Dear Fil,
Don's point -- and that of Mercier and Sperber -- is that human thought
and reasoning do not arise from logic. Logic has its uses. Don's assertion
is that we do not use logic to invent, innovate, design, or conduct science.
In writing, "science advances by induction and abduction. Good luck with
that. new facts sometimes contradict old ones (hence the requirement for
non-monotonicity)," Don is making an argument for the way that people
think in practice. Philosophy of science addresses these by speaking of the
logic of discovery and the logic of justification.
The logic of discovery is not really a logic, and it includes such non-logics
as abduction, intuition, and pure creation as well as induction. The logic of
justification includes different ways of finding out whether the hypotheses
and claims we assert based on discovery, imagination, or invention are
justifiable or warrantable.
Without mixing into the discussion of whether we can automate design
processes, I'd assert that the hermeneutical horizon of human existence and
experience precludes automating many aspects of thinking and invention.
This is why machinery and processes emerging from first-order predicate
logic don't function for doing design or science any more than one can
do science or even mathematics with machines. I'd agree that you can
automate some processes, while other processes require human beings.
There is another way to think of it: if human beings were logic machines,
we would not have inputs sufficient to create the new futures we continually
envision and create.
Yours,
Ken
Fil Salustri wrote:
Sorry, but from what I recall, all forms of logic, including epistemic
logics, logics of knowledge, etc, depend foundationally on 1st order
pred logic in terms of soundness, etc.
Is that not the case?
Don Norman wrote:
Logic covers deductive reasoning. But science advances by induction and
abduction. Good luck with that. new facts sometimes contradict old ones
(hence the requirement for non-monotonicity). You are preaching a very old
fashioned view of science.
I, as a card carrying cognitive scientist, firmly believe that logic is a
form of mathematics, not to be confused with human reasoning.
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