Re: Tautologies and Empirical Truth

From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 10/29/04 

Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 13:26:01 +0100

In article <KYlgd.329918$3l3.149384@attbi_s03>, patty
<pattyNO@SPAMicyberspace.net> writes
>I don't buy logic as a standard of truth. Logic is just a mechanism.
>Some people choose to use one mechanism, say FOPC ... others choose
>other ones, like multi valued logics or intensional or non monotonic or
>... the list goes on and on. The appropriate choices of logic depend
>on the kinds of symbols and the contexts you are manipulating.

You keep making these statements about the predicate calculus and I
think it betrays a critical misunderstanding of the extensional stance
(extensionalism). It is not a matter of "applying logic" (the predicate
calculus) rather than something else. We know there are all sorts of
(misguided in my view) folk about who have, since the 50s busied
themselves trying to patch up intensional logic using all sorts of
interesting band-aids such "rigid designators", "genuine names" etc
(supposedly "true" in all possible worlds) These come close to being
"critical" (transcendental) Kantian "regulative principles", which are
synthetic apriori (modern cognitive science's denizens). Yet even Popper
conceded though these might exist, they could not be apriori valid!.
This is why I have talked of "intensional heuristics" yet you don't
investigate *that* literature and appreciate just how descriptive it is
of our folk psychology! Like many championing these logics you either
fail to grasp or just lose sight of the whole point that extensional
logic serves basically as a pragmatic tool in the scientist's linguistic
repertoire for the clear expression of functional lawful relations which
can be used (as "rule governed behaviour") to pragmatically
(behaviourally) improve prediction and control of stimulation our own
sensory surfaces. In this respect it's part of the web of our scientific
belief, and it is so because that logic serves that enterprise so well.
We just don't see the intensional logics contributing in the way that
you and some of the others seem to think - as psychologists we study
that almost as we do superstitious behaviour. I have attempted to show
you why and so has Glen when we have introduced you to the way that
those in the EAB investigate the control of behaviour by the three term
contingency. The analyses of what is wrong with intensional contexts
("mentalism") is that they are at best what we call hypothetical
constructs which serve as no more than a modus vivendi within "the
double standard" which is an inevitable feature of all research and
development. We are not omniscient, hence all the illustrative examples
of intensional or referential opacity. What you need to grasp, and
perhaps help others to grasp is that Extensional expression suffices for
scientific theory - and the arguments in it favour are explicative, not
just proscriptive (against intensionalism). That is, it shows how and
where the intensional (always "mental") leads us astray whilst the
extensional stance enables us to improve our lot through better
management. Sure, let folk try to see if they can break extensional
logic, there's no proscription against that "testing", it's what science
is all about, but that must not be done whilst denigrating what science
itself is all about, without indulging in hopeless, anarchic
self-contradiction. Doing the latter is not just subversive it borders
on the delusional and that's exactly what we see from many posters here.
They spend their time looking for evidence to *support* their
preconceptions, and that's precisely how the psychotic differs from the
scientist. The former deludes him/herself by piling up more and more of
a delusional structure whilst the scientist assumes he is very probably
wrong in the first place and looks for evidence to knock down his
delusions. If they're left standing, all he can say is given his best
efforts he can find no refuting evidence, but he and his colleagues will
keep trying. The "psychotic" folk psychologist doesn't even look for
such evidence and reactions with hostility to the very material which
his conspecific, the "scientist" welcomes. That's how Glen, I and Wolf
classify people here, and we do that because we know how science, mental
life and pseudo-scientific "cognitive science (which includes much of
"AI") work. What we don't know is how to predict and control behaviour
*perfectly*, but that's inevitably an "unending quest". 

-- 
David Longley

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Tautologies and Empirical Truth
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