> Logic -- modern mathematical logic, descending
from
> Frege -- is not psychological and does not pretend to
> be.
It is a branch of mathematics. ...
Yes, but logic is psychological (or
"in our heads" as I said) when we _use_ it. As is math.
There's a
big question of whether math (including logic) exists independent of the version
that's in our heads (or that our heads arrange to have put on paper or other
media). I'll leave that aside. (I must admit that I like Martin Gardner's view
that there's an ontological basis for math & logic, i.e., that math
describes the abstract aspect of reality. But I don't know if that view is
defensible or not.)
> If Hegel's Logik -- no relation to either modern
math
> logic or the Aristotlean syllogistic -- is
> psychological,
it is not a matter of individual
> psychology. ...
Again, it's
psychological (in our heads) when we use it.
> The Logik is really
what modern philosophers call
> metaphysics, about substantive concepts
like being and
> nonbeing, substance and accident, and the like.
It
> only confuses things to think that Hegel was trying to
> do
badly what Kant or Frege was doing well in thinking
> abour logic -- that
is the mathematical theory of
> formal validity. Hegel was instead doing,
possibly
> well, what Leibniz and Spinoza were doing when they
>
were thinking about the ultimate structure of reality
> abstractly
described.
that makes sense to me.
> Hegel, btw, doesn't think
that whatever is, is
> rational in the sense that everything is always
hunky
> dory and this is always the best of all possible
>
worlds.
nor did I say that he was saying such a thing. Rather, it was
that there was a "correspondence between mental
states (dialectical 'logic')
and empirical reality."
> ... A more charitable reading is that the
real is
> _intelligible_, that we with the equipment of the
> Logik
we can make sense out of whatever is real,
> without necessarily thinking
it is perfect.
that's what I was talking about, though Hegel's mature view
leaned toward Panglossism.
JD
