Logical Thinking LO21651

Winfried Dressler (winfried.dressler@voith.de)
Mon, 17 May 1999 20:22:01 +0100

Replying to LO21614 --

Was: "Junk" Science

At de Lange responded to my experiences with LEM (Law of Excluded Middle),
where I introduced despite the LEM that Middle, using the term "front
structure" by Seiichi Yagi, which is in a specific sense that, what is "p
AND NOTp".

In my answer to John Gunkler in the thread "Logical Thinking" of today, I
announced that I would try to link the two logical ways of thinking
(relation of terms logic - RTL - and cause-effect-logic - CEL) to At's
essentialities. If you prefer to think about that relation for yourself
first, don't read on now!

Dear At,

did you read my answer to John? Then you may be able to imagine what kind
of weekend I had: a long time of increasing confusion, ungeniessbar for
the familiy. And suddenly I noticed, that I had to reverse p and q and a
minute later I also noticed that talking about relations of terms and
about causes and effects is not the same. It was a moment full of bliss, I
can tell you! I have never experienced this dynamics of emergent learning
so clearly and conciously before.

>The Scientific Method (SM) has three stages: (1) observation, (2)
>speculation, (3) falsification.

Observation is about effects. Speculation is about how these effects
relate to causes. Falsification is about systematically trying to
invalidate the speculations by trying to observe something that would
contradict the speculated cause-effect relation. The appropriate language
for this undertaking is CEL. CEL does not exclude RTL. In fact, the terms
used to discribe the observations need to be RTL-consistent, otherwise the
business of articulating speculations and possible falsifications would
lead to a big mess - the progress of science stuck in a language-mud.

To relate this to the question of age in science: CEL is not difficult to
learn and very exiting. So already young scientists can achieve impressive
results, revolutionary for those stuck in the mud of language. It is
difficult to avoid that mud when you become older, so that new emergences
become less probable with increasing age. But when you become older and
succeeded to clear the mud, the wisdom of old age gives way and a second
period of high emergences, mirroring the age of childhood, occurs. The
excitement of childhood, the struggle of adulthood and the wisdom of the
old. (Is there a relation also to the enthusiasm of newcomers, the
struggle of middle management and the leadership of top management?)

>But let us first browse a little bit more on the LEM.

LEM is central to RTL-consistency. Otherwise a term could not be
identified. In times, where eternal truths, dogmas, independent of time,
are used to explain the world, like in the middle ages, the dogmatic
effort was to ensure RTL-consistency (as opposed to the scientific effort
on the search for CEL-consistency). But the LEM is not very helpful when
someone happens to start to think and view the world in terms of
cause-effect relations, using something so unheavenly like time. "Time
leads to nothing but death" could have been the conviction of a dogmatist.
What a difference to our todays "progress of wealth" conviction based on
CEL.

>Winfried, you end with some intriguing questions:
>
>>What does awareness of the front structure mean for
>>organisations? Isn't this what Peter Senge wrote about in his
>>Fifth Discipline? Senge wrote that he regularily meditates.
>>What else is meditation than to leave the solid ground of
>>the mental model LEM to open ones mind for the experience
>>of the front structure?
>
>Allow me to answer you with a question. Is the front structure
>anything else than complexity?

I don't know. The term "complexity" is still in the mud for me - you know,
I haven't reached that age yet (grin).

In the moment I view the front structure as the umlomo between the world
inside me and the world outside me. In a logic of wholeness, the LEM need
to be replaced by a LEF (Law of existing front structure).

>Allow me also to question you. Does the front structure have an age?

(Warning: The next paragraph will be pure mud for the most of you. I don't
know how to express my answer so that it can be understood easily.)

I think it depends on from which essentiality you are looking at the front
structure of wholeness. Viewed from liveness, the front structure has an
age, viewed from sureness it has not. I guess, this is because liveness
"sees" more the associativity and sureness more the monadicity side of
wholeness. The front structure can be also expressed as "age and no-age".
It associates the history of man (including deep nature) as a
becoming-being with the eternal god/nirwana as the final categorical
identity. Looking from the no-age "room" to the "wall" front structure, we
have plain monadicity. Looking from the age "room" to the "wall" front
structure, we see how everything is associated. It all together forms the
essentiality wholeness, complexified in terms of liveness and sureness.

At, you have asked and I have tried an answer. If you know a better way to
answer your question, I am curious to see how you procede with answering
your own quesiton.

Let me try to summerize my findings:

I speculate that each essentiality has a logic related to it.

These logics are easy to understand and fully common sense, as long as
they are not confused, which happens easily, if one essentiality is
crowned king over the other. I also speculate that the confusion of
logics, or the inappropriate application of one essentialities logic in
the realm of another essentiality is the main cause for impaired
essentialities.

In this sense, I postulate, that logical literacy does not need to be
educated (although it can be improved and refined by education) but mainly
must not be confused. The task of education here is, to make the various
types of logic recognizable in the way it operates and its scopes of
application. This must be done by linking to experience. Everyone, who has
experienced an emergence, and this is true for everybody independent of
age (even the smallest babies learn by fast emergent/digestive learning
cycles), has experienced how the seven essentialities and their respective
logics work to the level, that the basic ideas of all kinds of logics are
common sense.

I have identified so far the first four kinds of logic, relating to the
first four essentialities. The other three are guesses:

1.) Cause-effect-logic (CEL):
logic of "liveness" (becoming-being)

2.) Relation of terms logic (RTL):
logic of "sureness" (identity-categoricity)

3.) Logic of the front structure (LFS):
logic of "wholeness" (associativity-monadicity)

4.) Logic of lateral thinking (Edward de Bono) (LLT):
logic of "fruitfullness" (connect-beget)

5.) Logic of refining the other logics (emergently and digestively) (LRL):
logic of "spareness" (quantity-limit)

6.) Logic of including and applying the other logics appropriately (LAL):
logic of "otherness" (quality-variety)

7.) Logic of the scientific revolution (Thomas Kuhn) (LSR):
logic of "openness" (open-paradigm)

So far, it is all about mechanics/form. To get a picture of its relation
to the dynamics/content, I have created following analogy:

Let's imagine an airplane. The content, that what we want, is flying. The
according dynamic is the force-flux-pair of a delta in pressure (force)
and flow of air (flux). In order to get an airplane, which is by
definition that form which allows flying, it's mechanics must be
adjusted/designed to the dynamics of flying and it's contingencies in such
a way, that it can fly. Do you realize, what a wonder it is, that we have
airplanes flying all around?

Imagine that we want the dynamics of creative learning (CL) - ongoing
cycles of emergent and digestive learning - with its contingencies, the
seven essentialities. Can you imagine to become a CLplane flying in the CL
sky? Do you know Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach?

Liebe Gruesse,

Winfried

-- 

"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>