Big Red Jeff Rubard
2010-02-06 18:49:54 UTC
Formal and Transcendental Logic
Here’s a revision of something I said a while back. Kant famously made
a division between “general logic”, which deals with the structure of
all argument, and “transcendental logic”, which addresses the
conditions of experience. However, if you seriously think about it,
formal logic has a transcendental structure: metalogic is composed of
transcendental arguments. We have objects and structure (model
theory), and rules of proof that allow us to navigate the objects and
structure: each must be adequate to the other, the model-theoretic
structure representing all consequences of the proof calculus and the
proof calculus sophisticated enough to “reach” all points of the
structure. It really makes no sense to be a “model-theoretic realist”,
even a “modal realist”: logical structure must be completely expressed
in proof. It makes no sense to be a “proof semanticist”: logical
argument that does not eventuate in conclusions is not argument, and
those conclusions just have mathematical structure that “falls out”.
We must be “transcendental idealists” about the underpinnings of proof
(i.e., the rules are coherent as organizing principles) and “empirical
realists” about the determinacy of statements (we just don’t know
better).
----
Weber’s Kantian Ways?
An idle thought, as the resurrection of sociology will take a little
while yet: are we to consider Max Weber’s “ideal type” construction as
a transcendental argument, rather than as invoking the types as
Platonic universals? Perhaps the “ideal type” used to explain a
phenomenon is just the appropriate concept for ‘understandingly’
comprehending a social process, and Weber is just giving us what we
should identify as the Urform of ordinary historical ‘explanation’:
justified in terms of its meshing with our common-sense schemata for
comprehending the historical and social world and the material facts
of historical and social processes, rather than the “analytical
realism” of Parsons’ interpretation.
SCRIPTUM: Weber's ways were *not* that of Heidegger, and "of course"
an appreciation of /his works/ is the *ultima ratio* of an
appreciation of pre-Weimar Germany [Nietzsche incl.]; /available to
all/, and "well considered" *in this respect* [me and Noam Chomsky
together on this "track"]. This is a "persistence of vision" which
has /lessened/ in recent years -- under the strain of an increased
"secret drive" towards equalitarianism, and an increasing
"multifariousness" [!!!!] of the Establishment voice. /Economy and
Society/ a "difficult" piece of /Germanistik/ 'licensing' [!!]
anything-and-everything? Yes; *but* /o'course/ other more
"progressive" visions are available to you in the *New World*, and /
your own/ secret-/and/-patent "tacit agreement" to /difficult/ *norms*
must need require consids. of /such/.
JDR camera mundi
Here’s a revision of something I said a while back. Kant famously made
a division between “general logic”, which deals with the structure of
all argument, and “transcendental logic”, which addresses the
conditions of experience. However, if you seriously think about it,
formal logic has a transcendental structure: metalogic is composed of
transcendental arguments. We have objects and structure (model
theory), and rules of proof that allow us to navigate the objects and
structure: each must be adequate to the other, the model-theoretic
structure representing all consequences of the proof calculus and the
proof calculus sophisticated enough to “reach” all points of the
structure. It really makes no sense to be a “model-theoretic realist”,
even a “modal realist”: logical structure must be completely expressed
in proof. It makes no sense to be a “proof semanticist”: logical
argument that does not eventuate in conclusions is not argument, and
those conclusions just have mathematical structure that “falls out”.
We must be “transcendental idealists” about the underpinnings of proof
(i.e., the rules are coherent as organizing principles) and “empirical
realists” about the determinacy of statements (we just don’t know
better).
----
Weber’s Kantian Ways?
An idle thought, as the resurrection of sociology will take a little
while yet: are we to consider Max Weber’s “ideal type” construction as
a transcendental argument, rather than as invoking the types as
Platonic universals? Perhaps the “ideal type” used to explain a
phenomenon is just the appropriate concept for ‘understandingly’
comprehending a social process, and Weber is just giving us what we
should identify as the Urform of ordinary historical ‘explanation’:
justified in terms of its meshing with our common-sense schemata for
comprehending the historical and social world and the material facts
of historical and social processes, rather than the “analytical
realism” of Parsons’ interpretation.
SCRIPTUM: Weber's ways were *not* that of Heidegger, and "of course"
an appreciation of /his works/ is the *ultima ratio* of an
appreciation of pre-Weimar Germany [Nietzsche incl.]; /available to
all/, and "well considered" *in this respect* [me and Noam Chomsky
together on this "track"]. This is a "persistence of vision" which
has /lessened/ in recent years -- under the strain of an increased
"secret drive" towards equalitarianism, and an increasing
"multifariousness" [!!!!] of the Establishment voice. /Economy and
Society/ a "difficult" piece of /Germanistik/ 'licensing' [!!]
anything-and-everything? Yes; *but* /o'course/ other more
"progressive" visions are available to you in the *New World*, and /
your own/ secret-/and/-patent "tacit agreement" to /difficult/ *norms*
must need require consids. of /such/.
JDR camera mundi