Complaint? — Wayfarer

Sorry. Must have been someone else complaining about the fact science has arrived at the conclusion that reality is fundamentally irreducible in the dialectical or complementary fashion noted by Bohr.

Of course Bohr was more directly inspired by his education in the Lao-Tse than by Hegel. But same elephant, different philosophical traditions.

In opting for such a bold departure from the European tradition, Bohr was much influenced by the Daojia tradition of the Laozi, which enabled him to make sense of quantum phenomena, when he realised that these failed to conform to the ‘either (particle) or (wave)’ Law of Excluded Middle, as they are both simultaneously. There is logic other than classical bvalent logic.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321280738_Bohr_Quantum_Physics_and_the_Laozi

Lao Tse is considerably less loquacious than Hegel and the basis of a living philosophy.

Bohr as you know incorporated the ying-yang symbol into the family Coat of Arms that was crafted when he was knighted by the Danish Crown.

Bohr regarded his ‘principle of complementarity’ a major discovery in its own right.

This is quite a useful article - https://phys.org/news/2009-06-quantum-mysticism-forgotten.html

It points out that the pioneers were deep thinkers - cultured Europeans who understood philosophy. Schrödinger and Heisenberg both wrote perceptively on physics and philosophy. Post-war the action shifted to the US, ‘big science’ and military/industrial research.

Good lecture on how quantum systems are formally equivalent to stochastic processes (link to papers at start of video though I have linked the previous in this thread):

https://youtu.be/IBP1oxHxnpk?si=zXwj-n56sdUpBUHo

Shown in the video how the weird quantum phenomena like non-commutativity (and heisenberg uncertainty, measurement dependence), interference (thus coherence/superposition), decoherence, entanglement are all behaviors that occur in a certain (and only recently described i.e within the last 20 years) family of [stochastic processes, i.e. sequences of random variables that will always realize definite outcomes at any point in time]. Collapse appears purely as statistical conditionalization. The author goes through how you can bi-directionally translate between quantum and stochastic formalisms - the quantum representation is just a useful tool. Note, the author also says this is extremely generic and can be applied to any kind of quantum system whether particles or any ontology you like.

No many worlds.
No measurement problem.
No cat dead and alive at same time.
No Heisenberg cut.
No shoehorning deterministic trajectories and pilot waves.
No need to wonder if the moon is really there when no one looks.
No observer woo.

Parsimony demands one ignores these distractions because they are not required to produce quantum behaviors.

Quantum theory is precisely orthogonal to Kantianism or Berkelianism or Schopenhauerism or Dennettianism.



"The functional information of a system will increase (i.e., the system will evolve) if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions."

... functional information increases if functions undergo selection"

... increases in functional information characterizes evolution"

This doesn't seem like some profound new law about the world to me; they just seem to be proposing another way of describing evolution as always been understood, just in a different and I guess more general way.

It points out that the pioneers were deep thinkers - cultured Europeans who understood philosophy. — Wayfarer

More than that I would say. I would point to how the logic of the Yin-Yang, co-dependent arising, Aristotelean hylomorphism, Hegelianism, Naturphilosphie, and all the other traditions of dialectical thought made the discovery of the quantum even possible.

Classical logic would seem to forbid one thinking in this fashion. It propels us towards a lumpen realism - a metaphysics of medium sized dry goods. Kitchenware and the like. The least critical mindset.

But a perspective widened by a relational view, a process view, a dialectical view, was necessary for science to make its great leap to discover quantum mechanics. It made the results observed thinkable.

What, you say particle mechanics and wave mechanics both seem to apply? Well as complementary descriptions - a local view vs a global view - maybe that should be no surprise.

The Hard Problem pretends to have its ontic ground - zombies as a real possibility despite all that science and commonsense says - but it simply devolves to standard Humean epistemic issue that “we will never really know” that bedevils all rational inquiry and which became precisely the reason for pragmatism becoming standard as the way to move forward after that. — apokrisis

The point is that what you call science does not rule them out, or indeed in. It has nothing to say on the subject of consciousness itself, although there's still plenty of interesting work to do peripheral to that, like scientifically studying the neural correlates of particular experiences. We don't doubt that other people are conscious because of commonsense (as you say), not science. We infer others are conscious because I am conscious and other people seem to be like me and do roughly similar things under similar circumstances. It's the best explanation of their behaviour. You don't have to do any science for this, and commonsense does it instinctively. So if we know that other people are conscious, but we can't derive that from their structure and function, then that is a clue that examining structure and function may actually be insufficient.

It's not about unwarranted doubt. We don't doubt. It's about finding a plausible explanation for what we don't doubt.

The problem of people deciding where they want to end up and working backwards for a justification is possible given any type of philosophical method (e.g. it seems hard to deny that Russell didn't do just this at times; rather than his scientism preventing this, it just served to obfuscate it). Nor do I think such a move is always unwarranted. If you have a good "project" it can make sense to try to find a way to save it.

But the larger problem here is that a genetic fallacy is still a genetic fallacy. Bad motivations don't make someone wrong. Falsifiability hasn't even proven to be a particularly good metric for demarcation of the sciences. Mach attacked atoms as unfalsifiable. Quarks were called, not without merit, "unfalsifiable pseudoscience." Plenty of work in quantum foundations is still regarded as unfalsifiable pseudoscience even as it results in tangible discoveries.

Popperian falsifiability itself ends up failing an empirical test of its own ability to properly demarcate "good and bad theory" or "good and bad science."

What, you say particle mechanics and wave mechanics both seem to apply? — apokrisis

Very rich post with much that could be commented on, but I wonder if you might provide an interpretation of this graphic. I’ve posted it here previously, it’s from John Wheeler’s paper, Law without Law:




The caption reads, ‘what we consider to be ‘reality’, symbolised by the letter R in the diagram, consists of an elaborate paper maché construction of imagination and theory fitted between a few iron posts of observation’.

What do you think the point of that simile is? Do you think it suggests something similar to what I’m proposing as the ‘mind-created world’?

@Banno

Again, there is a difference between how things are and how we believe they are. A difference between how they are and how we say that they are. A difference that tends to dissipate in idealism. A difference that explains what it is to be mistaken. — Banno

Say we see an oar in water and it appears bent to us. We then lift it out and see that it is really straight; the bent appearance was an illusion caused by the water's refraction. On Philonous' (i.e. idealist) view, though, we cannot say that we were wrong about the initial judgement; if we perceived the stick as bent then the stick had to have been bent. Similarly, since we see the moon's surface as smooth we cannot really say that the moon's surface is not smooth; the way that it appears to us has to be the way it is. Philonous has an answer to this worry as well. While we cannot be wrong about the particular idea, he explains, we can still be wrong in our judgement. Ideas occur in regular patterns, and it is these coherent and regular sensations that make up real things, not just the independent ideas of each isolated sensation. The bent stick can be called an illusion, therefore, because that sensation is not coherently and regularly connected to the others. If we pull the stick out of the water, or we reach down and touch the stick, we will get a sensation of a straight stick. It is this coherent pattern of sensations that makes the stick. If we judge that the stick is bent, therefore, then we have made the wrong judgement, because we have judged incorrectly about what sensation we will have when we touch the stick or when we remove it from the water. — Dialogue between Philonious and Hylas, Berkeley

Ok. Thanks.

No. I'm pointing out how the sociology of science operates. NASA wants to remain employed by the US taxpayer. — apokrisis

What does NASA playing politics/ecomomics have to do with a scientific theory developed by Cornell University scientists? Do you think they choose to only back ideas that might be popular with voters? Is AstroBiology a popular use of taxpayer investments? Show me the aliens! :joke:

Sorry Gnomon, I don't fathom how your brain works. What else have I been telling you for at least a decade? — apokrisis

Refresh my memory. What have you been telling me? Have you been saying something like : "while as the universe ages and expands, it is becoming more organized and functional, nearly opposite to theories surrounding increasing cosmological disorder"*2. This notion is also in opposition to the presumptions of Materialism, which focuses on the Randomness & Chaos of the universe"? If so, please accept my belated welcome to the club. :grin:

This doesn't seem like some profound new law about the world to me; they just seem to be proposing another way of describing evolution as always been understood, just in a different and I guess more general way. — Apustimelogist

So, you were underwhelmed by this revelation of Causal Information as the key to universal progressive & creative Evolution from almost nothing to everything? Apparently some scientists in related fields are more impressed. :nerd:


Scientists propose 'missing' law for the evolution of everything in the universe :
# This new law identifies "universal concepts of selection" that drive systems to evolve, whether they're living or not.
# The research team behind the law, which included philosophers, astrobiologists, a theoretical physicist, a mineralogist and a data scientist, have called it "the law of increasing functional information."
# The law applies to systems that form from numerous components — such as atoms, molecules and cells —which can be arranged and rearranged repeatedly and adopt multiple different configurations, according to the statement. The law also says these configurations are selected based on function, and only a few survive.
# Theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, professor emeritus of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, said the study is a "superb, bold, broad, and transformational article,"
https://www.space.com/scientists-propose-missing-law-evolution-of-everything-in-the-universe

Evolution, not just survival, but novelty & creativity :
# The third and most interesting function according to the researchers is ‘novelty’ — the tendency of evolving systems to explore new configurations that sometimes lead to startling new behaviors or characteristics, like photosynthesis
https://www.sci.news/physics/law-of-increasing-functional-information-12369.html

Philosophy :
Functionalism is a theory about the nature of mental states. According to functionalists, mental states are identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of. Functionalism is the most familiar or “received” view among philosophers of mind and cognitive science.
https://iep.utm.edu/functism/
Note --- Doing is causal, not material

Is the argument then that this complexity somehow implies (leads to, causes...) a fair and just universe? — Banno

No. Where did you get that idea? One implication of this New Law of Evolution is that its progression of increasing complexity & creative novelty eventually led from a hypothetical Singularity Soup (quark/gluon plasma) to the emergence of complex brains & minds capable of asking questions about Fairness & Justice, that we world-observers call Philosophy. :smile:

But the larger problem here is that a genetic fallacy is still a genetic fallacy. Bad motivations don't make someone wrong. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sticky this please mods!

We infer others are conscious because I am conscious and other people seem to be like me and do roughly similar things under similar circumstances. — bert1

So for some reason it is OK for you to use commonsense to make inferences about things you can’t directly know, but science as a formal method for making such inferences does not enjoy the same privilege? It is defeated by the zombies in which you don’t believe? Curious.

So what does your commonsense tell you about the consciousness of the chair you are sat on? Given the zombie argument that is so legit, how can you know it is either conscious or not conscious. It might be just keeping very quiet and still. It might be aware but suffering locked in syndrome.

Your commonsense is this magical power that transcends mere scientific inference. Please clear up these deep riddles of Nature.

What do you think the point of that simile is? — Wayfarer

The point is epistemic. And it reflects the semiotic fact that the mind must reduce reality to a system of signs. The world is a blooming, buzzing confusion of noise and we must distil that down to some orderly arrangement of information. A set of counterfactuals that impose a dialectical crispness on the vagueness of our experience.

So in Gestalt fashion, we turn sensory confusion into perceived order by homing in on critical features that would distinguish and R from an E or a K. We have to be sensitive to the fact that Rs have this loop that Es leave open. This becomes a rule of interpretation for when we start having to deal with a real world of messy handwriting and wild fonts. We have to see information that was meant to be there according to the rules and so ignore the variation that is also in some actual scribble or fancifully elaborate font.

Our interpretative experience of even the alphabet, let alone the world, has this epistemic character. We must divide the confusion dialectically into global formal necessity and local material accident. That is then how we can “decode” reality. That is how we can construct an “understanding”.

Refresh my memory. What have you been telling me? — Gnomon

As I say, I am officially baffled about how you deal with information.

For example I made this comment in a post last year.

Without understanding it, Gnomon in fact posted this graph of the creation of the negentropic gap from David Layzer, the cosmologist who saw this back in the 1960s.

Our interpretative experience of even the alphabet, let alone the world, has this epistemic character. We must divide the confusion dialectically into global formal necessity and local material accident. That is then how we can “decode” reality. That is how we can construct an “understanding”. — apokrisis

No need for the scare quotes around understanding. Which pretty well illustrates the point of the ‘mind-created world’.

Refresh my memory. What have you been telling me? — Gnomon
As I say, I am officially baffled about how you deal with information. — apokrisis

I apologize for my ignorance and leaky memory. As I've mentioned before, I had no formal training in Philosophy in college, and I only began to get some experience with argumentation since I retired, and began posting on this forum. So a large percentage of your posts goes over my head, especially the long complicated ones. You use technical terminology unfamiliar to me, and refer to authors & texts I've never read. So, in many cases I just skim the posts. As you probably do with mine.

Regarding the Information and Arrow of Time graphic, I don't remember posting it, but it seems to fit my general understanding of the Evolution of Information. Can you explain to me what you think I didn't understand about it?

My personal philosophical concept of Information Theory is a departure*1*2 from that of Shannon, who seemed to equate it with disorderly devolving Entropy. Instead, I view the area between the red & blue curves in the Entropy graph as Negentropy, which is what I call EnFormAction (power to enform). You won't find that term in any science or philosophy texts, because I made it up to serve my amateur thesis of Enformationism. So, unless you are motivated to look into that unorthodox thesis, you'll probably remain "baffled by how I deal with information". :smile:

*1. The Information Philosopher :
My explanation of the cosmic creation process shows how the expansion of the universe opened up new possibilities for different possible futures. My work is based on a suggestion by Arthur Stanley Eddington and my Harvard colleague David Layzer.
https://www.informationphilosopher.com/

*2. Paul Davies on Information :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7EjwUp5krY

FWIW, here's my own chart of the evolution of Information (EnFormAction) since the universe began :

No need for the scare quotes around understanding. Which pretty well illustrates the point of the ‘mind-created world’. — Wayfarer

Not so quick. An understanding is an Umwelt. It is the manufacturing, or co-dependent arising, of the subjective and the object, the self and its world, as the one cohesive dialectic.

There is no ontological self that is the seat of consciousness. That is as much a useful epistemic construct as the world in which this self sees itself living within.

I said ‘any judgement regarding what exists’. — Wayfarer

As opposed to sentence? But there remains the distinction between how the universe is and how we judge it to be. On one side, we have what we state, judge, believe, know, expect, doubt to be the case; and on the other, what is the case. Things we do against how things are.

Optical illusions and mistaken perceptions such as ‘the bent oar’ are discussed by Berkeley. I’ll dig up the ref although not right now. — Wayfarer

Sure. Why? In , you didn't take the time to set out what it is you want me to take from the extended quote. I'll refer you to the thread on Sense and Sensibility, to a post that outlines the physics of the bent stick and others that sets out Austin'e response. "The sting, when it comes, is pithy and simple."

What is wrong, what is even faintly surprising, in the idea of a stick's being straight but looking bent sometimes? Does anyone suppose that if something is straight, then it jolly well has to look straight at all times and in all circumstances?
— p.29 — Austin, p.29

So here:

The bent stick can be called an illusion, therefore, because that sensation is not coherently and regularly connected to the others. — Dialogue between Philonious and Hylas, Berkeley

Seeing the stick as bent is exactly what we expect, given that the stick is straight and partially immersed in water. Nothing incoherent here.

There's a piece of apocryphal about a philosophy lecture in which the class is presented with an apparent straight stick in water, only later to have the lecturer draw the stick out to show that it actually is bent. I hope it is true, because it shows another aspect that needs to be taken into account. We are not passive observers. We interact with the world. We put sticks into water and take them out. So this is inaccurately passive:

‘what we consider to be ‘reality’, symbolised by the letter R in the diagram, consists of an elaborate paper maché construction of imagination and theory fitted between a few iron posts of observation’. — Wayfarer

"What we consider to be reality". Again, what we do, not what is. So sure, we "divide" the world up so as to make sense of it. Therefore there is a world for us to divide up. Hence Idealism is insufficient to explain how things are.

...an argument in physics as to ‘what is real’ — Wayfarer

I spoke previously about speculative physics. Specificity is needed here. Folk think that it's all mins because quantum, but you and I want better arguments.

In previous discussions we reach a point where you seem to be pointing at stuff and trying to show something you see that I don't. We seem to be there again. I think we agree that there is a world, and that we have what philosophers call intentional attitudes towards that world, but you put all the emphasis on those attitudes, as if the world were not also part of what is going on. And again, what I am suggesting is not that idealism is wrong and realism is right, so much as that the juxtaposition of idealism and realism is misleading.

We might agree that we can make true statements about how things are.

nstead, I view the area between the red & blue curves in the Entropy graph as Negentropy — Gnomon

But what else did Layzer label it in calling it "negative entropy/possible information".

Negentropy was the term Schrödinger popularised back in the 1940s with his What is Life?.

Did your astrobiologists remember that classic as they restated what has been well known among those who study these things for so many years.

Thanks. Reiterating, there are two bits of logic in my post, not unrelated but also not the same. The first is the classic Popperian argument that historicist arguments are generally unfalsifiable, which we can to some extent extend to dialectic arguments generally. The second is the lack of fixity as to the third moment, the synthesis.

This latter is shown explicitly in classical logic by the explosion ρ^~ρ⊃ψ, that from a contradiction anything follows. But I don't see that (for example) moving to a paraconsistent logic helps dialectic - that move does not serve to fix the nature of the synthesis.

My suggestion is that in most cases the synthesis is fixed by other factors external to the dialectic, and the dialectic then used to justify that fixing. Which is an invalid move.

And it's this aspect I wanted to bring out, rather than Popper's criticism using falsification, which I agree is not quite up to the task.

An understanding is an Umwelt. It is the manufacturing, or co-dependent arising, of the subjective and the object, the self and its world, as the one cohesive dialectic.

There is no ontological self that is the seat of consciousness. That is as much a useful epistemic construct as the world in which this self sees itself living within. — apokrisis

Just as I said. Self and world are co-arising, just as posited by enactivism. That is why we see the convergence between phenomenology and Buddhism in The Embodied Mind.

You didn't take the time to set out what it is you want me to take from the extended quote — Banno

Apologies if that was not clear. It was posted in response to your:

there is a difference between how things are and how we believe they are. A difference between how they are and how we say that they are. A difference that tends to dissipate in idealism. A difference that explains what it is to be mistaken. — Banno

That argument was used against Berkeley: if our grasp of appearances can be mistaken, then how can he argue that the ideas and impressions which he claims constitute our knowledge should be trusted? How can there be a distinction between ‘what appears the case’, and ‘what is the case’ if all we have are our ideas?

So the passage from Berkeley’s imaginary dialogue was provided to illustrate how Berkeley deals with that criticism.

I think we agree that there is a world, and that we have what philosophers call intentional attitudes towards that world, but you put all the emphasis on those attitudes, as if the world were not also part of what is going on — Banno

As I said in the essay, there is no need for me to deny that there are ‘planets unseen by any eye’, to quote myself. Again, the question is the purported ‘mind-independence’ of the objective domain. As I’ve acknowledged many times already, there are different levels of understanding - in the empirical sense, obviously the world and everything in it is independent of my mind, unknown to me. Heck, I only know about half a dozen people in my street. But on a deeper level, ‘the world’ is a construct - not a confabulation, not an hallucination, but a construct of the mind. That is the sense in which it’s not ‘mind-independent’. And as soon as you posit ‘an unknown object’ - the tree that falls in the forest - you’re already bring a perspective to bear, attempting to illustrate the point with respect to some ‘intentional object’. (This incidentally I take to be in conformity with Kant’s understanding of the distinction between reality and appearance.)

The philosophical point behind the argument, is that naturalism tends to regard ‘mind-independence’ as a criteria for what is real. It attempts to arrive at an understanding of what exists in the absence of any subjective elements whatever. In that world-picture, we view ourselves as objects, and miniscule, insignificant objects at that, epiphenomenal occurrences thrown up by unknowing physical processes in the vast universe. That is what I take scientific realism to be advocating. In addition to that physicalism posits that the mind-independent realm comprises physical elements, which are purportedly the objects of physics itself. That is what I’m arguing against. Hence the emphasis on the ‘observer problem’ in physics, which directly undermines that formulation of physicalism.

Arguably, science itself is now moving beyond that formulation, but regardless, that is what I have in my sights.

Is the argument then that this complexity somehow implies (leads to, causes...) a fair and just universe?
— Banno
No. Where did you get that idea? One implication of this New Law of Evolution is that its progression of increasing complexity & creative novelty eventually led from a hypothetical Singularity Soup (quark/gluon plasma) to the emergence of complex brains & minds capable of asking questions about Fairness & Justice, that we world-observers call Philosophy. :smile: — Gnomon

Just trying to work out what your claim is. So we have something like that the universe that, as it slides inevitably towards thermodynamic equilibrium, progresses towards increasing complexity & creative novelty eventually led from a hypothetical Singularity Soup (quark/gluon plasma) to the emergence of complex brains & minds?

It remains that the universe is fair and just only if those "complex brains & minds" make it so - is that right?

Just as I said. — Wayfarer

But perhaps not clearly? There is still this tendency to slide from an epistemic to ontic position in your choice of words. I add the scare quotes to try to maintain this distinction.

And it all matters. We might be just modellers of the world, but we also do attempt to then remake that world in our own image – a point crucial to my take on the OP. The aim of consciousness is to construct the reality of our dreams. :grin:

So that divides the world into the part that resists our desires and the part which we have made materially conform.

Again the kitchen utensils and household furniture issue, the lumpen realist's examples of choice. The things we make that wouldn't otherwise exist. The unanalysed position where human intention and natural order are conflated in a caricature of metaphysical inquiry.

"Behold! A realm of medium sized dry goods. Chairs, pens, tables, forks, doors, fridges. Puppies that shouldn't be kicked but stones that you freely can."

Nothing of value comes from this kind of cherry-picking where only material objects with the imprint of human intentions are taken as the canonical examples of how reality as a whole operates. It is either intellectually dishonest or puzzlingly ignorant.

Which is why I have stressed that is/ought thinking can't be supported by such arguments. If we have already stamped material reality with our heavy imprint of form then we can't treat that as nature in itself. It is nature as now mediated by a semiotic modelling relation. And attention has to turn to the physical reality of how that works. Enter at this point, a modern sophisticated understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics – recently rediscovered by NASA astrobiologists apparently.

So the passage from Berkeley’s imaginary dialogue was provided to illustrate how Berkeley deals with that criticism. — Wayfarer

Sure. I think I replied to that, using Austin. A straight stick appears bent in water.

It might help to try and look at why we keep coming back to these same arguments. I think it to do with the vanity of small differences. We agree on pretty much everything except that final wording, where you say that the world is a construction of the mind, and I point out that the construction is dependent on stuff outside the mind.

I am not at all convinced we are in any substantive disagreement.

We might be just modellers of the world, but we also do attempt to then remake that world in our own image... — apokrisis

Oh, the joy! Light dawns!

...and of course, you were always saying this...

It might help to try and look at why we keep coming back to these same arguments. I think it to do with the vanity of small differences. We agree on pretty much everything except that final wording, where you say that the world is a construction of the mind, and I point out that the construction is dependent on stuff outside the mind.

I am not at all convinced we are in any substantive disagreement. — Banno

As someone outside of philosophy, I find the debate about idealism to be somewhat pointless. What changes in our lives, either way?

Is it simply the case that idealists are able to accept more 'supernatural' claims because they have determined that nature is ultimately no longer limited by laws of physics?

If idealism is true, I still need to remain gainfully employed, walk to get anywhere, feed the cat, be kind to others. Its appeal seems to be located in it being a kind of conduit to mysticism and other often tedious pursuits.

This latter is shown explicitly in classical logic by the explosion ρ^~ρ⊃ψ, that from a contradiction anything follows. — Banno

Still sticking it to a strawman? Actually read Hegel why don't you.

Here for example an account....

While it is true that Hegel’s speculative philosophy is a systematic unfolding, it is an error to suppose that the Hegelian system operates as a smooth, progressive development, mechanically moving forward in a unidirectional manner.

The Science of Logic is not a simple movement where one term encounters its antithesis and sublates itself. On the contrary, causality engenders a reciprocal action, and is what Hegel calls a double transition or a double movement (gedopplete Bewegung), where the cause determines the effect, and the effect determines the cause.

Sublation is composed of “two factors conditioned by negativity, these being the two modalities of suppression and preservation…both together forming the energy of the negative.”8 It is precisely this energy of the negative that gives Hegel’s negation of negation its power and force. Sublation determines what it sublates. When something is absolutely negated, it isn’t entirely cancelled out, there is a minimal remainder and it is this preservation that transforms the sublated term into something decidedly new.

And so on with of course increasingly less clarity in the attempt to pursue Hegel's essentially right ideas into their ever deeper thickets of prose. Thank goodness an actual logician like Peirce came along to sort things out.

But the point is that even Hegel, obscure that he is, wasn't arguing the kind of caricature of dialectical logic that you accuse him of.

While classical logic might well implode as it does with the Liar's paradox and anything else requiring a more holistic metaphysics, this is why Peirce sought to secure the force of the PNC as the way out of vagueness, not as the door to it.

From a vague potential, anything could possibly follow it might seem. But no in fact. Only dialectical division becomes possible as the self-organising, self-balancing, way to split possibility towards its mutually-opposed limits of being. Reality can be made safe for the counterfactuality of the laws of thought. The Cosmos can be understood by the light of natural reason. The PNC pragmatically works because the dialectic gets us there by locking in bivalence and allowing us to proceed to the third step of Peirce's logical holism. The place where even the general or universal becomes the real and so allows the LEM to pragmatically apply as a logical tool when talking about the particular or contextual.

...and of course, you were always saying this... — Banno

Just as you were always agreeing I guess. :chin:

Pretty much. Esoteric stuff. Hence my lumpen emphasis on medium size smallgoods, the stuff of life.

But the debate gives us something amusing for a quiet Sunday morning.