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THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION

~ Science, logic, and ethics, from a Whiteheadian Pragmatist perspective (go figure)

THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION

Tag Archives: algebraic reasoning

Learn The Language

27 Monday Dec 2021

Posted by Gary Herstein in Logic, Process Philosophy, Relationalism, Whitehead

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

algebraic reasoning, Relational thinking, Whitehead

To review a point I have made in the past:

  • A scientist is someone who engages in inquiry to discover new facts
  • An engineer is someone who engages in inquiry to discover new applications for known facts.
  • A technician is someone who engages in inquiry to maintain known applications.

We can add to this the mode of inquiry which characterizes philosophy

  • A philosopher is someone who engages in inquiry in order to discover new meanings, and fully understand old ones.

Philosophers aren’t alone in this latter form of inquiry, but as I am a philosopher that is what I am working from. (Arguably, the philosopher’s position is more generalized and abstract than, say, that of the novelist.) I highlight the above so that we may take a poke at that most maddening and obscure subject, the meanings of Whitehead’s terms, (mostly) in his philosophical works. Because you’ll never learn the thinker’s meanings if you do not first learn the thinker’s language. With Whitehead, this means two things. First, you must “get inside” the structure of the man’s thinking, a step the overwhelming majority of scholars have categorically refused to do. The second is that you must disabuse yourself of the notion that, just because Whitehead uses a term that you find familiar, Whitehead is therefore using that term in a way that is familiar to you. This latter is the part that really drives some people – most especially myself – absolutely bananas.i We’ll approach these in order.

Now, while the second issue can drive one over the edge, I will add that the first one is pretty frustrating as well. In point of fact, it really, really annoys me. I mean, it REALLY annoys me. Let me illustrate it with a non-Whiteheadian example.

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Foolish Consistency?

18 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Critical Thinking, Logic, Philosophy of Logic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

algebraic reasoning, Compartmentalization, Critical Thinking

So I’ve previously floated some remarks about Emerson’s famous quote about a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of a narrow mind. It seems reasonable that there might be something like a foolish consistency, but is that evident reasonableness actually validated in practice? And how might a person with a logical turn of mind validate, in turn, that reasonableness in theory? I’d like to explore this subject a bit by offering some informal remarks on formal logic, the thought being that there are actually reasons for learning the latter, yet intelligent things that can be discovered pursuing the former.

Formal logic, as it is traditionally taught and interpreted, holds that a formal contradiction is the End of Days. It is the thing that causes Jason Voorhees to drop his machete, Freddy Krueger to weep like a baby, and Michael Myers to pee himself hiding under his bed. It is the gate kicked open on the Pit of Hell, the black hole that swallows the universe, the Cubs winning the Series. OK, maybe not the “black hole” thing.

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Thinking about Thinking 3: Statistical modes

22 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Climate Change, Critical Thinking, Philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Science

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

algebraic reasoning, Climate change Denial, Critical Thinking, Logic, mathematics, Relational thinking, Statistics

Statistical thinking is one of the most important formal methods of engaging reality available to human beings. Sadly, it is also one of the more difficult, because human beings, in general, have absolutely no intuitive sense regarding probabilistic claims or statistical analyses. The people who do such things – even the ones that do them poorly – only reach such a stage of analysis after a significant amount of disciplined education. For the rest of us (and I must perforce include myself in this list) our statistical guesses only rise to the level of the merely appalling on those rare occasions that they are not completely idiotic. Quite usable texts can be had for the downloading (although the interested reader might consider supporting the Open Intro foundation), but one still requires no small measure of determination to “climb Mount Statistics” on one’s own. It is a challenge I’ve never completed at any substantive level, making this post more than a trifle daunting. However, even lacking any measure of expertise on the subject, there remain a few intelligent things that can be said, even by someone like me.

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Thinking about Thinking 2: Algebraic Reasoning

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Critical Thinking, General Philosophy, Philosophy of Logic

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

algebraic reasoning, Relational thinking

“I’m never going to use that!” Variations of this war cry are frequently lodged in protest against that Torquemada-ish, 7th level of hell known as “high school algebra.” I am inclined to sympathize with this lament, but not for the reasons one might suppose. The problem, you see, lies not in the pragmatics – the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the subject – but rather in the pedagogical techniques and intentions with which it is presented. Algebra, as it is almost universally taught in secondary school, is little more than a peculiarly mangled arithmetic. Algebra as it ought to be taught is relational logic, it is algebraic reasoning.

So what does the above mean?

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“But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is, that it adds to interest.” – Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality

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Science, logic, and ethics, from a Whiteheadian Pragmatist perspective (go figure)

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