Priest, Graham. 'Dialectic and Dialetheic', Science and Society 1990, 53,
388-415.
Priest is an odd duck. He illustrates the problem of combining two
disparate enterprises: the pursuit of logic as a pure formal enterprise (in
his case paraconsistent logic, which admits of true contradictions, whose
attendant doctrine is dialetheism), and the substantive engagement with
philosophical issues and ultimately the real world. While logic was
practically developed to study the nature of inference, valid and invalid
argument (without larger philosophical claims), its formal form has never
neatly meshed with the messiness of the real world nor with the structuring
the categories of its fundamental understanding. Furthermore, mixing up
logic with metaphysics has, historically, more often served the cause of
mysticism than science.
In his 1995 (with additions in 2002) book BEYOND THE LIMITS OF THOUGHT,
Priest bravely reviews the history of western philosophy (with Nagarjuna
thrown in in 2002) and attempts to unify all paradoxes in his Inclosure
Schema. (I have uploaded his diagram to two discussion lists with the
filename logicreal2.rtf) Paradoxically, paradoxically, by the time he has
accomplished this task, he has left the philosophical content of all these
philosophies embodying these paradoxes behind. In other words, the bare
formal structure he seeks to generalize does not do justice to the nature
of the philosophical issues involved.
In a later paper on philosophy in the 21st century, Priest predicts that
Asian philosophy will be the next big thing. Perhaps this ties in to his
interest in Nagarjuna, Taoism, and the martial arts. About Marxism he
seems to throw up his hands and suggest that somehow it drowned in the Sea
of Ilyenkov. I'll review this article more extensively at a later date.
However, back in 1989, Priest aggressively attempts to prove that Hegel,
Marx, and Engels were adherents of dialetheism. What this amounts to may
prove instructive.
(1) That Hegel's dialectics is dialetheism should be a no-brainer, Priest
argues. Hegel states that the very nature of motion embodies
contradiction. (You will be familiar with the issue from Zeno's
paradox.) But others have denied that Hegel affirms contradiction in the
formal logical sense.
Marxist philosophers have made similar denials about the marxist view of
dialectical contradiction. Sometimes contradiction is characterized as the
co-existence of conflicting forces, which is hardly a logical
interpretation. Priest cites a few to that effect. After the Stalin era
(in which contradiction hazily covered a variety of meanings), a growing
number of Soviet philosophers dissociated the notion of dialectical
contradiction from any taint of logical contradiction (Sheptulin, Narskii),
and some maintain that contradictions hold in thought but not in reality
(Narskii).
(2) The arguments against this position: In Hegel's time, the only logic
extant was Aristotle's logic, which Hegel deemed inadequate from a
dialectical perspective. But Frege/Russell logic is far more
sophisticated, and is the gold standard now. Contradiction is even more
taboo. Note Priest's quotation of Popper on dialectic. Most Marxists, who
know little of formal logic, have been browbeaten into retreating from
dialetheism. But now we have paraconsistent logic to the rescue.
(3) Dialetheic logic: Priest outlines the principles of paraconsistent
logic, which may assign truth values of both true and false. He also
discusses its semantics. He also introduces an operator ^ to nomialize
sentences, e.g. ^A means "that A" (e.g. 'that Sam went to the store' is
true). Further discussion.
(4) Motion: an illustration. Priest claims that paraconsistent logic can
easily render Hegel's notion of the paradox of motion into logical
form. He also deals with an argument based on a distinction between
extensional and intensional contradiction. In extensional contradiction,
there is no intrinsic connection between the conjuncts. But for
intensional (putatively dialectical) contradictions, there is an internal
relation between the conjuncts not captured by a mere extensional
conjunction (A & not-A). Priest treats this latter qualification by way of
example (with reference to Grice's conversational implicature), but leaves
us hanging, and promises to pick up the argument again in section 8.
(5) The history of Hegel's dialectic: This section is quite interesting,
and appears to be remote from the realm of paraconsistent logic. Hegel
draw on his predecessors Kant and Fichte as well as the medieval
Neo-Platonists who held that the One embodies contradictions. Priest
quotes Hegel's analysis of Kant's antinomies of reason. Hegel objects to
Kant's banishing contradiction from the world and relegating it to the
Reason claiming that "reason falls into contradiction only by applying the
categories". The postulation of the not-ego by the ego as argued by Fichte
is also summarized. Art the end of this review, Priest claims to have
firmly established Hegel as a dialetheist.
(6) Contradiction in Hegel's dialectic: There is a lengthy treatment of
Hegel's view of Geist, with reference to Fichte, that segues into the
master/slave dialectic and Sartre's notion of freedom. Then Priest takes
up the argument that all these 'contradictions' do not refer to the same
thing in the same respect, which he considers a dodge. (In his later book
he calls this parameterization.)
(7) Contradiction in Marx's dialectics: In his youthful Feuerbachian phase,
Marx transmutes Hegel's geist into Humanity and takes up the theme of
alienated labor and self-development. Priest briefly characterizes the
structural logic at work here. Then he skips to the mature Marx, on
use-value and exchange-value, and the forces and relations of production.
Then he moves on to Engels, who states his views more plainly. We are back
to the contradiction of motion. While impatient with the tendency to abuse
Engels, Priest concedes that Engels saw contradiction where it doesn't
exist, e.g. in his infamous claim about the square root of minus one.
(8) Identity in difference: Hegel's notion is for Priest the essential form
of dialectical contradiction. Here Priest translates Hegel's argument
about the identity of opposites into logical notation. The only example
cited is the paradox of motion.
Priest thinks he has proved his case, as promised in section 4. Now if my
abstract of the overall argument seems disjointed, this is just how I see
the original. There is a schizoid tendency plainly evident to me that
escapes Priest's attention:
(a) Priest qua logician can talk about logic;
(b) Priest is capable of discussing the substance of philosophical doctrines;
(c) yet, when he attempts to combine the two, he is a complete
idiot. Mixing up the metaphysician in him and the logician yields only the
most philistine product: the logician superficially wins out by trivially
rendering some formal property in logical notation, totally evading the
substantive philosophical content in the zeal to prove that A and not-A are
simultaneously predicated. This is neither fish nor fowl, merely a foul
fish or a fishy foul. To paraphrase Lenny Bruce, this is so obtuse, it's
thrilling.
(9) Dialectics and epistemology: Priest admits that there is much more to
dialectics than these formal considerations, i.e the analysis of concrete
contradictory situations. He takes up the example of being-in-itself and
being-in-consciousness. He then contrasts the positions of dualists
(Locke), non-dialectical monists: idealists (Berkeley), traditional
materialists (cf. central state materialism). Presumably, the dialectical
monist resolves this conundrum. True to form (pun intended), Priest
illustrates the resolution with logical notation. Miraculously, he fails
to see the triviality of such a treatment, as he fails to illuminate any of
the ideas involved, nor does he add anything by using the symbols c and not-c.
(10) Conclusion: Priest's bete noir is the pussyfooting around in fear of
acknowledging a contradiction. Priest indeed concludes with the statement
that his paper at least calls a spade a spade. (There seems to be a subtle
Tarskian allusion here. It would have been more obvious--and funnier!--if
he wrote: a 'spade' is a spade iff 'a spade is a spade'.)
It is truly remarkable that such sophisticated means should be marshalled
to such an unsophisticated end. It is also most telling that throughout
the essay Priest favorably refers to Sean Sayers, with whom he even shared
a draft of his paper. He also references this debate, published in a book:
Norman, Richard and Sean Sayers. Hegel, Marx and Dialectic. Harvester
Press, 1980.
My long-term readers will recognize this title and recall that I wrote an
exhaustive analysis of this debate in the mid-'90s. Very briefly: Sayers
took the most philistine position, defending the most intellectually sloppy
version of dialectical materialism (clogged up with fudge on the nature of
logic, which even the Soviets abandoned after the Stalin era), adding
further offense by citing Mao. Norman defends Engels' general effort to
formulate a nonreductive materialism while criticizing his logical
confusions and Sayers' shoddy reasonings. But there was never a Maoist
anywhere who was not a moron, and Norman's analysis fell on deaf ears (or
blind eyes). That Priest could embrace Sayers as he does is truly a
prodigious feat for a logician. Here we have an example of not only the
troubled relation between logic and reality, but the vexed relation between
their intermediary--philosophy--and logic. Logic as a self-contained
formal enterprise is one thing; engagement with philosophical issues
another, and the reality beyond yet something else. Aside from the
historical fact that philosophy and logic were done by the same people (in
China and India as well as in what is called the West), in my opinion they
make very poor bedfellows.
_______________________________________________
Marxism-Thaxis mailing list
Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
