I'm Looking for Books On the Logical Form and Process of Thought
I'm looking for books on the logical form and process of thought and its relationship to the logical form of the mind considered in itself, but cannot seem to find any. I'm not looking for books on the relationship between thought and neural or physical processes. Is there even such a thing?
Comments (56)
I may not be understanding what your saying, but there are books on logic, the fallacies, *how* to think, as opposed to *what* to think. Is that what you are getting at? I read Irving M. Copi's Introduction to Logic back in Community College forty years ago. I'm sure there is stuff like that around.
I see. I can't help. Best to you.
That's not only me with my own mind, that's me with this computer I'm using and the car I drive. I do hope there are people out there who are on top of it. And if so, I bet they have written the book you are looking for. But it's way out of my wheelhouse. I might be interested in giving it a look if you find something written for a lay person.
Phenomenology may be a topic of interest to you.
Start at the beginning: Critique of Pure Reason. Make no mistake......whatever is said today, about what you’re asking, is grounded in one way or another, pro or con, by that complete metaphysical treatise on the human cognitive system.
As an added bonus, you get a real test of your comprehension abilities.
Have fun!!!
I have read some of Husserl and Heidegger’s writings, but haven’t found much that is useful in them, especially Heidegger. His philosophy is pretty much useless to me, as I’m not looking to base my philosophy in empirical facts, but in a priori truths.
Quoting Mww
I’ve read most of the Critique of Pure Reason, and several commentaries on it, as well as several commentaries on Hegel’s writings, but very little of his actual writing. I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert on either of their philosophies, and that is fine, because I do not wish to be. My goal is to create my own system of philosophy, so I’ve taken bits and pieces from both of their philosophies to construct my own philosophical system using an original analytic method which allows me to infer, from particular to universal, with absolute certainty.
Specifically, I’m looking for my information on the immateriality of subjectivity because I find both Kants philosophy to be primitive in this sense.
Oh. Ok.
Good luck with that.
Good luck with that. :smile:
Quoting TheGreatArcanum
I would be interested in an example?
Try Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation.. His premise is basically the title of the four-volume work.
Thank you. But it’s actually already finished (with the exception of the final touches). I’ve been working on it for almost five years now and plan to release the first edition within a year. I have a very good feeling about it and think that it is going to be well received by many.
Quoting Pop
If I give an example, I will have to divulge the secret to my method (to a bunch of philosophers) prior to publishing it (which I’m not willing to do). I can assure you, however, that it is so simple, and so apparent, that it has been in front out very eyes (so to speak) for thousands of years, and for this very reason, no one has discovered it. How is that for irony?
I’ve read this book too, and I really, really love it, to be quite honest. Schopenhauer, in my opinion, has the best prose of all the philosopher’s, with the exception of Nietzsche (of course). I do agree with him that the world is ultimately a representation (a collection of ideas), but disagree with him that those ideas are ultimately “my ideas.” I also disagree with him on the essence of willing, which, by its very nature, is teleological and this not a “blind and incessant willing,” but “a purposeful, future-oriented willing.”
My biggest question of his metaphysics right now is how is it that Will can have many "wills"? Why is it also that there is representation in the first place, if all is ultimately Will? I guess I never really got how the "objectification" of the representational reality really manifested or coincided as a "flip side" of Will. I can describe it, but I guess I don't understand how it fits together.
Yes. I have had a problem with this question as well. The problem is that if there is only one Will, or rather, one Absolute Subject willing from many sub-centers, how is that I am ignorant and forgetful and not omniscient? If I were identical to the one Subject which wills all wills, wouldn’t I necessarily be omniscient? Would forgetfulness even be possible? Where would my memories go? How could I lose them?
The Will is an essential aspect of subjectivity, but not the only essential aspect (this is the catch), so there can be no “Will-in-Itself” apart from the other essential aspect of the Mind-In-Itself. In Willing, the subject brings an abstract concept from memory into the understanding which is simultaneously stored as in object of memory once again, albeit, in a different configuration (if it is a novel thought and not a mere representation of an old one).
I think that I have found a way to fit it all together. If you like Schopenhauer and his conception of an Absolute Will, I think that you will enjoy my philosophy immensely because I am a pure idealist in the sense that I that that the world is a representation, and no representation can exist apart from willing in the absolute sense.
Well, being creative here, perhaps if Will is not limited by space/time, perhaps what we think are separated entities of "wills" and objects (the flipside of Will?), is just maya or illusory. That is to say, the principle of sufficient reason, with its seeming causes of space/time, logical necessity, goal-seeking, and such is really frothy illusory foam that is really atemporal/non-spatial Will. However, even me just saying that, makes me think it begs the question as to why then is there this illusion? Why the frothy foam of reality as Representation- that is to say, as objects and individual, seemingly non-connected wills?
According to my understanding, willing is a duration-less process unless it is intended by the subject that the object of willing should remain present in awareness for an extended period of time. In other words, when I will to think a particular concept or image, that that concept is represented simultaneously with my will to represent it, but that if I will to think a proposition as opposed to a single concept, it takes time for that proposition to be thought inside the mind (unless it is an object of intuition, in which case, an entire proposition can be represented simultaneously in my understanding and is not present in my mind as a result of my subjective will, but as the result of a transcendent will).
Ultimately, I contend that there are thoughts which are heard in the mind that are spatial and thus temporal, and thoughts (in the form of intuitions) that are not heard, but known immediately and thus transcendent of space and time (in the relative sense).
Much more can be said of these relations.
I guess "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" by John Locke could fit what are you looking for.
[quote=Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism]Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.
….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. [/quote]
Bolds added.
What do you want? Frege?
Nice! I have not added this truth to my collection yet. Thank you. Is this part from De Anima, as well, or is only the bold writing from De Anima?
I'm not sure what this means, can you please explain?
Quoting Zophie
I agree.
Quoting Zophie
I'm not sure. I'm not that familiar with Frege. I'm not sure why people think it's necessary to understand the nuances of language and propositions to understand the essence of the mind?
Frege thought there were real things called "The True" and "The False" in which his concept of logic (based on arithmetic) constitutes what is or is supposed to be how humans do or should reason. Supposedly he is the precursor of modern logic as it's commonly understood.
I'm also not sure "why people think it's necessary to understand the nuances of language and propositions to understand the essence of the mind", but I think it may have something to do with the way that nothing can be expressed in a non-language.
This is inconsequential. Just because people don't think using any known formal logical method doesn't mean that they cannot think using a formal logical method or that the mind considered in itself is transcendent of logic.
Quoting Zophie
I believe that the foundations of logic lie in the concepts of contingency and necessity, concepts that originate in the logical structure of the mind itself.
Quoting Zophie
thought doesn't necessitate words, only symbols which can be purely imaginary. Indeed, if we reduce language to symbols, then thought necessitates language, but if we reduce thought to words, then thought doesn't necessitate language.
assumption.
Imagine nothing. Do not give the nothing a name. That seems to be the base unit of your mental analysis. And whatever it is, it's incommunicable. Yet it has a function. How is this coherent?
one cannot "imagine nothing" without imagining empty space. the base state of our minds is prior to and transcendent of intentionality. your experiment necessitates intentionality so it cannot be a description of the base state of the mind.
when the mind is in a passive state of potentiality (i.e. when the mind is silent), which is the base state of the mind, the object of knowledge (or awareness as it is often called) is not nothing (it is not an object-less awareness), but the totality of the subject's potentiality, or rather, the conceptual representation of the subject as a whole. It is definitely not incommunicable.
Basically what you're doing is pointing to your head and talking about the rich inner mental world that you can never describe. Why bother?
how am I describing it if it cannot be described? if it cannot be described, how is it possible me to conceive of the fact that "memory is necessary for knowledge"? if the processes inside my head cannot be described, how is it possible for me to say, without a reasonable doubt that "I, the knower, am necessarily distinct from the transient objects of knowledge which come and go inside my mind"? It wouldn't be possible, and for this reason, we must contend that, our "rich inner world" (at least in part) can be denoted using words, at least so long as the processes or entities inside of it have an aspect which remains unchanged over time (this is the precondition for denotation). That is to say that the structure of the mind is logical, and can be known, logically. This is not an absurd idea, for the mind, or rather, the subject, by its very nature, possesses the inherent ability to know itself.
Where are you getting the idea that the mind cannot be grasped using concepts from?
from my shelves:
• Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic by Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. James Hoops
• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
• The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Ernst Cassirer
also, perhaps:
• The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch
• The Mathematical Universe, Max Tegmark
Quoting schopenhauer1
How is it that the ocean can have many waves? How is it that the sky can have many weather-events? How is it that a cloud can have many shapes? How is it that a face can have many expressions? How is that the territory can have – be described by – many maps? ...
Why is it also that there is wave-perspective in the first place, if every wave is ultimately ocean?
A: Propositions are a convenient unit of analysis because they can be true or false.
And what is to be done with the intrinsic circularity of such a system?
circular reasoning is fallacious if and only if the subject and the predicate of the proposition in question are not co-dependent aspects of the same entity.
Have you checked-out Kant's Metaphysics? For instance: How are the synthetic a priori propositions possible?
Systems. Antecedent to propositions constructed by it.
Yes, and I think that I have successfully answered this question.
not sure what you're getting at here.
Mentioned.
Dismissed as......primitive.
Quoting TheGreatArcanum
Guys!
I'm sorry I must have missed that one?
a synthetic proposition is a proposition which is not true by definition.
an a priori proposition is a proposition which does not have its origin in perception.
a synthetic a priori proposition is a proposition which is not true by definition and does not have its origin in perception.
answer: a priori propositions are possible because the mind in itself is immaterial and possess the inherent ability to know itself, meaning, of course, that the mind, in using propositions to conceive of its own structure or essence, is formulating a priori propositions. they cannot originate in perception because that which is immaterial is necessarily transcendent of perception, which necessitates space.
further, synthetic propositions are possible because the subject possess the inherent ability to synthesize concepts into conceptual wholes which did not formerly exist (this is the essence of freedom).
so, in short, synthetic a priori propositions are possible because the subject in itself is immaterial, and also, free (in the sense that a subject, by its very nature, has free will).
This is the what a system of thought does, considered in itself. There are no propositions, hence no circular reasoning involved therein, but are deriveable from it by means of it.
When I asked about the intrinsic circularity contained in the system, you answered with the circularity possible from the illogical employment of the system.
Can’t mix the two, in building a new philosophy.
Exception taken as noted: Is 'perception' tantamount to self-awareness? And of so, what is self-awareness, a metaphysical, or as you so well articulated, an immaterial entity?
Quoting TheGreatArcanum
No exceptions taken there. However, what about the proposition : All events must have a cause. Assuming that is a classic synthetic a priori proposition, can you put that into context?
And, what are you thinking is transcendent of perception?
Quoting TheGreatArcanum
If I could paraphrase, is that another way of saying that each individual has volitional existence and/or their own sense of same (subjective truth)?
I think that it's best to break this all down into unambiguous terms.
Quoting Mww
meaning that the essence of the subject involves the formulation of thoughts;
further, it must be noted that thoughts are abstract representations (concepts) of actually existing beings (whether spatial or non-spatial), or even representations of relations between actually existing beings (concepts of concepts). These representations are called propositions.
Quoting Mww
It is a presumption to say that there are no propositions, especially whilst formulating propositions; that is, whilst formulating a collection of words (or symbols) that represent objects or concepts which has meaning to one or many subjects (i.e. a proposition).
Quoting Mww
we've established that one cannot use propositions to make the claim that propositions do not exist, so this next point about "no circular reasoning is involved therein" is inconsequential. of course, propositions are derived from thinking, as you claim, but the thinker is not derived from propositions.
Quoting Mww
the subject possesses the inherent ability to reference its own memory and thereby reference itself. the fact that I must reference myself to speak about self-reference is not illogical at all, because, as I said, self-reference is only fallacious if the entity in question is not, by its very essence, a self-referential entity, which I am, so there is no fallacy. These two must be mixed if philosophy is to progress, that is to say that we must create a system of logic which accounts for the fact that to be a subject is to be a self-referential entity.
perception involves spatial relations, self-awareness does not involves spatial relations. self-awareness involves the subjects inherent understanding (in each present moment so long as it exists) that it possesses the potential to create change (within itself). there are several essential aspects to subjectivity, which are necessary for self-awareness. these will be elucidated in my upcoming book.
Quoting 3017amen
I do not like defining things in terms of causes because the term is ambiguous, and one must also distinguish between physical causes and mental causes, because they are not the same, for one involves spatial relations and the other does not. The mere existence of physical causation is an assumption, yet hitherto, philosophers have thought it reasonable to ground their philosophies in the supposed truth that "all events must have a (physical) cause." According to my understanding, this proposition must be changed to "all events must have a mental cause," and this is because subjectivity in itself is transcendent of space. This means that all physical causes are mental causes in disguise.
Quoting 3017amen
the essence of subjectivity in itself is transcendent of perception.
Quoting 3017amen
to be a subject is to be free, each subject, however, has a varying degree of freedom, and this is ultimately because the body has the potential to limit their freedom to think, act, and speak, and also, if there is no body, then they are limited by the number and nature of the concepts which are stored in their memory set.
Quoting TheGreatArcanum
Logical consistency requires that if the first is the case, then it follows that the second should read....the essence of the mind involves the formulation of thoughts. The subject is that to which the thoughts belong, the subject is not itself the process. The essence of the subject, though, is merely the manifold of his representations.
But hey........it’s your philosophy, do with it as you wish. Who knows; we might be witnessing another paradigm shift.
the process is contained within the essence of the subject and does not exist independently of it. for this reason, my thoughts are contained within my mind and not yours, or rather, within my mind and not within some external object outside of myself in the world. The subject is not identical to the process of thought just the same as the whole is not identical to one of its necessary parts.
Quoting Mww
however, the essence of the subject is not entirely reducible to the manifold of his representations, this is because an aspect of the essence of the subject involves the potential to formulate representations and this is not a representation (a mere concept). this is because all representations are passive entities which do not possess the inherent ability to actualize potential and are thereby distinguished from subjects, which possess the inherent potential to actualize potentiality (through willing) for a purpose that is known by the subject at the time of willing.
Quoting Mww
i contend that even people who disagree with my philosophy are going to love my philosophy simply because of its poeticness and its originality.
The subject never even arises until or unless the system thinks about itself, insofar as the subject merely represents the first person nature of the system, by means of propositions the system constructs in accordance with its own rules.
Hence, the aforementioned intrinsic circularity.
this is not entirely true; there is a passive state of subjectivity (when thought is not active) and an active state of subjectivity (when thought is active), but the subject, while the active state is not instantiated, is not non-existent, but existent in a state of potentiality, in which every aspect of its essence (with the exception of a few; I'm sure you can guess which ones are active and which are not) are still existent. in this state, prior to reflection, that is, prior to thinking, the subject must have knowledge, otherwise it would be impossible for the subject to instantiate the active state of subjectivity through thought. that is to say that the subject has a quasi-unconscious non-representational a priori knowledge of its potential to create change within itself through thought. the subject doesn't need to represent itself using propositions to know that it exists, in other words, one doesn't need to say inside their "move your arm to grab that cup," they can do it without using language, and this is experimentally verifiable. In other words, one can move their arm and grab a cub while knowing the reason for their performing the action without using any words at all, so how can we say that knowledge is reducible to propositions if this is empirically the case?
Dunno, which is why I would never say that. I, in fact, reject the notion entirely, under either a priori or a posteriori conditions.
As for the rest, I’ll have to think about it. Some seems right, some not so much. But I’m cognitively prejudiced, so there is that......
Right, but this is all world of representation. How is it that representation gets in the picture at all if all is Will? If you say "Maya" then, how did that get in the equation if all is Will?
I would name this sensibility.
Quoting TheGreatArcanum
I would name this understanding.
Quoting TheGreatArcanum
I would name this consciousness.
Quoting TheGreatArcanum
Reification, or misplaced concreteness generally, and James’ (1890) psychologist’s fallacy in particular. Or so it seems. And if not that, then the logical mistake of using existence as a predicate. If a subject knows anything at all, whether from its propositions or otherwise, then its existence is given which makes knowing it exists, quite superfluous.
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Quoting TheGreatArcanum
So the mind has a process, which involves a series of steps, so to speak. At some point in that process, according to your theory, some steps are inactive because the subject is not actually thinking, per se. What happens to the input to a system, when it meets an inactive step? What comes out the other side, if its activity is blocked by an inactive step in the process? It sounds to me like you’re proposing the aspects of the subject are still there, but just not doing anything.
OK, so....there is an aspect in which the subject’s active state is not instantiated, meaning the subject is not engaged in thought, and I name it “sensibility”. It is that in which the matter of perceptions (theoretically, mind you) is found, and gives to the active, thinking subject its material, which I name phenomena. But as you can see, it is very far from inactive, for otherwise, we might perceive an object but never be given the means to henceforth think it as the representation of, e.g., “bulldozer”.
This is all quite reasonable, given that all sensations, traveling from the receptivity of organs responsible for each type along their specialized, dedicated nerves to the CNS, the empirical facts and therefore the absolute necessity of which we are never the least bit conscious.
Now....state of potentiality. Sounds at first rather far-fetched. Seemingly wants to be reduced to possibility, which just sounds better. But that reduction misses a very fine point that potentiality grants, and that is....there is no smell of frying bacon unless bacon is in fact frying. Experience tells us that the stuff frying is bacon, but potentiality tells us how bacon would smell if it fries. Your potentiality is not far-fetched at all; I just name it differently, as intuition.
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Quoting TheGreatArcanum
Weeellllll....it isn’t all that original, and I don’t want my philosophy poetic. But your thinking is admirable nonetheless. You know.....cuz it adjoins my own enough to say so. Which only means we both might be so FOS our eyes are brown. (Grin)
TGA!
Well, let's see, in the context of physics (and metaphysics), most all theories, experiments and the like start with synthetic propositions because they can be tested and proven/disproven. So quite simply, that distinction involves physical causes or causation. There is no escaping that.
Now with respect to mental causation and philosophy/psychology, self-awareness seems like the concept in which to parse. For example, we have the metaphysical Will (Schopenhauer), that is a part of conscious existence. In contrast to pure instinct, we have self-aware, volitional Beings, moving through time and space (our existence), who are causing things to happen, and change. And we do that through consciousness (which its nature cannot be explained logically). So in a humanistic way, we have a sense of basic causation both immaterial and material.
And so to speak to your OP 'process of thought', if that simple example (causation) is ambiguous, how do we go about describing mental events? Are you referring to philosophical/metaphysical Idealism?
Quoting TheGreatArcanum
Can you please provide an example?