ELEPHANT TO HORSE RE VAGUELY POPPERIAN:
> ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN: Perhaps one of the reasons why fuzzy logic can sometimes
> help us get by in the world is that the world isn't just our thought-of
> objects, but something (mystical) beyond them, and which provoked our thinking
> in the first place.
>
> HORSE WROTE: Sounds vaguely Popperian! The "world" contains objects AND
> thoughts of objects AND mystical somethings beyond them, AND inorganic things
> before them etc. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that the world is both
> contained in these these things and these things contain the world. I don't
> see that there is any problem with both views being correct simultaneously. X
> contains Y and Y contains X.
>
ELEPHANT: Excuse me while I fall off my chair (mental note: must go to the
circus more often). "Popperian"? It's hard to think of a veiw more
distinct from mine. Your comment though, is understandable, as to save you
from making it I ought really to have inserted an "also" between "but" and
"something (mystical?)". Sorry about that - I hope the clarification helps.
BTW, your introduction of container-contained relations is a bit left field.
I think the idea that "X contains Y and Y contains X" is *very odd*, and
something ridiculed in Lila: pp62 - 63 near the end of 4..
> ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN: However, I think it is a mistake to think of the the
> fuzzy logic being a real logic, either of the mystical reality (because that
> doesn't contain the discrete objects which the fuzzy logic fuzzily relates),
> or of the objectified world.
>
> HORSE WROTE: Excuse me? Fuzzy logic isn't a real logic? What is it that
> constitutes real then? Obviously it doesn't relate to mysticism as mysticism
> is not contained within Intellectual patterns of value and fuzzy logic is an
> instance of these Intellectual patterns. Unless you're referring to the
> objectified world in some special sense which I've missed then I fail to
> understand what you mean when you say that fuzzy logic doesn't relate to the
> objectified world.
>
ELEPHANT: I'll try to explain my thought. It seems to me that the idea that
I am both writing this post and not writing it at the same time doesn't make
any sense. I can think of all sorts of ways one might go about rescuing
some sense in the idea that I am writing it and not writing it at the same
time, but all of them involve specifing different levels of self, or
different times considered together as one time, or otherwise redividing the
world so that the law of non-contradiction still holds. Indeed, reflecting
further, it is almost as is the original division of the world into separate
objects was a device to permit the law of non-contradiction, and the law of
the divided middle, to hold. Perhaps we can drop the "almost", because the
hard edges of classical logic are so fantastically useful to us that it is
hard to conceive of doing without them. Yes, you are someone who thinks
that one can do with out them, have a 'take it or leave it' attitude to
these hard edges, treat them as one useful tool amougst others. My point to
you would be this: when you are standing before your intellectual toolkit
and thinking about which tool might be the right one for this particular
job, what kind of logic do you use then? You can call this a 'metalogic' if
you like, but I find the expression otiose: logic is precisely that which is
meta - that's what the word 'logic' means - pertaining to all logoi
(descriptions) whatsoever. Anything local, used here but not there, isn't a
logic, but a logos.
> ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN: The reason for my latter comment is that one thing Chris
> has right is that it is our wielding of dichotomies which makes such a world
> of objects possible, and a fuzzy dichotomy is a contradiction in terms.
>
> HORSE WROTE: Maybe you or Chris would elaborate further on this point.
>
ELEPHANT: Happy to. The useful thing, you see, about a dichotomy, is that
it is a dichotomy: a cutting in two. Classical logic weilds a knife. Fuzzy
logic weilds a paddle. Paddles are all very well in their place (in a
canoe), but if paddles were all that were ever weilded the world world be
about as divided up as the Missisipi River. There wouldn't be any such
thing as a Canoe, and there wouldn't be any such thing as a Paddle: it would
all be just flux. So you see, fuzzy logic depends on classical logic, and
as such can only be a local tool, whereas classical logic can be universal
(which is it's whole point). Repeating what I said earlier, this means that
classical logic could be described as the metalogic, and that understanding
'logic' as I do, for me fuzzy 'logic' is merely a logos, not a logic.
> HORSE HAD WRITTEN: As far as I can see the world of objects and the
> objectified world is contained/created by static patterns of Value -
> Intellectual patterns of Value being one set of patterns. Fuzzy logic is one
> of a number of tools which describes the world from an Intellectual
> viewpoint and provides the objectified world with a richer set of rules with
> which to describe that world.
ELEPHANT: Not a richer set of rules, I maintain, just a richer set of
descriptions (the logic/logos distinction). And in fact, I suspect, what
fuzzy logic amounts to in practice is entirely consistent with classical
logic, because the supposedly new 'logical' states can often be sucessfully
translated in terms of epistemological states ('A or not A, but I just don't
know'). For some people, it seems that conceeding that there are cases
where we will never know A or not A means that there must be some middling
state. There are alternative explanations: (1) that we are asking a wrong
question underpined by a false picture (ie A doesn't even enter into it),
and (2) that the unsatisfactorariness of both A and not A is a result of a
general incoherence in our whole world view. Now, if fuzzy logic becomes an
attractive get-out clause, we might be spared ever having to consider
possibilities (1) and (2). To say that the removal of these two responses
to problematic situations might be a bit of a loss to intellectual endeavour
is the understatement of the year.
Which is what was meant when....
> ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN: As an afterthought, and to prevent you arguing that
> since fuzzy logic is really very practical we should think of it as true, I
> think you ought to acknowledge that fuzzy logic can make life more difficult
> as often as it makes it easier, more often in fact.
>
> HORSE WROTE: The practicality of Fuzzy Logic is not an indication of its truth
> value as there is no need to think of it as either true or false - it is a
> valuable tool when used correctly, nothing more.
>
ELEPHANT: I had the impression I was talking to someone who thought that
truth was a species of the good.
> HORSE WROTE: As I said in my last post Binary Logic (something is EITHER
> True OR False) is contained within Fuzzy logic - True/False or 0/1 are the
> extremes - but fuzzy logic also introduces values between True and False. I
> assume this is what Chris means by his statement: "yes -- the excluded
> middle is more the realm of possibles than just 'null'."
ELEPHANT: Your case that: [fuzzy logic (binary logic)] is supported by what?
That the latter has two values whereas the former has those two plus a
third? That appears to support the conclusion that the Reliant Robin (an
infamous british car with only three wheels) is contained in the Buick. I
beg to differ.
Secondly, it is the "I don't know" of classical logic that is
paradigmatically the "realm of possibilities". The whole point of the third
value in fuzzy logic is that it is a value, an answer to the question "what
is the case", an affirmative cocksure "I know!", which puts it firmly in the
realm of actualities, not possibilites. And, as I have already pointed out,
this kind of answer is of great danger to the continued stinulation and
development of enquiry: it precisely closes down all the really valuable
intellectual possibilities.
>
> HORSE WROTE: I acknowledge that fuzzy logic introduces addition levels of
> complexity but I don't see how this can be construed as making life more
> difficult - I would have thought that it shows that the world is more
> complex than just a series of True OR False statements. It does mean that
> the bipolar view is for most purposes an incorrect view based on an
> artificial premise thus damaging the simplistic either/or view, but that's
> life :-)
ELEPHANT: I don't think the fact that the fact that the world escapes
satisfactory description in classical logic can show that the world is more
complex than our description, because complexity is a function of
discreteness, and the discreteness is a function of the description. What
lies beyond electrons and quarks and all the rest isn't some ever more
"complex" world, but Quality. I am very far from holding a simplistic
either/or veiw, because I certainly do not beleive that a perfect
description of the world in terms of classical logic is or could be
possible. I simply maintain that this is the only logic we have worthy of
the name. The failure of language coexists with it's indispensibility. You
might like to take a look at my quotation from Prisig in my posting on
Mysticism.
(I'm hoping I can move some interest to that topic).
All the best to all the best,
Puzzled Elephant
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