Rational Revisability of Logic

Science is provisional in this sense - while we are striving to find "The Absolute Truth", we are also aware that the world via new discoveries, and consequenctly changing ideas can cause us to rationally revise our theories based on new evidence. They can even, occasionally, cause us to want to be more tentative with our judgements in light of various complications regarding a theory.

For instance, with Quantum Mechanics we have many "interpretations of the formalism" from which we have no obvious way to choose. This could change. Our empirical situation might change, our understanding of the mathematics and geometry of the matter might change. We may discover new techniques or new relevant data from other areas that might help us decide among them.

However, what we do know is that we currently don't possess a good "interpretation of quantum mechanics" - good in the sense of there being a definitive reason to choose it from amongst the options. There are many other ideas floating around in "the standard model" that have a similarly tenuous nature. (Godel's theorem, for instance, raises many questions of interpretation.)

For these "tenuous" parts, we objectively give science a pass - we allow it to continue until the matter is decided hoping for the best, sometimes expecting the worst - and we consequently suspect attributing "absolute truth" to those tenuous aspects of our knowledge, recognizing that we may have to revise our ideas. It may turn out that there is a better formulation of quantum physics that someone simply hasn't thought of that would have all the same empirical results but was deterministic. It may turn out that there are better logical and mathematical laws under which Godel's theorem is not derivable.

Those ideas that are "most closely associated with philosophy" also tend to be the ones about which we suspend our judgement. We don't assert that the "standard model" implies the existence of God because we're willing to suspend our judgement about the nature of causation. But we don't assert that the standard model denies the existence of God either. We don't assert that Godel's theorem is "absolutely true" because we don't assert that all the unproved axioms which allow its derivation are themselves known firmly, mostly because the arguments for them tend to be "philosophical" rather than definitive.

The ability to rationally revise our ideas based on evidence is a core scientific value. It is one of the many things that is intended to separate science from non-science.

This revise-ability needs to include our notion of rationality, which is said to be defined by Logic. Logic is the study of the quality of inference - validity, truth preservation, etc. To study this with an eye toward providing a framework in which good inferences are generally made and bad inferences are generally not made is to have a pragmatic view of it. We want our "rules of inference" to allow us to make good inferences - be flexible enough to cover new situations while conservative enough to prevent us from flying wildly off the deep end, so to speak.

If our logical systems were not thusly revisable, what would we call them but philosophy? They would become dogmas, there would be schools, and they would have no grounds by which to decide the matters. Those schools would be motivated primarily by political, economic, religious and psychological factors that have nothing to do with the matter at hand and which would be decidedly anti-science. I think this is the condition we find our philosophy in today.

(Anecdote: A boy at a funeral hears that the dead man is going to a house where there are no friendly neighbors, no roof, no floor and no door. The boy exclaims "Pappa, they're bringing the dead body to our house!")

In philosophical logic we have schools. Intuitionism and Platonism being the "most largely populated" of them, but like democracy, strength in numbers doesn't determine the justice of the matter, only who wins. There are many sub-opinions and even completely conflicting opinions. And, as in politics, the subjugation of the minority views only tends to create disharmony and strife, eventually revolution. The current "malaise" in philosophical logic should be regarded as the symptom of this irrational subjugation. Progress in philosophical logic is being stilted not by lack of interest, but by the inability of the practitioners to treat it as a science - as open to development and even major paradigmatic change - this despite the fact that the tenets of the various schools are the closest to "philosophy" of any scientific practice - the unproved axioms of (insert your variety of logic here).

How can we move forward? The political aspects (and here I mean to include the psychological, political, religious and economic aspects) of logic have already dominated the field, for millennia. Is there any way to remove those aspects of the science that are "inherited" from these political factions and move forward and somehow revive this science, make it more than the mere rhetoric it (effectively) is today. If we could identify them, obviously, different factions might disagree on which ideas were purely political and which ideas weren't.

I submit that there is no removing the purely political from the supposedly rational in this essential science by any rational means.

Any 'rational means' would presuppose an adequate definition of the term "rational" for which the science of logic is searching. If we presume an answer to this question, it would likely have to come from these pre-rational ideas that are the motivating factors in our logics today - politics, religion, economics, psychological idiosyncrasies.

For instance, I started this note by appealing to the scientific notion of rational revise-ability. Good scientific theories, I say, are rationally revisable. If we took this to mean also Logic as a science is rationally revisable, we could use this as a standard for picking a logic - we would pick a logic that allowed us to revise its standards as necessary. But that wouldn't be our only criteria. And many people would object even to this criteria as it, no doubt, wouldn't fit their own political, religious, economic or psychological paradigm. As a result, the only real way to regard my idea of science as rationally revisable beliefs, is as part of a political program (which in my case is obvious enough).

But will the others in the game admit their bias?!

Doubtful, but I'm open to revising my opinion.

Robbie Lindauer