Responding to "As for the invalidity of symbolic logic, clearly we live in different Universes..."
Here's a perceptual analogy to what happens on the conceptual level when an invalid logic is used. The following passage comes from Philip K. Dick's novel Lies, Inc.
"A high-velocity dart waggled its directing fins as it spun at him. It was, he realized as he watched it descend toward him, an LSD-tipped dart; the hallucinogenic ergotic alkaloid derivative constituted - had constituted ever since its introduction into the field of weapons of war - a unique instrument for reducing the enemy to a condition in which he was absolutely neutralized: instead of destroying him, the LSD, injected intravenously by the dart, destroyed his world.
Sharp, quick pain snuffed at his arm; the dart had plunged into him, had embedded itself successfully.
The LSD had entered his circulatory system. He had, now, only a few minutes ahead; that realization alone generally took the target out: to know, under conditions such as these, that very shortly the entire self-system, the structure of world-character which had developed stage by stage over the years from birth on -
His thoughts ceased. The LSD had reached the cortical tissue of his frontal lob and all abstract mentional processes had instantly shut down. He still saw the world, saw the THL soldier leisurely reloading the dart-releasining gun, the rolling clouds of A-warhead-contaminated ash, the half-ruined buildings, the ant-like scampering figures here and there. He could recognize them and understood what each was. But beyond that - nothing."
When symbolic logic is substituted for Aristotelian logic there is a universal collapsing of the qualitative significance of the world, an evacuation of the meaning of values and a tendency to nihilism. It is a world of appearances divorced from nature.
Aristotle's aim in his theory of motion was to explain both the actions of inanimate and animate objects. Newton's laws of motion are delimited to the inanimate and have nothing to say about goal-directed action, or what Aristotle calls final causation.
In evaluating Aristotle it is important to take into account the knowledge that he had available to start from.
Also, as you allude to, much that is attributed to Aristotle may not have been said by him.
If you actually read Aristotle's work on physics, and then read Galileo and Newton, you will find that they owe a considerable debt to Aristotle, as do all scientists since they implicitly or explicitly rely on the logic that Aristotle discovered.
The attempt to mathematize logic, in other words, to reduce logical operations to mathematical operations is invalid. Symbolic logic is therefore invalid and, as a result, we have a century of miseducated scientists suffering from what amounts to a mathematical lobotomy.
Brand Blanchard carefully and thoroughly explains what is wrong with symbolic logic in his book "Reason and Analysis".
Jaynes refers to the philosophy of Aristotle on pages 4 and 5 of his book "Probability Theory, the Logic of Science". He also rejected the subjectivist interpretation of Bayesian methods, taking a pro-Aristotelian philosophical position on this issue.
Jaynes' work has great practical value for science in terms of methodology, but tragically Jaynes fell prey to a subtle fallacy -- trying to use mathematical units in place of logical units. In so doing, he laid waste to the whole logical conceptual realm with a system of numerical model building, a grand instance of the mind projection fallacy that he so valiantly attacked. In the final analysis, Jaynes was a man of mixed philosophy: he was explicitly sympathetic to Aristotle, but also unwittingly an anti-conceptual Kantian.
You can learn about the relation between mathematical units and logical units, and the difference between concepts and anti-concepts in "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology", a book by Ayn Rand.
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Responding to "As for the invalidity of symbolic logic, clearly we live in different Universes..."
Here's a perceptual analogy to what happens on the conceptual level when an invalid logic is used. The following passage comes from Philip K. Dick's novel Lies, Inc.
"A high-velocity dart waggled its directing fins as it spun at him. It was, he realized as he watched it descend toward him, an LSD-tipped dart; the hallucinogenic ergotic alkaloid derivative constituted - had constituted ever since its introduction into the field of weapons of war - a unique instrument for reducing the enemy to a condition in which he was absolutely neutralized: instead of destroying him, the LSD, injected intravenously by the dart, destroyed his world.
Sharp, quick pain snuffed at his arm; the dart had plunged into him, had embedded itself successfully.
The LSD had entered his circulatory system. He had, now, only a few minutes ahead; that realization alone generally took the target out: to know, under conditions such as these, that very shortly the entire self-system, the structure of world-character which had developed stage by stage over the years from birth on -
His thoughts ceased. The LSD had reached the cortical tissue of his frontal lob and all abstract mentional processes had instantly shut down. He still saw the world, saw the THL soldier leisurely reloading the dart-releasining gun, the rolling clouds of A-warhead-contaminated ash, the half-ruined buildings, the ant-like scampering figures here and there. He could recognize them and understood what each was. But beyond that - nothing."
When symbolic logic is substituted for Aristotelian logic there is a universal collapsing of the qualitative significance of the world, an evacuation of the meaning of values and a tendency to nihilism. It is a world of appearances divorced from nature.
Aristotle's aim in his theory of motion was to explain both the actions of inanimate and animate objects. Newton's laws of motion are delimited to the inanimate and have nothing to say about goal-directed action, or what Aristotle calls final causation.
In evaluating Aristotle it is important to take into account the knowledge that he had available to start from.
Also, as you allude to, much that is attributed to Aristotle may not have been said by him.
Regarding "Aristotle was an idiot...", I couldn't help but recall this priceless scene from The Princess Bride: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-ibcEJj_KI
If you actually read Aristotle's work on physics, and then read Galileo and Newton, you will find that they owe a considerable debt to Aristotle, as do all scientists since they implicitly or explicitly rely on the logic that Aristotle discovered.
The attempt to mathematize logic, in other words, to reduce logical operations to mathematical operations is invalid. Symbolic logic is therefore invalid and, as a result, we have a century of miseducated scientists suffering from what amounts to a mathematical lobotomy.
Brand Blanchard carefully and thoroughly explains what is wrong with symbolic logic in his book "Reason and Analysis".
Jaynes refers to the philosophy of Aristotle on pages 4 and 5 of his book "Probability Theory, the Logic of Science". He also rejected the subjectivist interpretation of Bayesian methods, taking a pro-Aristotelian philosophical position on this issue.
Jaynes' work has great practical value for science in terms of methodology, but tragically Jaynes fell prey to a subtle fallacy -- trying to use mathematical units in place of logical units. In so doing, he laid waste to the whole logical conceptual realm with a system of numerical model building, a grand instance of the mind projection fallacy that he so valiantly attacked. In the final analysis, Jaynes was a man of mixed philosophy: he was explicitly sympathetic to Aristotle, but also unwittingly an anti-conceptual Kantian.
You can learn about the relation between mathematical units and logical units, and the difference between concepts and anti-concepts in "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology", a book by Ayn Rand.