Part 10 (2/2)

Since scale (of hu coherent activities, of activities themselves) plays such an important role in the dynah practical activities involving language, it is only fair to question whether logic is affected by scale Again, the ansill depend upon who is asked Logic as we study it has nothing to do with scale An inference remains preserved no matter how many people make it, or study it, for that matter But this reflects the universalistic viewpoint Once we question the constitution of logic itself, and trace it to practical experiences resulting in the awareness of connections, it becoic is independent of scale

Actually, so reached a critical mass, and the relation between siression But it is certainly a ression

The practical experience of a tribe (in Africa, North America, or South America) is defined at the scale of relations inside the tribe, and between the tribe and the relatively liic, to adapt the jargon of soists) specific to this scale corresponds to the dominance of instincts and intuitions, and is expressed within the visually dominant means of expression and communication characteristic of what is called the primitive mentality Fro patterns of activity The power of discri, sher than that of humans in modern societies These tribe roups, unaware even of biological coroups, focused on theies notcreatures who share the sa to each other, the practical experiences of self-constitution diversify Cooperation and exchange increase, and language, in many varieties, becomes part of the self-constitution of various huinate in areas associated with the early nuclei of agriculture These are places where the population could increase, since in soreater nuriculture is the first activity in which a scale threshold was reached and a new quality, constituted in the practical experience of language, eic embodied in the awareness of a multitude of levels where connections are critical for the outco of those practicing it The sacredness of place, to which the Latin root of the word culture (cultus) refers, is e pertinent to huic captures the connection between the place and the activity In a variety of embodiments-from ways to sequence an action to the use of available resources, how to pursue a plan, craft tools, etc-logic is integrated in culture and, in turn, participates in shaping it It is a tay dependency which increases over tiical machines that define a culture radically different from the culture of the mechanical contraption There are differences in the type of intelligence, which need to be acknowledged And there are differences resulting from the variety of natural contexts of practical life, which we need to consider Commonalties of the survival experience and further development should also be placed in the equation of huic extracted from practical experiences of self-constitution in the world and the logic constituted in experiences defining the world of the huic of language and infer froic (itself a practical result of self-constitution) upon the experience in the world The algebra of thought, a cross section of rational thinking that Boole subood exaes are created in order to support a variety of logical syste, autoepistemic, temporal and tense propositional, ence of a universal logic and a universal language (attempts were and are made to facilitate such a universalise, a characteristica universalis and a calculus ratiocinator So didthat in the process of diversification of huressively less attainable In parallel, we gave up the logical inheritance of the past: logic embedded in a variety of autarchic priroups (in Africa, Asia, Europe, etc) had up to our ti a cultural reference The scale that such experiences eic appropriate to that scale are silobal econoer in the position to effectively unveil the logic of ical experiences, not even of those rational or rationalizable aspects that refer to the plants, ani us for avoiding disease or treating illness

In our days, the cultures swinging from the sacred to the profane, froether This happens not because everyone wants this to happen, not even because all benefit (in fact, ive up an identity-their oay of life-for a condition of non-identity that characterizes a certain style of living) The process is driven by the need to achieve levels of efficiency appropriate to the scale hurated as huions), and consequently a pragressively put in place

The Euro-centrist (or Western) notion that all types of intelligence develop towards the Western type (and thus the Western practice of language cul in literacy) has been discredited many times The plurality of intellectual structures has been acknowledged, unfortunately either deically or in lip-service to the past, but never as an opening to the future

Literacy eradicated, for valid practical reasons- those of the Industrial Revolution-heterogeneity, and thus variety froh which people constitute themselves in the universe of their experience When those reasons are exhausted, because new circuic, literacy beco the role of the logic inhabiting it

The scale of human life and activity, and the associated projection of expectations beyond human survival and preservation, lead less to the need for universal literacy than to the need for several literacies and for a rich variety of logical horizons Since the coordinating ic, rhetoric, heuristics, and dialectics, the new scale pro other things It suffices to think about persuasion at the level of the global village, or about persuasion at the level of the individual, as the individual can be filtered in this global village through ical ical considerations of increased individual communication Think about new heuristic procedures at work on the World Wide Web, as well as in market research and in Netconomy transactions Consider a new dialectic, definitely that of the infertile opposition bethat is proclaiood and excellent, as we try to convince ourselves thatwork in ic, and ical focus pertinent to co allow progress well beyond what the science fiction of the world of non A presented us with

The logics of actions

Between the relatively monolithic and uniforic, and the pluralistic and heterogeneous reality of partial literacies that transfer logic to e in direction Persons with a rather adequate literate culture, educated in the spirit of rationality guarded by classic or for the sub-literacies of specialized practical endeavors, or the illogical inferences made within new fields of human self-constitution Let us put their attitude in soes in hu to hunting, or froriculture-people experienced the effects of the erosion of some behavioral codes and projected their new condition in new practical patterns One type of cohesion represented in the declining behavioral code was replaced by another; one logic, deferring the code, was followed by others When interaction aic was severely challenged Soic dominated; other ties are ree, re), consists of an appropriated environic, rhetoric, heuristics, and dialectics interact inside this fraoes fro in the natural world to an artificial (human crafted) world superimposed on the concrete reality-and eventually extended into artificial life, one fro the most recently established fields of scientific inquiry Within this world, huer restrict the projection of their natural and intellectual condition through one (or very few) con systelobal cohesion, but local cohesiveness, corresponding to local opties within this systeic, or several, supporting it In the interaction between a language and the huical characteristics and of their experience, logical conflicts are not excluded After all, the logic of actions, influenced by heuristics as well, and the logic inherent to literacy are not identical

Actions bring to rated in tools and artifacts The assue is involved in the expression leading to theof tools and other objects related to people's activity went unchallenged for a long ti to an ideal of literacy that is expected to reflect in their work the rationality exe s have expressed ideas about how to s and how to perform some operations that are part of our continuous experience of self- constitution in practical activity Each drawing eic of the future artifact, no e record of literate work fro can be derived

There is a rather s artifacts They were conceived for precise practical experiences and usually did not outlast the experience, or the person who embodied it Roads, houses, tools, and other objects indeed survived, but it is not until better tools for drawing itself and better paper beca was established

As a hybrid between art and science, engineering accepts the logic of scientific discovery only in order to balance it against the logic of aesthetic expectations In the prag definitely has a dominant position in respect to the self-constitution of the hue- based practical experiences This is due to the impact it has on the efficiency of human practical experiences and on their almost endless diversification

There is a phase of conflict, a phase of accommodation, and a phase of coe and the ineers) replace others, if they do not render the many more people than ever, of distributive transactions, of heterogeneity, and of interactions that go beyond the linearity of the sequence, the structural characteristics of literacy interfere with the new dynamics of human developies eical possibilities At this tiics (in the plural) collide in the pragic of the literate discourse, followed volens nolens in this book, it should be clear that the attee literacy is the attempt to maintain linear relations, determinism, hierarchy (of values), centralization-which fostered literacy-in a fra non-linearity, decentralization, distributedothers) The two fraically incompatible This does not ether, or that it will disappear, as cuneifor did, or that it will be replaced by drawing or by co The linear will definitely satisfy a vast number of practical activities; so will deterious, technological, etc), and even an elitist sense of value But instead of being a universal standard, or even a goal (to linearize everything that is not linear, to ascertain sequences of cause and effect, to find a center and practice centrality), it will become part of a complex systeing hierarchies-valueless, adaptive, extrenificance is the type of logic (and for that uage, ie, projected from the universe of hue, and awareness of the being characteristic of literate frae successfully captured a dualistic logic indebted to the values of truth and falsehood, and supported experiences eical rationality It was coical calculus, very successful in foricalthe dualistic structure

Literacy instilled bivalent logic as another of its invisible layers-so-allowing only quite late, and actually in the realical formalism, the appearance of ueness, and fuzziness characteristic of the post-industrial pragh human efficiency, better adapted to the scale of humankind that required efficiency and eventually oal Literacy is ill endowed for supporting h it was always tempted to step in its vast territories

Even some of the disciplines built around and in extension of literacy (such as history, philosophy, sociology) are not able to integrate a logic different fro and writing This explains, for instance, computationalisic can be si structure is that of Boolean logic The literate argument of science and multimedia's non-linear heuristic path to science are fundaic and results in a different interaction between those who constitute their identity in the practical experience of scientific experiments and those who constitute their identity in co- participation

It took longer in the world of predicative logic and in the science based on analytic power to accept fuzzy logic and to integrate it in new artifacts, than it took in the world of non-predicative logic and in the science based on the power of synthesis Within the universe of non-predicative language, fuzzy logic h-speed trains, as well as into new efficient toasters It was accepted in japan while it was still debated a experts in the Western world, until 1993, when a washi+ng ic was introduced in the o on record asthe ie systeand eression froeneralize predicate calculus; neural networking is devoted tothe way ic addresses the limitations of Boolean calculus and the nondeter iuity, and undecidability as these are e

Within the civilization of literacy, recollection and the logic attached to it are predo In the literate fra ic of writing Lives are subject to memories, and diaries are our interpreted life, written with some reader into acknowledge or understand The literatein successive practical experiences contain the expected logic and affect both the experience and its coinate in the same context: to know y, with its i, reconstituting the experience as a language experience This is why every for based on the structure eious, scientific, journalistic, or political-is actually rewriting