The Discursive Framework, Logic, and Whether the Via Negativa is the Path to Nowhere

The Historian of Logic comments:

It seems to me that what you call the ‘Discursive Framework’ is what I and others call ‘logic’, and that it reflects a Kantian view of logic that prevailed before Russell and Frege, namely that logic reflects the ‘laws of thought’ only. Are you mooting the possibility of beings which defy conception under these laws, or realms where the laws do not apply?

I was re-reading Kant’s Logic last week and it is full of this stuff.

Logic.  I would define logic as the normative science of inference. Science: scientia, study of.  Inference:  the mental process of deriving a proposition (the conclusion) from one or more  propositions (the premises).  Normative: logic is not concerned with how people think as a matter of fact, which is a concern of psychology, but with how they ought to think if they are to arrive at truth and move from known truths to further truths.   The task of logic is to set forth the criteria whereby correct inferences may be distinguished from incorrect inferences. 

The above definition is neutral with respect to any number of ontological questions.  Thus I used 'proposition' above innocuously without presupposing any theory as to what propositions are.  I spoke of inference as a mental process, but this too is innocuous inasmuch as one could be a mind-brain identity theorist and agree with me about logic.  (But if you are an eliminativist about the mental, then you 'get the boot':  it is a Moorean fact that there are inferences.)

Discursive Framework.  This is not the same as logic, pace the Historian, even though it does contain such logical principles as LNC and LEM, and indeed the whole of standard logic.  (We can argue about 'standard' in the ComBox.)  The DF also contains principles that are not strictly logical -- they are not logical truths -- but are better classifiable as metaphysical, as propositions of metaphysica generalis.  Examples:

a. Everything exists: There are no nonexistent items.  Pace van Inwagen, the negation of this is not a logical contradiction.

b. Everything has properties.  (Partisans of bare or thin particulars do not deny this.)

c. Nothing has a property P by being identical to P.   (The 'is' of predication is not assimilable to the 'is' if formal identity.)

d. Principles of logic, such as For any x, x = x, are not just true of objects of thought qua objects of thought, but are also true  of mind-independentally real items.   Thus the principles of logic are not merely principles of thought but principles of reality as well. Not merely logical, they are also ontological.  There is a jump here, from the logical to the ontological, that Aristotle was aware of.  With that jump comes the problem of justifying it.

e. The thinking of ectypal intellects such as ourselves is necessarily such as to involve a distinction between subject and predicate. There are no simple thoughts/propositions if by that we mean thoughts/proposition lacking sub-propositional structure.  Every proposition is internally structured, e.g. Fa, Rab, (x)Fx, etc.  

Laws of Thought but No Psychologism.  Kant, Husserl, and Frege all rejected psychologism in logic.  Are the laws of logic laws of thought?  Yes, of course.  What else would they be?  But this is not to say that they are laws of human psychology.  They are laws that govern the thinking of any actual or possible ectypal intellect.  They might also be laws of reality, all reality, with no exceptions. But surely it would be uncritical simply to assume this.  It wants proof, or at least argument.  As I said, Aristotle had already seen the problem.

Are you mooting the possibility of beings which defy conception under these laws, or realms where the laws do not apply?

Yes, that is what I am doing, although I wouldn't speak of beings.  That's plural, and the singular-plural distinction is part and parcel of the Discursive Framework.  My aim is to make philosophy safe for mysticism.    My aim is to show that while remaining in philosophy, in the DF, one can come to descry the 'possibility' of a, or rather, THE transdiscursive realm.  I deny that the via negativa is the road to nowheresville or u-topia.

I am not attempting anything new; the novelty is merely in the way I go about it.  And there is nothing illogical about it.  Or can you find non sequiturs or other strictly logical mistakes in the above or in recent cognate posts?  If there is a suprarational realm would it not be sloppy thinking, and thus 'illogical,' to assume that it must be infrarational?

Nothing new:  we have seen this sort of thing in the Far East in Buddhist schools like that of Nagarjuna and in Taoism; in the ancient and medieval Western world, e.g., Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite, and in the modern period with Kant and then again in the early Wittgenstein.

The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DDS) Helps Focus The Issue.  Duality is unavoidable on the discursive plane.  To think is to judge, and to judge at the most basic level  is to judge of a that it is or is not F.  At a bare minimum, then, there is the duality of subject and property.  (Brentano transformations of  predications into existential sentences avail nothing: the duality of existence-nonexistence remains.) As I said above, no thought/proposition, no content of an act of thinking, is simple.  But God is simple according to DDS.  He is identical to his attributes, which implies that each attribute is identical to every other one.  If he weren't then he would be dependent on his attributes for his nature, and he would not be the absolute reality.  He could not possess aseity. He could not be uniquely unique. If God were unique only in the sense that he is necessarily one of a kind, then he would one of a class of such beings, and a greater could be conceived, namely, a being uniquely unique, i.e., unique in the sense of transcending the very distinction between instance and kind.

Now if God is simple, then how can our talk and thought, which is necessarily discursive, be literally true of him?  One response is that God talk is literal but analogical.  This needs exploring in a separate post.  But if we cannot accept the doctrine of analogy, then the simple God lies entirely beyond the DF. 

Related articles

a

Arguing with Kripke over Existence

Georg Lichtenberg, Aphoristically, on the Freedom of the Will, with Pedantic Commentary

Truth and God: How are they Related?

Bertrand Russell: Empiricism is Self-Refuting. Is He Right?

Language and Reality

Comments

[Astute]

Who is that handsome devil?

“Are the laws of logic laws of thought? Yes, of course. What else would they be?” Lukasiewicz: ‘It is not true … that logic is the science of the laws of thought. It is not the object of logic to investigate how we are thinking or how we ought to think’.

“Kant, Husserl, and Frege all rejected psychologism in logic.” Kant, Logic §22 ‘As to quality, judgments (Urteile) are either affirmative (bejahende), negative (verneinende) or infinite (unendliche). In the affirmative judgment, the subject is thought (gedacht) under the sphere (Sphäre) of the predicate’.

Before Russell, traditional logic spoke of ‘judgments’, whereas modern logic talks about propositions or more likely sentences (propositions are creatures of darkness for some). Kant speaks of the subject being ‘thought’ under the sphere of the predicate. Seems like psychologism to me.

Aristotle’s On Interpretation, by contrast, talks about psychology being ‘an investigation distinct from that which lies before us’. He speaks rather of linguistic items like 'noun' and 'verb', 'denial' 'affirmation', 'proposition' and 'sentence.' A sentence is a noun plus a verb. A proposition is a special type of sentence capable of truth or falsity. An affirmation (κατάφασισ) is a declaration (ἀπόφανσις) of something of something, negation (ἀπόφασις) is a declaration of something ‘from’ (ἀπὸ) something. No psychology or thought there.

It is from ἀπόφασις that we get ‘apophatic’ theology, no?

[BV]

He is indeed a handsome devil, and he has a beautiful daughter.

We discussed Lukasiewicz two and a half years ago: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/04/lukasiewicz-on-logical-form.html

Kant rejects psychologism in the section *Begriff der Logik* in the Intro to his Logic.

I argue that the laws of logic cannot be empirical generalizations here: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2012/06/are-the-laws-of-logic-empirical-generalizations.html

But you didn't engage the main point. Whatever logic exactly is, it is different from DF.

[Astute]

>>But you didn't engage the main point. Whatever logic exactly is, it is different from DF.

Too difficult for now.

[Astute]

Still struggling with what you actually mean.

1. Is your point is about quantification? Are you claiming that when we assert (p) [p or not-p], the range of the quantifier ‘lasso’ can reach outside the DF into another world where ordinary truths about propositions do not apply? The problem is that I don’t see how to distinguish it from the claim that LEM does not apply to all propositions. What is all this stuff about ‘discursive framework’ meant to be about?

2. Or is it that anything we express using quantifiers e.g. ‘(p) [p or not-p]’ is by its very nature within the DF. So it is true that the LEM always applies, but the statement ‘the LEM always applies’ is by its very nature within the DF? This is very Wittgensteinian. There are as it were certain truths which we cannot express because their expression would require using a framework which does not allow us to express them.

So the problem is that you are trapped between expressing something which is false, and expressing something that you can’t express at all.

[BV]

I am surprised that you are not getting it at all. I have another post in the works that may help.

[David Brightly]

Hello Bill,
It’s often said that the physics of the very small cannot be accommodated within the terms of the DF---one runs up against violations of LEM. Yet we do have some mathematics which gives us a grasp of such physics. Now I imagine that we would want to include the whole of mathematics inside the DF. If so, we would seem to have a paradox. On the other hand, what would it mean for our understanding of the reach of the DF if we were to exclude (the relevant) mathematics? This strikes me as a genuine puzzle and I wonder what your take on it is.