Pursuing praxis

Foreword: I’ll be transcribing here the quotes and notes I wish to retain from my reading of HWB Joseph’s An Introduction to Logic, (1916). This is not meant to be a summary of the chapters, but the references and jumping off points for future thoughts and research. My quotations should be accurate, but in many places I will paraphrase, and will not use quotations then.

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Chapter 1: Of the general character of the enquiry

pg 2: "[I]n the same ways that we study the laws of motion as they are exemplified in the movement of all bodies, without studying all the bodies that ever move, so we may study the laws of thought, as they are exemplified in thinking about all subjects, without studying all the subjects that are ever thought of."

pg 3: "[B]ut it is not the business of Logic to make men rational, but rather to teach them in what their being rational consists." [Lovely]. "And this they could never learn, if they were not rational first."

pg 3: "Logic, then, is the science which studies the general principles in accordance with which we think about things, whatever things they may be." … Our thought about things is expressed partly "and most systematically in the various sciences. Those sciences are the best examples of human thinking about things, the  most careful, clear and coherent, that exist. In them, therefore, the logician can best study the laws of men’s thinking, and it is in this sense that we may accept the old definition of Logic, scientia scientiarum."

pg 4: "… what is meant by saying that Logic is concerned with forms of thinking. … By form we mean what is the same in many individuals called materially different. … And all science is formal, in the sense that it deals with waht is common to differences." YES.

pg 5 footnote: "What is different in particular thoughts is not related to their common form as … to their common[ality], but rather as the specialty of their structures to the generic identity, or as particular instances to the common nature of which they are instances."
- All of page 5 is good - He reminds us not to abstract logic too far, to the commonest of all common denominators. You miss a lot when you do this, and bastardize the point of the whole thing anyway.

cont’d: "But the truth is, that we think in different ways about subjects of different kinds, and therefore we must, if we wish to study the principles that pervade our thinking, consider to some extent the differences in our thinking arising from differences in that about which we think."
- This is a key to arguing against reductionism - the bane of biologists who rail against it yet participate in it themselves. Natures are different, though materials may be connected…

pg 5 cont’d: "The distinction between form and matter may as it were be taken at different levels." Discussion of Cuvier’s embranchements. "The higher the level therefore at which in Zoology the distinction between form and matter is taken, the less can we study the form in isolation from variety of matter; no example taken from one order of animals, say the starfish, will enable us to realize what animality is."
- So the same for logic - we need wide material familiarity (with thoughts) for wide concepts.

pg 7: "Form cannot be studied apart from matter." "What is important to realize is the need for following the common form out into the differences which it displays in different matter."

pg 7 ftnt: "In strictness, the generic nature of a subject should not be called an attribute of it."

pg 10: "Logic ascertains the methods and nature of knowledge, but does not prescribe it.
- This is a total inversion of what I had assumed, and - perhaps? - been taught. It totally changes the ethics of epistemology - who prescribes what, and why. Existence and experience are primary. It is only from these that we can figure out how we exist, but existing is the given. Same for experience. It need not be proved, as some might imply or attempt to do; only explored, explained, explicated.

pg 12: "[It is] just because it studies our thought about things, [that it] is concerned with questions about the general nature of things."
- Logic’s role, relation to metaphysics.

pg 11 (The value and purpose of Logic): "It would be a mistake to suppose that it can have no practical value unless it can furnish rules for ‘the conduct of the understanding.’ The direct help that it can give in this way is not very great. Its practical value in general education is firstly this: that it demands very careful and exact thinking about its own subject matter, and thus tends to produce a habit of similar carefulness in the study of any other subject. In this it only does for the mind what a thorough training in any exact science might do. Secondly, it makes us realize better what the general forms of speech that we habitually use really mean, and familiarizes us with the task of examining our reasonings and looking to see whether they are conclusive. In this it has an effect which the study of some special science like botany is not equally calculated to produce. Thirdly, it brings more clearly into consciousness… what knowledge is, and so far furnishes us with a sort of standard by which to judge what we commonly call our knowledge of things; it makes us more alive to shortcomings in our ordinary opinions. But it does not need for its justification that we should point to effects which it produces upon our thoughts about other subjects; the nature of thought and knowledge is itself a subject worthy of investigation. And, if we are to look also beyond this, its chief value lies in its bearing upon these ultimate problems, concerning the nature of reality, and man’s place and destiny in the world, from which at first sight it might seem far remote." Fantastic.
- I particularly appreciate his attention to the consequences of the study of Logic, but insistance that the primary justification of a subject or study be the very nature of that study itself. Use does not justify means. Means must justify themselves. The entire enterprise may be motivated by the uses, but it cannot move ethically beyond its means.

pg 12: "Thus recent Symbolic Logic is full of discussions about classes and the relations between classes, because it holds thinking to be fundamentally thinking about the relations of classes. It seems to me that classing and class-relations are a very secondary subject of though, and that for this reason Symbolic Logic gives a very distorted theory of thinking."
- Something to re-visit upon reading Ghiselin’s formulation of species as individuals rather than as (only) classes.

pg 13 ftnt: An exploration of the relation between thinking (downstream: epistemology) and being (downstream: metaphysics) - wholly beautiful. Discusses the Law of Identity, the Law of Contradiction, and the Law of Excluded Middle, and some aspects of determinism, and the ability of the mind to know reality, and of thought to capture reality. Joseph dismisses any doubt or concern on those matters. We are fully capable.