Logic, are you serious?
I was just reading Nietzsche's The Gay Science (not what you think - it is really better as the happy science, a sarcastic title against knowledge as we know it) and I came across this amazing passage. Speaking of the origin of logic (the basis for all knoweldge), he says:
"The predominant disposition, however, to treat the similar as identical - an illogical disposition, for there is nothing identical as such - is what first supplied all the foundations for logic. Similarly, in order for the concept of substance to originate, which is indispensible to logic though nothing real corresponds to it in the strictest sense, it was necessary that for a long time changes in things not be seen, not be precieved; the beings who did not see things exactly had a head start over those who saw everything 'in flux'. The course of logical thoughts and inferences in our brains today corresponds to a process and battle of drives that taken seperately are all very illogical and unjust; we usually experience only the outcomes of the battle: that is how quickly and covertly this ancient mechanism runs its course in us. (Nietzsche, 112-113)"
I guess I would summarize this passage in three points (Is this a Presbyterian sermon?):
1. Logic is founded on the false idea that things are identical or can be seen as such.
2. Logic is founded on the false notion that things are constant or unchanging, i.e. substances.
3. Since these two foundations of our knowledge are incorrect, we should see logic as a cheap pragmatism which is nothing but a false construct of the world.
I think this is pretty powerful and quite explains why people see Nietzsche as bringing moderism to its knees even before the "postmoderns" arrive. His arguments to me seem rather convincing. Take the first one. This is easy to see in practice. Looking outside at all the leaves falling off of the trees it is obvious to me that my category "leaves" doesn't actually mean anything. No two "leaves" are the same, so how could I group them in such a fashion? Surely it is only because it is advantageous to do so, even though it is giving a wink to what is true. I think this is even more obvious when we are called by some group name, say "students", or "you". It is fine and good sometimes, but no one really wants to be called "student" all the time or "you", we are a particular person and we can not be defined by anything else but our name. Mental experiment for this: what makes you human? Two legs? What about those who don't have them? Ability to reason? What about those who can't? When you try and figure out a definition you see that there can be no one perfect categorical definition, because we are all different. Very interesting.
Secondly the flux questions is something postmodernism is keen to pick up on. Things are always changing. You are literally a whole different person some every five years when all the old cells die and are replaced. Physically we are all changing every nanosecond. Stability is again a wink at what is really happening. This is true emotionally as well. Nietzsche used this point to attack the notion of cause and effect as well.
"Cause and effect: there is probably never such a duality; in truth a continuum faces us, from which we isolate a few pieces, just as we always perceive a movement only as isolated points, i.e. do not really see, but infer. There is an infinite number of processes that elude us in this second of suddennes. An intellect that saw cause and effect as a continuum, not, as we do, as arbitrary division and dismemberment - that saw the stream of the event - would reject the concept of cause and effect and deny all determinedness. (Nietzsche, 113)"
We think in terms of static forms because that is how our mind best sees things, but that is not how the world is. Without going into how quantum mechanics starts playing around with cause and effect (although equally it does have a lot to say about quantization) it is easy to see how we lump a whole continuous stream into seperated events. If this is incorrect (which Niezsche argues for) then our whole linear thinking of knowledge is only a half-truth, maybe less.
So it seems to me there are two ways out if we concede Nietzsche's points (which we might have too - they seem fairly sound).
1. Admit some form of Platonism and confess that although nothing is "identical" or "stable" in this world, there are these principles in the divine mind which hold the world together. This world could then be a shadowy and fallen version of true life which we will one day inhereit in the recreation of the cosmos. This line of thinking has been the orthodox view of Christianity for quite some time now, I think. I am not totally disinclined towards it, but it does leave questions about what it will look like if everything is identical and what the form of human is in the redeemed creation. So let's leave this as a backup.
2. Follow the Eastern Church Fathers and stress the infinity of God, the inifinite difference that is involved in the Trinity and creation to Creator. I have mentioned Gregory of Nyssa before, I think he is one of the best at this understanding. This allows us to accept Nietzsche's claim of individuality and non-identity and say "Of course, if there is an infinite Creator then creation will be part of that infinite play we see all around us." And at redemption instead of all being brought back into the forms (I am not sure this is what orthodox Christian teaching really says, but it seems the logical outlook from the above view) we will be able to fully recognize our differences and find unity in participation with the divine Trinity. Sweet Trinity dance! And since He is infinite we shall have no problem with finding space within the divine recreation - it is always open to more and always fully with His already infinite prescence.
Why do I rock so much?
posted by Hans-Georg Gadamer @ 8:57 am
8 comments
8 Comments:
While I'm not saying nitzche doesn't have a point - and an amazing one, at that - I think we might be giving him a little too much credit here. I don't look at individual leaves on a tree and put them into a category because they're all identical - I do it because they contain many similar characteristics. We further sub-divide our categories only to such extent that they prove useful to the one doing the categorizing, evincing logic and modernism's open affirmation that categories are a pragmatic construct; a useful tool from which logic might be done.
Modernist logic would never assert that all leaves are identical - only that they're vastly more similar to each other than they are to the rest of the tree, or to a cat, or to Jupiter - this is the assertion that Nitzche would have to contradict in order for me to agree that he had brought modernism, in this respect, to it's knees.
Redness - good critique. I think that Nietzsche is really against logic because of the fact that it doesn't actually mean anything in "reality." So for example A = A is the basis for logic, but in reality there is no such identity. Since no two things are the same this formula can never be filled in. It may be a neat mathematical tool and a fun game to play, but I think he is saying we are making a huge mistake to transfer the realm of logic to reality - it doesn't really work except when we put things in categories whereas in reality there are no such things.
I don't know if I totally agree with his critique of knowledge, but it is certainly a serious one. Also I don't think modernism is all about pragmatism, that is a later invention. "Modernism" or scienctific knowledge in general demands that we take it seriously as conveying reality, and this is exactly what Nietzsche is saying it can't do. Science based on logic works fine in a made-up universe of lines, circles, and other "perfect" objects, but since none of those actually exist (a circle by definition cannot exist as it is mathematically stated) we are really not dealing with reality, only our interesting construction of it. Again, I am not sure I totally go along with this, but I think he makes a very good point.
How he brings modernism to its knees is not only through this but also through his critiques of power (he was Foucault's idol) and his idea of "perspectivism." The fact that no one has an absolute perspective on things because we are all being affected by our struggle for power and our own ill-formed presuppositions. This does bring him closer to being the father of postmodernity, but he is not a relativist like some of his followers. He is more agnostic about truth and thinks the best way forward is the way of beauty and virtue.
I know there's no real point to arguing with Nitzche, but I'm still stuck on this "basis of logic" thing and how Nitzche contradicts it.
First, a=a does exist. What does not exist is an absolute a=b. I say absolute because it depends on the definition and use of '='. A leaf = another leaf for the purposes of leafiness, but not absolutely.
Second, is logic really based on a=a? Francis Schaeffer says the basis of logic is that a=b and a!=b can't both be true - antithesis.
Would a real modernist claim absolute equality as necessary to his worldview? He might, I suppose. I'm just not ready to dive off of the Nitzchean bridge (it runs to Lenin's, by the way), and yet I'm not a modernist, so it's hard for me to argue. I don't accept in it's fullness Nitzche critique because I think the categorizing and logical equalities are entirely valid and that it really does "mean something" in reality. Our notion of equality is expressed in reality more as "similar for the purposes of this conjecture" than "absolutely the same in every quality."
In truth, a=b IS impossible because even if two things could exist in absolute symmetry, they'd still occupy different spaces and times. Only abstracts like numbers and variables escape this pitfall, yet this does not make logic irrelevant. So I agree that modernism has huge deficits - I'm just not seeing Nitzche address any of them here. Help me?
Redness - I think you will find that logic is based on a=a since this is essential saying that a thing can be identified. If a=b then b=c and so on to infinity and therefore nothing would ever be identified. Math and logic take the law of identity as the a priori truth with which to build their system.
Secondly, Niethzsche's critique of this is a chronological one. He regards "things" as non-existent outside our own postulations of them. Two ways of seeing this:
1. Think of an apple. What is an apple? If we concede that the piece of fruit in our hands is changing physical properites all the time then there is no such real thing as an apple. The "thing" we are holding is really just a convienent name for an everchanging reality which is not identical to any other thing nor itself as any given time. A universe of one-offs!
2. Charles will be better on this, but Nietzsche prefigures Russell et al. in discussin things as relations, or bundle theory. Things are really defined by their relations, so an apple is definied by colour, smell, taste, etc. But all of these are defined in terms of other things, which themselves are defined by other things, etc. etc. etc. If you try and get to the bottom of this chain you find nothing but a fabrication of reality. It just so happens that we chose this particular fabrication of reality (one might try to imagine another in terms of something other than taste etc.). Therefore Nietzsche is saying there is no thing-in-itself, prefiguring Heidegger in this regard as well and all continental philosophy, but interestingly enough through analytic philosophy's main tool: language. Is Nietzsche the common ground to these two divergent camps?
So basically Nietzsche thinks a=b is pretty meaningless because it could continue forever, technically, and more importantly a does not = a because there is no such thing as "thing in itself", both by chronology (continuous change) and by bundle or relational theories of definition (all descriptions are just relations, there is no "intrinsitc" quality here). Interpretation all the way down, I guess, which leads to his prespectivism.
I guess the secondary point of the post (primary being to show Nietzsche's sweetness) was to show that we don't need to be afraid of this sort of anti-realism that Nietzsche is proposing because of the infinite nature of God. Just a curious thought I guess, but where infinites get us in trouble as far as math is concerned, they might be the solution as far as reality is concerned. Yay or Nay?
Yay.
I had this whole thing written out before my roommate's computer crashed, and it was better.
"I don't accept in it's fullness Nitzche critique because I think the categorizing and logical equalities are entirely valid and that it really does "mean something" in reality."
I can't argue that A=A, but even though my truck may be slightly different in the morning than when I parked it outside the night before, I refuse to walk outside and say-
"Dude, where's my car?"
"It's right there dude!"
"Well, that looks like my car, but it isn't EXACTLY the same..."
-going back to Russell:
"although different people may see the table slightly differently, still they all see more or less similar things when they look at the table, and the variations in what they see follow the laws of perspective and reflection of light, so that it is easy to arrive at a permanent object underlying all the different people's sense-data. I bought my table from the former occupant of my room; I could not buy his sense-data, which died when he went away, but I could and did buy the confident expectation of more or less similar sense-data. Thus it is the fact that different people have similar sense-data, and that one person in a given place at different times has similar sense-data, which makes us suppose that over and above the sense-data there is a permanent public object which underlies or causes the sense-data of various people at various times."
Am I saying NIetzsche is wrong? No, but I am saying that Nietzche's denial of absolutes
makes my life infinitely more confusing and is useless in successfully managing my everyday
affairs, so I'll reject it in view of its utility. I choose to believe that there are permanent public objects that exist outside of time and sense-data constraints. Can I
attempt to use Occam's Razor here?
Problem: Man discerns something in front of him consistent with his lingual definition of an apple:
Solution 1: It is an apple, it exists as part of objective reality, anyone with the necessary senses can determine it as such.
Solution 2: There is no apple. The "apple" we are holding is really just a convientent name for an ever-changing reality which is not identical to any other thing nor itself at any given time.
I think the first is simpler...
(Redness- since numbers are abstracts and escape the A can't equal A pitfall, at least we can order at McDonald's and be sure to get what we want!)
Jacks - good comments. I think the pragmatism is valid. I think Nietzsche is saying exactly that: it doesn't "work" very well in everyday circumstances to use his definitions, but that does not make any difference as far as the truth of the matter is concerned. I guess it is like Newtonian vs. modern physics (maybe): Newtonian is fine in almost all practical situations, but it is not physically the best description of reality, you need something more powerful for that. I think Nietzsche would totally agree with you, but then he would say "Why do you care whether it is practicaly or not? Just buying into the power play of the masses, eh?" Valid enough. And I think Russell does as good a job as can be done defending correspondence theory of truth. But...
While it can be argued whether the word 'Nietzsche' can usefully and accurately be applied to the historical person known as Friedrich Nietzsche (Does 'N' = N?), the words 'Nitzche' and 'Niethzsche' most certainly fail to refer meaningfully to any entity past or present of which I am aware.
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