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The Laws of Thought

A Thematic Compilation by Avi Sion

17. More on Negation

 

1.     Formal Consequences

 

Returning to logic – our insight [earlier] into the nature of negation can be construed to have formal consequences. The negative term is now seen to be a radically different kind of term, even though in common discourse it is made to behave like any other term.

We cannot point to something as ‘negative’ except insofar as it is the negation of something positive. This remark is essentially logical, not experiential. The term ‘not’ has no substance per se – it is a purely relative term. The positive must be experienced or thought of before the negative can at all be conceived, let alone be specifically sought for empirically. This is as true for intuitive as for material or mental objects; and as true for abstracts as for concretes.

One inference to draw from this realization of the distinction of negation is: “non-existence” is not some kind of “existence”. Non-existent things cannot be classed under existence; they are not existent things. The term “non-existence” involves no content of consciousness whatsoever – it occurs in discourse only as the verbal repository of any and all denials of “existence”. Existentialist philosophers have written volumes allegedly about “non-being”, but as Parmenides reportedly stated:

“You cannot know not-being, nor even say it.”

This could be formally expressed and solidified by saying that obversion (at least that of a negative – i.e. inferring “This is nonX” from “This is not X”) is essentially an artificial process. If so, the negative predicate (nonX) is not always inferable from the negative copula (is not). In other words, the form “There is no X” does not imply “There is non-X”; or conversely, “X does not exist” does not imply “nonX exists”.

We can grant heuristically that such eductive processes work in most cases (i.e. lead to no illogical result), but they may be declared invalid in certain extreme situations (as with the term “non-existence”)! In such cases, “nonX” is ‘just a word’; it has no conscionable meaning – we have no specific thing in mind as we utter it.

Logicians who have not yet grasped the important difference of negation are hard put to explain such formal distinctions. I know, because it is perhaps only in the last three years or so that this insight about negation has begun to dawn on me; and even now, I am still in the process of digesting it.

Note that a philosophical critic of this view of negation cannot consider himself an objective onlooker, who can hypothesize ‘a situation where absence exists but has not or not yet been identified’. For that critic is himself a Subject like any other, who must explain the whence and wherefore of his knowledge like anyone else – including the negatives he appeals to. No special privileges are granted.

That is, if you wish to deny all the above, ask yourself and tell me how you consider you go about denying without having something to deny! Claiming to have knowledge of a negative without first thinking of the corresponding positive is comparable to laying personal claim to an absolute framework in space-time – it is an impossible exercise for us ordinary folk.

It should also be emphasized that the above narrative describes only the simplest kind of negation: negation of a perceptual item. But most of the time, in practice, we deal with far more complex situations. Even the mere act of ‘pointing’ at some concrete thing involves not only a positive act (“follow my finger to this”), but also the act of negation (“I do not however mean my finger to point at that”).

Again, a lot of our conceptual arsenal is based on imaginary recombinations of empirical data. E.g. I have seen “pink” things and I have seen “elephants”, and I wonder whether “pink elephants” perhaps exist. Such hypothetical entities are then tested empirically, and might be rejected (or confirmed). However, note, abstraction does not depend only on negation, but on quantitative judgments (comparing, and experiencing what is more or less than the other).

Abstraction starts with experiences. These are variously grouped through comparisons and contrasts. Negation here plays a crucial role, since to group two things together, we must find them not only similar to each other but also different from other things. This work involves much trial and error.

But at this level, not only denial but also affirmation is a rational act. For, ‘similarity’ means seemingly having some quality in common in some measure, although there are bound to be other qualities not in common or differences of measure of the common quality. The essence of affirmation here is thus ‘measurement’.

But Nature doesn’t measure anything. Every item in it just is, whatever it happens to be (at any given time and place). It is only a Subject with consciousness that measures: this against that, or this and that versus some norm.

This weighing work of the cognizing Subject is not, however, arbitrary (or ought not to be, if the Subject has the right attitudes). As in the above case of mere negation, the conclusion of it does proceed from certain existing findings. Yet, it is also true that this work only occurs in the framework of cognition.

 

2.     Negation and the Laws of Thought

 

Logic cannot be properly understood without first understanding negation. This should be obvious from the fact that two of the laws of thought concern the relation between positive and negative terms. Similarly, the basic principle of adduction, that hypotheses we put forward should be empirically tested and rejected if they make wrong predictions – this principle depends on an elucidation of negation.

a.         The so-called laws of thought are, in a sense, laws of the universe or ontological laws – in that the universe is what it is (identity), is not something other than what it is (non-contradiction) and is something specific (excluded middle).

They have phenomenological aspects: appearances appear (identity); some are in apparent contradiction to others (a contradiction situation); in some cases, it is not clear just what has appeared (an excluded middle situation).

They may also be presented as epistemological laws or laws of logic, in that they guide us in the pursuit of knowledge. However, they are aptly named laws of thought, because they really arise as propositions only in the context of cognitive acts.

To understand this, one has to consider the peculiar status of negation, as well as other (partly derivative) major processes used in human reasoning, including abstraction, conceiving alternative possibilities and making hypotheses.

b.         The impact of this insight on the laws of thought should be obvious. The law of identity enjoins us primarily to take note of the positive particulars being perceived. But the laws of non-contradiction and of the excluded middle, note well, both involve negation. Indeed, that’s what they are all about – their role is precisely to regulate our use of negation – to keep us in harmony with the more positive law of identity!

Their instructions concerning the subjective act of negation, at the most perceptual level, are as follows. The law of non-contradiction forbids negating in the perceptible presence of the thing negated. The law of the excluded middle forbids accepting as final an uncertainty as to whether a thing thought of is currently present or absent.

We are unable to cognize a negative (not-X) except by negation of the positive (X) we have in mind; it is therefore absurd to imagine a situation in which both X and not-X are true (law of non-contradiction). Similarly, if we carefully trace how our thoughts of X and not-X arise in our minds, it is absurd to think that there might be some third alternative between or beyond them (law of the excluded middle.)

Thus, these two laws are not arbitrary conventions or happenstances that might be different in other universes, as some logicians contend (because they have unfortunately remained stuck at the level of mere symbols, “X” and “non-X”, failing to go deeper into the cognitive issues involved). Nor are they wholly subjective or wholly objective.

These laws of thought concern the interface of Subject and Object, of consciousness and existence – for any Subject graced with rational powers, i.e. cognitive faculties that go beyond the perceptual thanks in part to the possibility of negation.

They are for this reason applicable universally, whatever the content of the material and mental universe faced. They establish for us the relations between affirmation and denial, for any and every content of consciousness.

c.         On this basis, we can better comprehend the ontological status of the laws of thought. They have no actual existence, since the concrete world has no use for or need of them, but exists self-sufficiently in positive particulars.

But the laws are a potential of the world, which is actualized when certain inhabitants of the world, who have the gifts of consciousness and freewill, resort to negation, abstraction and other cognitive-volitional activities, in order to summarize and understand the world.

In a world devoid of humans (or similar Subject/Agents), there are no negations and no ‘universals’. Things just are (i.e. appear) – positively and particularly. Negation only appears in the world in relation to beings like us who can search for something positive and not find it. Likewise for ‘universals’ – they proceed from acts of comparison and contrast.

Consciousness and volition are together what gives rise to concepts and alternative possibilities, to hypotheses requiring testing. It is only in their context that logical issues arise, such as existence or not, reality or illusion, as well as consistency and exhaustiveness.

It is important to keep in mind that the laws of thought are themselves complex abstractions implying negations – viz. the negative terms they discuss, as well as the negation of logical utility and value in contradictory or ‘middle’ thinking. Indeed all the ‘laws’ in our sciences are such complex abstractions involving negations.

d.         The insight that negation is essentially a volitional act allied to cognition explains why the laws of thought are prescriptive as well as descriptive epistemological principles.

The laws of thought are prescriptive inasmuch as human thought is fallible and humans have volition, and can behave erratically or maliciously. If humans were infallible, there would be no need for us to study and voluntarily use such laws. There is an ethic to cognition, as to all actions of freewill, and the laws of thought are its top principles.

The laws of thought are descriptive, insofar as we commonly explicitly or implicitly use them in our thinking. But this does not mean we all always use them, or always do so correctly. They are not ‘laws’ in the sense of reports of universal behavior. Some people are unaware of them, increasing probabilities of erroneous thinking. Some people would prefer to do without them, and eventually suffer the existential consequences. Some people would like to abide by these prescriptions, but do not always succeed.

These prescriptions, as explicit principles to consciously seek to abide by, have a history. They were to our knowledge first formulated by a man called Aristotle in Ancient Greece. He considered them to best describe the cognitive behavior patterns that lead to successful cognition. He did not invent them, but realized their absolute importance to human thought.

Their justification is self-evident to anyone who goes through the inductive and deductive logical demonstrations certain logicians have developed in this regard. Ultimately it is based on a holistic consideration of knowledge development.

Our insights here about the relativity of negation and abstraction, and the realization of their role in the laws of thought serve to further clarify the necessity and universality of the latter.

 

3.     Pure Experience

 

A logically prior issue that should perhaps be stressed in this context is the existence of pure experience, as distinct from experience somewhat tainted by acts of thought.

Some philosophers claim that all alleged ‘experience’ falls under the latter class, and deny the possibility of the former. But such skepticism is clearly inconsistent: if we recognize some part of some experience as pure of thought, this is sufficient to justify a claim to some pure experience. Thus, the proposition “There are some pure experiences” may be taken as an axiom of logic, phenomenology, epistemology and ontology. This proposition is self-evident, for to deny it is self-contradictory.

Note that this proposition is more specific than the more obvious “There are experiences”. Denial of the latter is a denial of the evidence before one’s eyes (and ears and nose and tongue and hands, etc. – and before one’s “mind’s eye”, too): it directly contravenes the law of identity. Philosophers who engage in such denial have no leg to stand on, anyway - since they are then hard put to at all explain what meaning the concepts they use in their denial might possibly have. We have to all admit some experience – some appearance in common (however open to debate) – to have anything to discuss (or even to be acknowledged to be discussing).

Let us return now to the distinction between pure and tainted experiences. This concerns the involvement of thought processes of any kind – i.e. of ratiocinations, acts of reason. To claim that there are pure experiences is not to deny that some (or many or most) experiences are indeed tainted by conceptual activity (abstraction, classification, reasoning, etc.)

We can readily admit that all of us very often have a hard time distinguishing pure experience from experience mixed with rational acts. The mechanisms of human reason are overbearing and come into play without asking for our permission, as is evident to anyone who tries to meditate on pure experience. It takes a lot of training to clearly distinguish the two in practice.

But surely, any biologist would admit that lower animals, at least, have the capacity to experience without the interference of thought, since they have no faculty of thought. The same has to be true to some extent for humans – not only in reflex actions, but also in the very fact that reasoning of any sort is only feasible in relation to pre-existing non-rational material. To process is to process something.

I have already argued that what scientists call ‘experiment’ cannot be regarded as the foundation of science, but must be understood as a mix of intellectual (and in some cases, even physical acts) and passive observation (if only observation of the results of experiment displayed by the detection and measuring instruments used). Thus, observation is cognitively more fundamental than experiment.

Here, my purpose is to emphasize that perceptual ‘negation’ is also necessarily a mix of pure experience and acts of the intellect. It is never pure, unlike the perception of positive particulars (which sometimes is pure, necessarily) – because it logically cannot be, since to deny anything one must first have something in mind to deny (or affirm).

Thus, negation can be regarded as one of the most primary acts of reason – it comes before abstraction, since the latter depends to some extent on making distinctions, which means on negation.

 

4.     Consistency is Natural

 

It is important to here reiterate the principle that consistency is natural; whereas inconsistency is exceptional.

Some modern logicians have come up with the notion of “proving consistency” – but this notion is misconceived. Consistency is the natural state of affairs in knowledge; it requires no (deductive) proof and we are incapable of providing such proof, since it would be ‘placing the cart before the horse’. The only possible ‘proof’ of consistency is that no inconsistency has been encountered. Consistency is an inductive given, which is very rarely overturned. All our knowledge may be and must be assumed consistent, unless and until there is reason to believe otherwise.

In short: harmony generally reigns unnoticed, while conflicts erupt occasionally to our surprise. One might well wonder now if this principle is itself consistent with the principle herein defended that negatives are never per se objects of cognition, but only exist by denial of the corresponding positives. Our principle that consistency is taken for granted seems to imply that we on occasion have logical insights of inconsistency, something negative!

To resolve this issue, we must again emphasize the distinction between pure experience and the interpretations of experience that we, wordlessly (by mere intention) or explicitly, habitually infuse into our experiences. Generally, almost as soon as we experience something, we immediately start interpreting it, dynamically relating it to the rest of our knowledge thus far. Every experience almost unavoidably generates in us strings of associations, explanations, etc.

The contradictions we sometimes come across in our knowledge do not concern our pure experiences (which are necessarily harmonious, since they in fact exist side by side – we might add, quite ‘happily’). Our contradictions are necessarily contradictions between an interpretation and a pure experience, or between two interpretations. Contradictions do not, strictly speaking, reveal difficulties in the raw data of knowledge, but merely in the hypotheses that we conceived concerning such data.

Contradictions are thus to be blamed on reason, not on experience. This does not mean that reason is necessarily faulty, but only that it is fallible. Contradictions ought not be viewed as tragic proofs of our ignorance and stupidity – but as helpful indicators that we have misinterpreted something somewhere, and that this needs reinterpretation. These indicators are precisely one of the main tools used by the faculty of reason to control the quality of beliefs. The resolution of a contradiction is just new interpretation.

How we know that two theories, or a theory and some raw data, are ‘in contradiction’ with each other is a moot question. We dismiss this query rather facilely by referring to “logical insight”. Such insight is partly ‘experiential’, since it is based on scrutiny of the evidence and doctrines at hand. But it is clearly not entirely empirical and involves abstract factors. ‘Contradiction’ is, after all, an abstraction. I believe the answer to this question is largely given in the psychological analysis of negation.

There is an introspective sense that conflicting intentions are involved. Thus, the ‘logical insight’ that there is inconsistency is not essentially insight into a negative (a non-consistency), but into a positive (the intuitive experience of conflict of intentions). Although the word inconsistency involves a negative prefix, it brings to mind something empirically positive – a felt tension between two theses or a thesis and some data.

For this reason, to say that ‘consistency is assumable, until if ever inconsistency be found’ is consistent with our claim that ‘negations are not purely empirical’. (Notice incidentally that we did not here “prove” consistency, but merely recovered it by clarifying the theses involved.)

The above analysis also further clarifies how the law of non-contradiction is expressed in practice. It does not sort out experiences as such, but concerns more abstract items of knowledge. To understand it fully, we must be aware of the underlying intentions. A similar analysis may be proposed to explain the law of the excluded middle.

In the latter case, we would insist that (by the law of identity) ‘things are something, what they are, whatever that happen to be’. Things cannot be said to be neither this nor the negation of this, because such characterizations are negative (and, respectively, doubly negative) – and therefore cannot constitute or be claimed as positive experience. Such situations refer to uncertainties in the knower, which he is called upon to eventually fill-in. They cannot be proclaimed final knowledge (as some modern sophists have tried to do), but must be considered temporary postures in the pursuit of knowledge.

 

Drawn from Ruminations (2005), Chapter 9 (sections 5-8).

 

 

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