Rationality and Totality, Part XII

I am presenting two thought-production methods (or concept creation methods): a recti-method which I think may be a predicate calculus, and a combi-permu method which is a probabilistic method, a rigorous method of imagining and accounting for all possible associations.

The two methods don’t exactly compete: to some extent they co-exist. But let me cut to the chase: I think the recti-method has pretensions to being the method, of being the way to generate the best representation of reality(of thought, to think?)—it is fancied as the significant, or important, method. My position, which I am just now stating (and am far from demonstrating or proving) is that the recti-method is just one of a myriad, a non-denumerable,set of combinations or permutations to be generated via the combi-permu method; it has its advantages and disadvantages, it is useful in some situations but harmful in many others; the recti-method is not, by any predicate assignable to predicate calculus, above and beyond the other calculi: it is not a regent calculus reigning honorably and nobly "above or beyond."

Yesterday, Christoffer said,

“One thing is for sure, we need some way of treating our thoughts differently. If we were to treat them all equally, we would go nuts, and I mean that in a bad way: suicidal, unable to function.”

I agree: we need some way of treating our thoughts differently. However, my point is that the recti-method is not only treated differently, it is treated as if superior. It is treated as if it is warranted with the power of domination—the literal power to exclude thoughts generated via other pathways from entering consciousness.

In regard to the dominating recti-method, I found this comment by Jacek Malinowski and Andrzej Pietruszczak to be evidential,

“When we look at any system of formal symbolic logic, they all have one conspicuous feature in common. All involve the possibility of predicating properties of objects. In Aristotelian logic we have what by modern standards are relatively opaque ways [note by Yusef: optical metaphor!] of formulating such predicates as “All men are mortal”, “Socrates is a man,” and “Socrates is mortal.” Symbolic logic permits formulations that exhibit the internal logical structure of these sentences, that makes it even more perspicuous [do I need to note these metaphors?] that the basis of all logic is the possibility of true or false predications of logically possible properties to logically possible objects. Standard first-order or predicate-quantificational logic permits a detailed formal representation of the way in which object terms are combined with property terms, regardless of the ontic status of the objects or properties. In defining a semantic domain of logically possible predications, which is to say of logically possible propositions, predicational combinatorial possibilities provide the propositional building blocks for a formal theory of deductively valid inference.

Logical formalisms express more rigorously and precisely, some better than others, a corresponding basic concept, without which we cannot undertake the study of ontology or any other subject. Nothing is meaningful, true or false, except by virtue of a property being truly or falsely predicated of an object or objects. We cannot even say that a combinatorial ontology is correct or incorrect without attributing a property to an object. The logical possibility of combining objects with properties, represented in the most articulate logical notations as the combination of object terms with property terms, is the foundation of every system of logic. To the extent that logic represents the structure of reasoning [!!!] it equally underlies the possibility of thought [!!!!], and as we shall see, of reality insofar as it is thinkable. If we are to consider pure philosophical ontology exclusively as a discipline, then this is the explanatory level at which we should expect to discover its most fundamental concepts [!!!!!!!!!!!!].” -- from, Essays in Logic and Ontology, By Jacek Malinowski, Andrzej Pietruszczak, Published in 2006 by
Rodopi.

Today I am unable to comment on this excerpt as extensively as I would like and can only rather simplistically draw attention to the rhetoric of this passage(which I am taking as an excellent example and representative of its kind—and if anyone thinks I am in error in doing so, please let me know,)some of which I’ve indicated with exclamation marks, above.