Catch philosopher Mirja Hartimo’s speech from the workshop Europe and the Crisis of Reason: “Logic and the Crisis of Reason" on Spotify
And read the transcription here:
I will first show you the outline of the talk. I will discuss two different approaches to logic. I will title them [Phrygian and Husserlian? 00:00:13] approaches to logic. I will then compare these two approaches in terms of how they relate to reason. And the basic idea is that whereas in Phrygian approach, reason has something to do with logic or logicality, whereas in what I call Serlian approach, reason and logicality are not to be identified. Having done that, I will discuss the crisis of reason, and what it means in these two approaches, and compare the two approaches, and then conclude the talk. And apologies for the analytic manner, but I suppose you can deal with that. So we start with Frege. Gottlob Frege was the founder of the modern predicate logic. There are some indications that [Peirce? 00:01:21] founded it at the same time, but Frege is the father of the modern logic. He was motivated in his development of logic by anti-psychologism, a very general trend in the 19th century. And here there is a quote from his Grundlagen der Arithmetik, so kind of philosophical way of explaining what he's doing in his logical project. So there he writes that always to separate sharply the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective. That's what you have to continuously be doing according to Frege. That's one of the three claims he puts forward in the introduction of the Grundlagen. So there you can already see that what is psychological is related to the subjective, and what is logical is related to whatever is objective. So whatever is objective tends to be what is logical. He talks about objectivity later. For example, he says that what is subject to laws, what can be conceived and judged, what is expressible in words is what is objective. And later on, he explains that his explanation of number, so that's basically what he's doing in [Grundlag Arithmetik and Grundgesetze Der Arithmetik? 00:03:13], he defines the notion of natural number in logic. That's his logicist project. After the notion of number, the arithmetic, whole of arithmetic is reducible to logic in his project. So when this is done... It's not about what is subjectively possible, but of what is objectively definite. So basically putting things in terms of logic makes them objectively definite. For in fact, that one proposition follows from certain others is something objective. I suppose this is all very obvious for you. He also holds that logical laws are general laws, which neither need nor admit of proof. So, this is a kind of a view he inherits from [Lotse? 00:04:21], and there are others too who have expressed this view. So, the idea is that there are logical laws that we just have to take for granted because we cannot justify them without coming up with a circular justification. So we have to start from somewhere, and that's something that, so to say, stands on its own feet. So because of that logic, just is, it's not justified, it's there, it stands on its own feet, or as [Wittgenstein in Tractatus? 00:05:12] says, it takes care of itself. So this is kind of a logic first view, where logic is the fundamental structure and everything else is based on logic. So that's why Frege is taken to be the first analytic philosopher. That is, he's taken to be the first analytic philosopher. Okay, so then we have, so for Frege, one more thing, logic is maximally general and also topic neutral. So these are views that he shares, for example, with Kant and Kant's general logic. Logic is same everywhere. It does not change and it's always the same, disregarding the topic that we are talking about. Okay, so then there's what I call Husserlian approach to logic. I think it's Husserlian, but I am not going to explain how. There's no time for it here. And the important difference to Frege here is, well, there are many important differences, but first of all, his view of logic is kind of a mathematical view of logic. It's about formal structures, or [Husserl? 00:06:53] would be talking about manifolds, [manifaltigkeiten? 00:06:56]. It's not primarily about inference or what is a valid inference, but he paints a picture of theories of manifolds, which then are the source for logical principles. So it is also motivated by anti-psychologism, and it's also in many respects related to Herman Lodz's view. But here Husso's anti-psychologism takes a very different expression in comparison to Frege, whereas Frege would take care of antipsychologism by formalizing everything in logic. What Husserl would do is to claim that the art of thinking requires a theoretical foundation, and this theoretical foundation is a kind of mathematical foundation, which then is the ground for logical principles. And that way the normative force of the logical principles has their source in the way the world is or what kinds of structures these are. So Husserl has this idea of how the laws, theoretical laws, are turned into normative principles and that way the theoretical foundation is first. Well, this is not enough for Husserl. Here he takes a kind of a [Kantian? 00:08:53] critical term. He thinks that these formal structures then need a philosophical foundation. So, the relationship to Kant is complicated, but anyway, the idea is that we have basically a mathematical approach to structures in the world that needs to be founded philosophically, and that's what he is going to do in the [Logische Untersuchungen? 00:09:22] that follow the prolegomena where he explains all this. So what is interesting and important here is that the seed of reason, so to say, is in the philosophical clarification and self-reflection that he carries out in the subsequent investigations. So the seed of reason is in what we do, how we think about logic, whereas in Frege, it is in the logic that is there, out there first. There are different ways of reading Frege, but I think all of them shares this idea. So, brief comparison. For Frege, actually, the way reason relates to logic is a bit more complicated than just identification, but it's close. Reason is explained by way of logic. For Frege, there is only one logic. I mean, this view cannot tolerate the idea that there would be some alternative logics. The logic is logic first, it takes care of itself. Logic is topic neutral, this is also in Kant. Logic needs no further justification and logic is what decides what is objective and in a way also what is reasonable together with our strive for truth. Husserlian thinks that there is, in principle, possibility for many different logics, so there's different, this [?? 00:11:30] that Husserl is committed to in these logical works. The idea is that there are different kinds of manifolds and there's nothing that necessarily declares them to be of certain, somehow have same principles. Choice and justification of logic is obviously then a question and this... These views you can find only clear in Husserl's later work. The choice of logic is not completely topic neutral because, well, what Husserl actually says, it depends on the kind of evidence that you are looking for. So Husserlian logic or the choice of logic depends on the subject matter and the goals and values of the enterprise in question. So logic is not topic neutral in the way it is for Frege. Objectivity is an incredibly complex matter and it in the end depends on things like intersubjective, historical and transcendental critique. It's not decided by a method, a formal method like logic. And thus, for him, reason is continuous self-reflection. So, basically, here one could go on for a long time what exactly it is, but I'm trying to make this comparison clear, so I will leave it at that. So crisis of reason then, with these two different kinds of views of logic and reason. For Frege, the crisis of reason is obviously a failure of logic. And that took place when Russell found Russell's paradox or [Russell-Germelo paradox? 00:13:44] in Frege's system in 1902. And that was a complete paralysis, and a complete paralysis for others too, until they adopted a new logic, first Russell and type theory and [inset theory? 00:14:05]. You would develop, Zermelo would develop [?? 00:14:14] to take care of the [contours? 00:14:18], well, the Russell's paradox. But the basic idea is that the crisis is overcome by adopting a better logic that is fixed and better. And since the 1930s, this better logic is what is now taught in the logic courses, even in baby logic usually, which is first order predicate calculus. And especially since the 50s, it was almost like an ideology that that is the one logic. So that's... Much developed from what Frege thought. I bring up Quine because Quine is a bit different in thinking that in principle empirical sciences could develop so that we should make revisions to our logic. But still Quine is in the same camp. He is within the holistic picture with logic over there. So he does not have the kind of distance that you would need to separate logic and reason in the way you would do in Husserl. So for Husserl, crisis of reason results from the blind adoption of a system of thinking. It's the failure of the reflective justification of the choice of logic. You just take up something. It's kind of intellectual laziness, blindness. And the method decides, makes the decisions, for example value decisions for you. And so these decisions are based on mere habituality instead of active taking stance of what is right. The crisis results from the lack of reflection. In a funny way, [?? 00:16:51] view of crisis is very similar to, well, is in a way similar to his criticism of psychologism, which he thought that if you are psychological about logic, then you end up assuming all kinds of systems of reason completely arbitrarily, which leads to relativism and in the end to skepticism and whatnot. So the crisis is a crisis of conscious deliberation about the values, both epistemic and non-epistemic, but in case of logic, we are interested in epistemic norms in particular. And now I would want to say that this does not mean that you have to abandon analytic approach to logic because these kinds of views are being developed, well, not perhaps quite in the Husserlian way, but for example Timothy Williamson thinks that since there are so many logics on the market, we cannot just possibly claim that the choice of logic is neutral. So we have to justify the choice of logic in some way. So that requires a kind of reasoning which is outside of logic. And I have been developing a view called critical views of logic with some logicians which would require this kind of a view of logic which has to be justified in a way critically. That's a term that refers to Kant and the term critical view of logic has been coined by Charles Parsons. So [?? 00:19:20] is looking at the clock so that I'm happy to get to the conclusion. So in a way, this Husserlian approach to logic has to take the conscious responsibility for the choice of logic, whereas the [Phrygian? 00:19:42] might defend themselves by saying that at least they have some obvious handle on truth. Well, Husserlian would claim that these obvious handles are arbitrary without justification, and they are not handles on truth in that sense. The Husserlian would claim that the irreducible plurality of perspectives on truth and values have to be taken into account in the choice of logic. And we are now talking about formal logic, so it's not a metaphor here. So for Phrygian approach, you are locked into kind of one view of logic, and if you have only one view of logic, you have to have enough reductionist, well, things have to be reduced, or Husserl has a term, universalized, in such a way that you can deal with them on the same dimension in a way. Whereas the Husserlian approach to logic, you can have or encompass a kind of pluralism of values. So, well, then I guess this is a bit, well, obvious that this certain view is rather demanding and relates to the questions such as whose reason counts then, but then that perhaps is not the question for logic anymore. Well, that's all and I look forward to hearing all kinds of questions.