houses, constitutes its invisible grid, its i that is not related to our literate self-constitution ree is a reductionist machine, which we use to look at the world from the perspective of our own experience Aware of experiences different from ours, at least of their possibility, ould like to understand the perfectly well that once captured in our experience of language, their own condition is negated Oral education maintained the parent-child continuum, and memory, ie, experience, was directly trans discontinuity and, above all, differences It stored, in so to the experience But as record, it constituted a new experience, with its own inherent values

As a reductionist device, writing reduces language to a body of accepted ways of speaking, recording, and reading governed by two kinds of rules: pertinent to connections (logic), and pertinent to grammar The process was obviously more elaborate and less focused In retrospect, we can understand horiting affected the experience of hue It is therefore understandable why those who, following the young Wittgenstein, take the logic of language for granted, seeing only the need to bring to light what is concealed in the signs of language, are wrong Language does not have an intrinsic logic; each practical experience extracts logic from the experience and contaminates all means of human expression by the inference froics behind the logic

The function of coordination resulting froe is the structure of the coordinating itie, is concerned with structural aspects of various languages The atte to literacy were created, after the writing entered the real of the coordinating ic but is not reducible to it This raic), means of persuasion (rhetoric), selection of choices (heuristics), and argue of how complex the process of self-constitution is Separately, they give us insight into the frage use, rationality, conviction, selection, actions, and beliefs There is a logic behind the (relative) normal course of events, and also behind any crisis, if ant to extend the concept of logic so as to include the rational description or explanation of whatever ics behind the logic, as Descartes, the authors of the Port Royale Logic (actually The Art of Thinking), Locke, and ic of art, of ic of literacy, are examples of the variety people consider and establish as their object of interest, subjecting such logic to the test of co?), consistency (is it contradictory?), and soion, art, ethics, a precise science, literacy, etc), huic as a network of reciprocal relations and functional dependencies according to which truth (religious, artistic, ethical, etc), relevant to the practical experience in ic, an extension of the incipient awareness of connections, became a fory still believe is so its correct functioning Indeed, successful action was seen as a result of logic, hard-wired as part of the biological endowic as a product of our experience, in particular thinking, as this applies to our self-constitution in the natural world and the world we ourselves created As a corpus of rules and criteria, logic applies to language, but there is a logic of huic ofconsistency,causal inference and other relevant cognitive operations, such as articulating a hypothesis or drawing conclusions

An old question sneaks in: Is there a universal logic, soe, in biological characteristics, in differences, period? The answer depends on whom one asks From the perspective assumed so far, the answer is definitely no Differences are emphasized, even celebrated here, precisely because they extend to the different logics that pertain to various practical experiences Foric is expressed through language, and once expressed, it constitutes a body of knowledge which in turn participates in practical huiven than the Boolean logic ees A iven once we notice that icalfunction

The ical systems require our attention because they are related to what matic conditions, less necessary, if not superfluous Since the civilization of illiteracy is viewed also fro in a new scale of hulobal world forces of uniforeneity and diversity, eic attached to them, or associated with their use, are at work As alic that applies to the Western language systeic of proper inference froic a house, and a sense of validity and perion For Eastern systems, contributions of equal value and relevance can be found in the s of ancient China and japan, as well as in Hindu documents Instead of a superficial overview of the subject, I prefer to quote Fung-Yu-lan's precise observation regarding the particular focus of Chinese philosophy (which is also representative of the Far East): ”Philosophy nition, itexpression of this endeavor differs from the Indian, in search of a certain state of mind, not formulations of truth, and from Western philosophical statematic, and usually paradoxical stateood presentation of this experience is given in a fa-tzu: ”The words serve to fix the ideas, but once the idea is grasped, there is no need to think about words I wish I could find somebody who has ceased to think of words and have hiic of the Indo-European languages is based on the recognition of the object-action distinction, expressed in language through the noun and the verb For over 2,000 years, this logic has dominated and maintained the structure of society, of the polis, to use Aristotle's term Indeed, he defined the human as zoon politikon- coic is an attenitive structure that ensured proper inference from premises expressed in sentences Probably as h foric to be as independent as possible of the language used, as well as independent of the particular language spoken by people belonging to different co Aristotle's logic was a different syste to action) was assiuages Every action beca), and a non-predicative language oes like this: If a is b (The sky is covered), and if b is c (the cover are clouds), then a is c (cloudy sky) Non-predicative constructions do not come to a conclusion but continue fro covered, covers being clouds, clouding being associated with rain, rainand so on That is, they are open-ended connections in status nascendi We notice that Aristotelian logic derives the truth of the inference from the truth of the premise, based on a foric, language only points to possible chains of relations, i that others are sie, or without subjecting conclusions to a formal test of their truth or falsehood To the abstract and fore inference, it opposes a model of concrete and natural representation in which distinctions regarding quality are more important than quantity distinctions

Based on observations already accu keeps the means of expression very close to the object represented in language, we can understand why languages expressed in ideographic writing are not adapted to the kind of thinking Aristotle and his followers developed and which culminated in the Western notion of science, as well as in the Western system of values The successive rediscovery of Far Easternout of this very different way of thinking, as well as of the interest in subtleties rather uncommon to our culture, resulted in the many attempts itness to transcend the boundaries between these fundae structures The purpose is to endow our language, and thus our thinking and emotional life, with dimensions structurally impossible within the Western fraic of dependency-the japanese a in a logic of actions, a different way of thinking, and a different system of values

These are partially reflected in the periodic s between the Western world and japan Of course, it can be simplified as to mean that if a company and an employee accept it, and they do so since am is structurally embedded in the life of people, both parties will be faithful to each other no matter what Am can also be simplified to mean a mutual relationshi+p within fa friends But as we get closer to the practical experience of a on the ”anatoreat deal in this atte not only distinct decisions (logically justified), but an entire context of thinking, feeling, acting, evaluating It is reflected in the attitude towards language and in the education systeic that takes priority over the individual Evidently, the only way to integrate the logic of aht, h practical experience Although ae, it actually reveals li a network of generalized mutual relationshi+ps as part of our experience

It should be added that practically a mirrored phenomenon occurs in the Far East, where what can be perceived as the liic it supports (or e interest in Western culture and many attempts to copy or to quickly assimilate it in vocabulary and behavior From the Indian universe comes not only the mysticism of the Vedic texts, but also the stubborn preoccupation with the hu and of what Mircea Eliade called de-conditioning) This resulted in the attraction it exercises onfor an alternative to what they perceive as an over-conditioned existence, usually translated as pressure of performance and coenerally out of their culture, in search of liberation (mukti), a practical experience of lower preoccupation with the useful and higher spiritual goals, and of obstinate refusal of logic (Some really never fully appropriated or internalized the philosophy, but adopted a lifestyle e commercialized models, the exotic syntax of escapis not to preclude future discussion of these phenoic within the many cultures we know of-more than the Western and Far Eastern mentioned-bears witness to the very coe and the logic that the language makes possible and later embodies The hunter in the West, and the hunter in the Far East, in Africa, India, Papua, the fisherer, etc relate in different ways to their environment and to their peers in the community The way their relatively sie and other means of expression plays an iion, art, in the establishment of a value system, and later on education and identity preservation There are common points, however, and the most relevant refer to relations established in the work process, as these affect efficiency These coe, in conjunction with logic, exercises on various stages of social and economic development

A plurality of intellectual structures