Abstract
The selective attitude expressed by analytic formal logic, which disregards much of the content of what we say to concentrate on what it calls the form of discourse (and is nothing other than a portion of the content), can be, and has been, generalized to an attitude according to which what has logical, conceptual dignity does not belong to the ordinary, spatiotemporal world but subsists in its own transcendent dimension, and ordinary objects and experiences only provide inessential, imperfect examples of logical structures. For dialectical logic, on the other hand, the concept inhabits the spatiotemporal world, that world is the concept incarnate, and every minute detail of the world illuminates the concept’s logical vicissitudes. For oceanic logic, the world is an unresponsive, mute mass that is closed to any attempt at deciphering its code; it is what Wittgenstein called the mystical.
Since a theory of the logos is an all-inclusive doctrine, among the countless things it is supposed to account for are the competing theories. For analytic logic, there can be only one definition of the word “logic” (ambiguity is an anomaly there); so alternative logics would be nonsensical (though there may be competing theories that give distinct formulations of one and the same logic, as in the proliferation of logics we have witnessed in the last several decades). Dialectical logic appropriates the other logics as early phases of itself: the contraries that analytic logic regards as definitive chasms in the structure of the world are instrumental in bringing out the conflicts that will be dialectically transcended, and Spinoza’s oceanic view is understood as a rudimentary (immediate) manifestation of the idea. Oceanic logic regards its rivals as different, partial points of view on the same (mysterious) logical reality.
Finally, how shall we behave in the presence of alternative, and opposed, theories of thinking, reasoning, and arguing? If language is seen as less a means of communication than an arena of play, then the answer is: playfully. In our everyday conversations, we constantly shift from one logic to another; and all such shifts empower us, by making us familiar with all the diversity that is reflected in them.
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Notes
- 1.
Both Kant and Hegel, despite their (somewhat) different logics, recognize that the assumption of an agreement between natural occurrences and rational considerations plays a major heuristic role within scientific endeavors. See, for example, the following passages: “It is in fact indispensable for us to subject nature to the concept of an intention if we would even merely conduct research among its organized products by means of continued observation; and this concept is thus already an absolutely necessary maxim for the use of our reason in experience. It is obvious that once we have adopted such a guideline for studying nature and found it to be reliable we must also at least attempt to apply this maxim of the power of judgment to the whole of nature, since by means of it we have been able to discover many laws of nature which, given the limitations of our insights into the inner mechanisms of nature, would otherwise remain hidden from us” (Kant 2000, p. 269). “While at first it is only dimly aware of its presence in the actual world, or only knows quite simply that this world is its own, … [reason] strides forward in this belief to a general appropriation of its own assured possessions, and plants the symbol of its sovereignty on every height and in every depth. But this superficial ‘mine’ is not its ultimate interest; the joy of this general appropriation finds still in its possessions the alien ‘other’ which abstract reason does not contain within itself. Reason is dimly aware of itself as a profounder essence than the pure ‘I’ is, and must demand that difference, that being, in its manifold variety, become its very own, that it behold itself as the actual world and find itself present as a shape and thing. But even if reason digs into the very entrails of things and opens every vein in them so that it may gush forth to meet itself, it will not attain this joy; it must have completed itself inwardly before it can experience the consummation of itself” (Hegel 1977b, p. 146; translation modified). It is hard, on the other hand, to find scientists who are even aware of this possible presupposition of their entire work.
- 2.
See Kant (2004), p. 6.
- 3.
See Armstrong (2009): “when asked what would happen if his theories were not vindicated in the laboratory, … [Einstein] retorted, ‘So much the worse for the experiments; the theory is right!’” (p. 267).
- 4.
See his (1977a), pp. 180–181: “Religion offers a possible reconciliation with nature viewed as finite and particular. The original possibility of this reconciliation lies in the original image of God on the subjective side; its actuality, the objective side lies in God’s eternal Incarnation in man, and the identity of the possibility with the actuality through the spirit is the union of the subjective side with God made man.”
- 5.
- 6.
“[P]ractical wisdom [phrónesis] cannot be knowledge nor art; not knowledge because that which can be done is capable of being otherwise, not art because action [prãxis] and making are different kinds of thing. It remains, then, that it is a true and reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man. For while making has an end other than itself, action cannot; for good action itself is its end” (Nicomachean Ethics 1140b).
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Bencivenga, E. (2017). The Play of Logics. In: Theories of the Logos. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63396-1_11
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