Axiomity

Continuing the discussion of Logic without Axioms

A big question sitting out there in the minds of the anti-historical is "what does logic without axioms look like?"

As no surprise to many, no doubt, it looks like rhetoric for that is the disdainful name given to it by our pseudo-culture. But it takes many forms, and starting with a list is sometimes a good thing.

Law - The laws of people ("You may not bring an elephant into a licensed bar") is a reasoning system without axioms. There are different laws in different lands, and the enforcement of laws and the standards of enforcement and the methods of interpretation, etc., differ from people to people, from land to land, from time to time. In the United States we have a "highest law" - the constitution - but that too is fungible. We have treaties and amendments that occasionally change the substance of the "highest law" and court rulings that fail to change the wording of said laws, but succeed in changing their meaning daily. We are, in that sense, Oligarchical Collectivists in that we can change the meaning of words willy-nilly. 2+2 sometimes equals 5 and sometimes equals 4.

The force of law is literal violence - failure to accord with the law results in torture, imprisonment, fines, injunctions and sometimes death. This law is then normative in a relative sense, normative in the sense that if you don't obey it the enforcers of the law will come and get you. "In the day that you eat of it you will surely die."

Capital - In capitalist society, the practice of getting a good deal is extremely important - you need to pay as little as possible in order to get as much as you can in order to sell it for as much as possible in order to have a profit left-over. This rule, the rule of capitalism I call it, requires cunning and the practice of that cunning is the skill called negotiation. If two people know the rule, the negotiation is harder. Understanding the universal application of the rule is the skill of a good negotiator - someone who can give and take information with the right grains of sand in order to come out "ahead".
The force of the law of capitalism is loss. Failure to living in accord with it makes one poor, downtrodden, sometimes destitute and dead. The extent of this law is limited by the first group of laws - the literal laws of the state. This law, then, is also normative in the sense that if you don't obey it, the enforcers of the law will come and get you, that is, they will make you destitute or make you conform.

In an oligarchist society, the need for "progress" as a rhetorical tool for negotiation is critical. In negotiations there are, generally, winners and losers according to the law of capitalism. Ishmaelites might think of them as "Takers" and "Leavers". However, the destitution of the destitute can become a problem - it must be solved. For if the destitute fail to continue to lose at their negotiations, from whom will the winners gain their profit? There are two answers to this question and they are our other two rhetorical tools in use today.

War - when the losers need an explanation for their losses, they can either look at the winner across the table or they can be directed to look elsewhere. Simultaneously, when the loser-class becomes better at negotiations, the opportunity for winning becomes diminished. Both rhetorical needs are served by War. War expands the class of losers ad-hoc - whenever there is a need for more losers, one conquers them, kills them and subjects them to losing. At the same time, the "losers-at-home" can regard themselves as becoming winners, reaping the rewards of the conquered nation(s). Lastly, the losers are willing to continue to make sacrifices for "the war" because they are led to believe (by negotiation) that winning it will lead them to becoming the winners themselves.

The law of war is obviously also the law of force. If you fail to obey it, you will become conquered, enslaved and possibly killed. We see all around us the activity of the law of war today.

Science - The law of war is limited by the physics of our planet. There are just these continents, just this arable land, just this water, just this coal, just this oil, just this air. There is a lot of it, no doubt, but as the number of winners and losers increase and the losers continue their learning-to-be-winners-at-negotiation the need for Progress is inevitable. Progress takes many forms for science. First is improving the ability for the winners to win and maintain their winning position. Second is the ability for losers to lose more gracefully and come back more quickly. Third is the ability to wage war more effectively.

These logics - Law, Capital, Science, War - are the eternal logics of civilization. We have seen them since the time that Cain killed Abel or that the Inuits made their trek north to escape the onslaught of it (civilization).

There are, perhaps, pre-existing laws, the laws of God so to speak. These are the basic laws that may have, in a sense, been formative in the development of our human laws - at least that's a story we like to tell now. Everyone to live must eat and excrete, be kept reasonably warm and procreate. These human characteristics were handed to us by evolution or God, however you like to think of it. We can imagine, I expect, different kinds of life-forms - that have no need of eating, reproducing or being warm. We imagine, I suspect, rocks being eternally "alive" in some sense. (No, we don't know what life is without food and reproduction, I think.) Humans eat other (the remains of, in general) living things. Not so with all living things. Some living things can metabolize non-living things. Perhaps we could alter ourselves to do this, I don't know.

In any case, the penalty for breaking the laws of evolution or God is death, clearly enough. To live we must eat. To eat we must kill. Our situation is, in that sense, pre-destined. We can't help but be what we are - we don't choose our births. Although we can imagine developing different laws altogether - different laws of human society, different laws of science, different laws of war, our situation is vampiric.

The notion of "Logical Law" does not appear here, except perhaps as a footnote to the law of negotiation, as a precursor to war and science. But if there are logical laws, then, they were not given to us, as it were, by God or evolution. God never said "Thou shalt deduce p from q in these circumstances." That would no doubt have been interesting. Instead we have been given choices - we choose how to deduce, what to deduce when, etc. And these laws of logic which we have created are idolized, and rightly so, by the minions of civilization. For as a negotiation tactic, it's important to be able to control the language of the conversation which are the terms under which the negotiation can happen at all. If these terms are idolized - made into Gods themselves - they become unquestionable in the mind of the minion.

But do the makers of idols believe in the Gods? There's a story that Abram's father was an idol-seller. Abram destroyed the idols in his father's shop and blamed it on one of them in it. His father rightly noted that idols can't do that, they're made of stone, not alive. "Why do you worship them, then?" said Abram. Platonism is this kind of idol-worship, really. We make laws and pretend they were given to us from eternity by the Gods themselves. But we know them to be powerless, smash them and watch what their fathers do.