Re: [OPE-L] abstraction and surprise

[Andrew Brown <A.Brown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We have discussed previously Chiatin's point that premises cannot contain as much info as reality. This seems to me to make a research program entirely based on linear logic doomed to failure. We have to look elsewhere and dialectics, a logic of content, not just form, fits the bill. The idea is that the starting point (the dialecical equivalent of the 'premises') does *imply* its own further development, it has implicit conditions of existence. This is not some sort miracle but it occurs simply because the starting point is an abstraction from the system as a whole, and cannot exist as such an abstraction. E.g. the commodity as the general form of wealth implies money, which (arguably) implies capital, which implies exploitation, etc.
 
Of course each development is a surprise. Any other way we wouldn't be learning anything, beyond what we already know!
 
Andy 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: OPE-L on behalf of Paul Cockshott 
	Sent: Mon 28/11/2005 09:14 
	To: OPE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
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	Subject: Re: [OPE-L] abstraction and surprise
	
	

		    And I take his point in appealing to a logic of exposition is exactly to show that if we keep stumbling over surprises, as VFT finds in Capital, ch. 1, then we have a problem.   Or is that just with a logic that is linear?  That is, supposing a presentation that was dialectical, could we find the insufficiency of each stage to comprehend its presuppositions a kind of surprise that drove forward the immanent logic of the argument so that it constituted a move from surprise to surprise, dialectically sublated, so to speak?   

		 

		Howard what do you mean by a linear logic?

		Do you mean the same thing as a monotonic logic?

		 

		I am skeptical that the Hegelian arguments are logical developments from a given

		starting point. Wherever you have surprise, you have new information.

		This must have been introduced from outside as a hidden additional

		premise.