From: Andrew Brown (Andrew@LUBS.LEEDS.AC.UK)
Date: Wed Jan 21 2004 - 06:27:02 EST
Ian, Many thanks. It seems we agree on the nature of Godel's theorem. However, your conclusion that dialectical logic should aspire to formalism despite no single formal system encompassing all true maths statements (let alone other statements) doesn't seem quite right from the perspective of dialectical logic. As a sublation of formal logic, dialectical logic recognises the limits of formal logic, and goes beyond them. This means that formalism is used as and where necessary (to recognise limits is not to reject) but that the fundamental point of dialectical logic is recognition that formal logic is only a limited branch of logic and of knowledge more broadly. To delve into waters about which I am still less familiar, I seem to remember stumbling across a Chaitin paper on the web. Wasn't there some argument to the effect that a formal system has only as much info content as its' axioms? The world has more content than any finite set of axioms hence formalism is inherently limited? I'm sure I have this horribly wrong but one way or another isn't this once more an indication of the limits of formalism not an argument for aspiring to formalism? You make the distinction between formal logic and computation. Indeed your point that formal logic is 'useless' for certain aspects of robot building supports the above line of thinking. What is the essential difference between computation and formal logic? Taking your more broad discussion, it is difficult to respond since I know so little about computation etc. (as indicated by my question above). Clearly there is a need to relate the developments you describe to materialist dialectics. A job of relating 'systems theory' to materialist dialectics has been done by Levins in Science and Society 1998, 62, 3. I wonder if this has any bearing on your concerns? There must be something important in the developments you describe but I guess I would see their significance differently to the interpretation you have suggested. For one thing 'colonising' the bourgeois academic disciplines is no sign of health! Consider neo- classical economics! More substantially, whilst I think there are great problems in critical realism it has at least popularised the concept of 'emergence' [really the transormation of quantitative into qualitative change], which is enough to establish that human society and psychology are emergent from the micro-processes which computation theory and AI etc. dwells upon. As such the study of psychology and society does not require the study of such micro processes; rather the study of society and psychology should entail the study of the specifc mode of production. This puts the research you refer to -- its appropriate goals and wider significance -- in a different light to that which its practitioners see it. Sorry if the above is a bit random. Thanks again, Andy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jan 22 2004 - 00:00:01 EST