If logic is a science, what is it a science of? Tom suggests the following answer: logic is to inquiry or to experience more generally what geometry is to land-measurement or space more generally. Indeed, if geometry has become the science of all possible space (Euclidean, Riemannian, etc.), so logic could become the science of all possible experience, including the experience of scientists who work with fancy instruments which extend their sensory capacities, the experience of blind people who cannot rely on sight, the experience of frogs, etc.
Standard logic doesn't come anywhere near this goal. After all, standard truth-functional or quantificational logic is restricted to language and judgement but doesn't for the most part extend to inquiry and experience. In standard logic, variables are typically propositions or names for objects. And standard logic presupposes a particular narrow conception of experience. The mind receives impressions from the world, it then forms ideas, beliefs, or propositions, then makes judgements, forms intentions, or issues actions and thus acts back on the world. Logic deals with the processes taking place in this mind.
Tom Burke draws on Pragmatism and especially on the philosophy of John Dewey when he proposes an alternative conception of mind and world and an expanded 'access-based' logic. Pragmatists do not assume that the mind processes experience. On their view the mind is in experience. [Charles Sanders Peirce suggested that instead of "I think" we should say "I am in thought" as we say "I am in motion."] Experience is a structured and directed life-activity leading from conflict to resolution, from disturbance to equilibrium, from the irritation of doubt to a settled belief. Mind is implicated in this life-activity to a greater or lesser degree; it comes into play when representations of the life-processes enter into the movement from conflict to resolution, etc. For example, we may start envisioning alternative courses of action and choosing one to act on, find it thwarted, retract, reconsider, etc.
In order to 'have' a variable we need to have the instrumentation or tools to get at its object. Variables thus figure as indices of our modes of access to the world. As such they represent possible ways of being in the world. Obviously, then, the scientist in the laboratory, the blind person on her way home, the frog in the pond 'have' different variables, enabling them to experience different qualities, organizing variables and qualities into different kinds.
Now, if all of this sounds somewhat programmatic - this is because Tom didn't have time (nor did most of us listeners have the background) to appreciate the technical details of it. One of Tom's tables indicated how access-based logic extends elementary, modal, and dynamic variants of truth-functional and quantificational logic. For the time being, I have to refer you to Tom's book on Dewey's New Logic: A Reply to Russell which looks at the debate between Bertrand Russell and Dewey on the nature of logic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Currently, there are three manuscripts in various stages of completion which address specific pieces of the material he presented: "What is a Situation?" (an examination of the notion of "situations" in the context of Dewey's conception of experience and his philosophy of logic), "Verificational Logic" (a version of quantificational logic with the added requirement that for each variable there is some kind of reliable productive operational skill/techne and/or instrumentation by which values for the variable can be obtained or assigned), and "How to Make Our Idea of Reality Clear" (an examination of C. S. Peirce's early formulation of the pragmatic maxim and his application of it to the idea of "reality").
Alfred Nordmann
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