Dialectic Theory of Logic

[jacobin1949]

Can someone explain to me the dialectic theory of logic and how it opposes formal logic? Does it allow for contradiction? Law of the excluded middle? Does anyone have any texts on how it works as a system?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

J, I am afraid all this sort of stuff derived from Hegel's misunderstanding of Aristotle.

He thought that certain sentences contained an in-built contradiction.

Using Lenin's example:

J1: John is a man.

Now Hegel accepted the medieval Roman Catholic theory of propositions like this (this is now called the Identity Theory of Predication), which re-interprets this as the following:

J2: John is identical with Manhood

But, since John cannot be identical with a general term, we must conclude the following:

J3: John is not identical with Manhood.

But, then again, John, if he is a man, must be identical with what other men are, so we must now conclude:

J4: John is not not identical with Manhood.

Or, more simply:

J5: John is not a non-man.

Thus was born the Negation of the Negation.

Hegel thought that this showed that motion was built into our concepts, as thought passes from one pole to another, and that it also indicated that language has dialectics built into it.

It also allowed him to begin to doubt the 'Law of Identity' (LOI -- an idea foreign to Aristotle, but invented by Medieval Roman Catholic theologians, again).

So, he thought that it was now possible to negate that 'Law'.

But he employed very sloppy language in order to do this, for he thought he could ignore the logical difference between the various terms he used (which single move put logic back to before Aristotle, who was a model of clarity in comparison).

So, be thought that the LOI could be negated; but the LOI is about objects being identical, not propositions, so that law cannot be negated in the same way that one might want to negate a proposition.

[Propositions are not objects, or they could say nothing; sure, we use signs to express them, but they become symbols thereby (i.e., they symbolise things for us) -- that is, by the way we employ them according to their inner grammatical complexity.]

This then allowed Hegel to 'derive' the negation of the law of non-contradiction from this mess, and the rest followed. [The details are rather messy, so I have left these out. On this, see below.]

Hence, the entire dialectic follows from Hegel's acceptance of a Roman Catholic theory, and a misconstrual of Aristotle.

Unfortunately, Engels and Lenin swallowed this hook line and sinker (and they did this because they both knew no logic -- this is not to pick on them, many others who should know better have similarly swallowed this bunkum), and so we have been saddled with this loopy logic ever since. Here is Lenin, for example:


"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other….

"Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961), Philosophical Notebooks, pp.359-60.]

Now, Aristotle would have said, in order to explain the structure of J1:

A1: Manhood applies to John.

In other words, J1 expresses a description of John (brought out in A1), not an identity.

And it makes no sense to suppose John could be identical with a general term (so this supposition is not false, it is just confused).

Now, this is a trick that can only be carried out in Indo-European languages (other language groups do not have this particular structure), and it derives from the subject-predicate form found in that language, i.e.:

A2: John is a man

A3: S is a P.

["S" = "Subject"; "P" = "Predicate".]

But, we already have the facility in language (and in ancient Greek, too, I believe) to express identity:

A4: Cicero is Tully

["Tully" was Cicero's other name. Cicero was a right-wing git who lived in Ancient Rome, about the same time as Julius Caesar.]

So, A5 is quite legitimately this:

A5: A = B

Aristotle was already moving in this direction by the time he died, that of confusing predication with identity.

However, the rationale behind this move had already been established by earlier theorists (who pre-dated Plato, and who were concerned about the mystical union/identity between the human soul and 'God/Being' --, hence the emphasis on the 'identity' of thought with 'Being', and which later became the main problematic of German Idealism, a problematic Engels also accepted -- see his Ludwig Feuerbach, etc.). Anyway, logicians after Aristotle, and especially in the Middle Ages, began to mix these two distinct forms together. This fed into and was fed by an increasingly elaborate metaphysic about the ultimate structure of reality.

So, in the end, A2 and A4 type sentences were modelled along the lines expressed in A5 -- both as identity statements.

But that just treats predicates as Proper Names, which they are not.

A predicate is used to describe, not to name.

But, Hegel accepted this mess, and treated the simple "is" of predication as an "is" of identity.

Hence, dialectics follows solely from defective logic and a crass misconstrual of grammar.

Now, even if this analysis were correct, neither Aristotle, nor Hegel (nor anyone else since) has been able to explain why the contingent features of Indo-European grammar (and a very minor part of that grammar, too) can possibly have such profound implications, and can tell us human beings about the deep structure of reality, for all of space and time.

Sure, this is a very complex issue.

But, you can read more details in my Essays, especially here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2003_01.htm

Use the Quick Link to skip to:

DM-Epistemology: Set In Concrete?

And:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2004.htm

Finally, the whole sorry mess is exposed here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2...-Contradictions (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2008_02.htm#What-Are-Dialectical-Contradictions)

In short: just ignore 'Dialectical Logic'.

[praxicoide]

You might want to look into the writings of Henri Lefevbre, particularly his book "Formal Logic, Dialectical Logic" which was the first volume in a projected treatise on dialectics that was unfortunately shut down by Stalinist tendencies within the PCF.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that Praxicode, but I think his book is just called 'Dialectical Materialism', and it is appallingly bad.

He relies on all the crass errors I have exposed above, and a few more into the bargain.

The very best piece of work I have seen in more than 25 years research in this area (written by an American academic and Marxist) is alas also lamentably weak; I take it apart here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2...-Contradictions (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2008_02.htm#What-Are-Dialectical-Contradictions)

All such attempts to explain dialectical 'logic' founder on the rocks I have exposed above.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

A slicker and slightly fuller version of my first post above (with several links added, to help explain a few f the terms I have used) can be found here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Outlin...s_errors_01.htm (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Outline_of_Hegel's_errors_01.htm)