Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 15:12:25 -0500 From: Kerim Friedman Subject: Re: Logic, etc Sender: owner-linganth@cc.rochester.edu To: linganthro list MIME-version: 1.0 Precedence: bulk >This white English-speaking male would also like to point out the existence of other logics, e.g. schools of logic in ancient India, including "Buddhist" logic, with their own kinds of "epistemology" etc. I'd have to disagree with Aaron, then; otherwise how did ancient Indian philosophers "discover" a logic that was not consistent with the western type? I think they're both constructed/invented, rather than discovered. Or am I missing something?

>Hal Schiffman

Isn't this a conflation of different levels of analysis? While it is true that knowledge is institutionalized differently in different societies, I can't believe that there is anywhere where people would derive different conclusions from a mathematical proposition on the basis of "having a different logic"?

For example, the game of Chess is played both in Europe and in China, but with different rules. In Chinese Chess some peices have different rules of movement after they cross a "river" in the middle of the board, and the king is confined to a small "castle" from which he can never leave. Even more different might be the social rules of "play." In China the whole crowd might participate in the game in a way that is considered "rude" in the European tradition of one-on-one play (Although this is really pushing it, as the internet chess games have a command to turn "kibbetzing" on or off!!!). Whatever these difference might be, I would still argue that people engaged in a game of chess still engage in the same basic kinds of reasoning to determine whether a move is "legal," "advantageous," or "a bad move." In my understanding the term "logic" applies only to this level of analysis.

While I can understand that there are various formal schools of thought which approach the topic of "logic" in different ways, I can't believe that this means that they are dealing with different entities altogether. In other words, I see this as a situation analogous to the four blind men and the elephant, rather than the separate "invented" entities which Hal suggests.

The only caveat which seems acceptable to me, is that the analytical separation between these two levels of analysis is not an empirical one. Empirically I'm sure there is some interplay between one and the other. In fact, I would even suggest that it is precisely this sort of interplay which has constituted the subject of much linguistic anthropology (and as I understand Aaron as arguing in his recently posted article - located on his web page). However, in order to adequately conceptualize the relationship between these two levels of analysis we do ourselves a great disservice if we abandon the distinction altogether.

kerim

________________________________________________________ P. KERIM FRIEDMAN
Anthropology, Temple University


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