From: Freeman Craig Presson (dhr@iname.com)
Date: Tue Aug 10 1999 - 07:48:27 MDT
On 8 Aug 99, at 13:34, Technotranscendence wrote:
> Question: How do you think dialectics relates to transhumanism and
> Extropianism?
>
> Daniel Ust
About like oxygen relates to metabolism, perhaps? I would want to focus that
question a bit before saying anything substantive about it (an example of
dialectics :-).
How will dialectics change (improve) in the >H future? Dialectics refers
generally to the art/science of reasoned argument, and culturally at any
given time it is about questions at the boundary of logic, questions we find
in some way difficult to reduce to logic. That's why dialectical questions
from many years ago sound quaint. When the participants in a discussion agree
on "enough" premises, they can presumably draw some conclusions by logic on
which they agree.
Most of our discussions today don't require better logic[1], they require
better communication about premises. Perhaps in the future, >H intelligences
will tackle problems that require both. I have trouble envisioning the shape
of this, it's too many levels up from where I am.
Some questions that go around endlessly, like abortion and gun control, are
examples of irreconcilable premises and inability to agree on the facts
("lies, damned lies, and statistics"). Actually, they are that at their best;
sometimes there's just a refusal to use logic on one side vs. a refusal to
abandon it on the other.
Other questions recur generationally and individually. Everyone has to
confront Socrates and develop their own answers to some of his vexed
questions, like "what is the good?", no matter how quaint it sounds.
I seem to have written a capsule summary of an answer to "why is philosophy
hard?" Tune in next week for "Why is philosophy easy?" followed by "Why is
philosophy bullshit?" <grin>
Postscriptum: I expect sapients will always enjoy conundra. Questions that
show us the limitations of thought are valuable and entertaining. Too high a
Spock factor will make for a very dry intellectual future.
[1] I completely rethought this after re-reading the whole post. Depending on
subject matter, there are valid questions of proper application of logic, and
there actually are questions that send us off in search of specialized logics
such as multivalued, temporal, or fuzzy logic. The statement as given isn't
demonstrably false :-) so I left it in and put the digression in a footnote.
-- fcp@traveller.com (Freeman Craig Presson)
-- ExI member, geek-at-large, etc.
-- http://www.bhm.tis.net/~fcp/
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