LOGIC AND CULTURE
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 1943 ▶ |
| Object type | Human sciences, Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
M. MARUYAMA states that different cultures tend to adhere to different types of reasoning (1994, p. 2-4)
As an example: “the logic that is taught in European and NorthAmerican schools is called ”Aristotelian logic“, or ”Cartesian logic“”, named after Aristotle (384-322BC), the Greek philosopher, and Descartes (1596-1650), a French philosopher. It is also called “Von Neumann logic” by computer people. It is based on classificational and hierarchical thinking, and it denies the possibility that many things can cause one another“. This is of course the root of rigorous lineal causal determinism , which still dominates most of western thought.
However other views exist in other cultures and even within western cultures some individuals share them. Cybernetics for ex. , by introducing feedbacks (positive or negative) is bending deterministic causality onto itself, so to say.
More recently determinism has turned “chaotic ”, when it became clearer that any event is in fact the complex result of a twisted and complex set of causes concurring to shape some present event .
Maruyama writes that the cybernetic view, and other ones have existed and still exist implicitely in various non-western cultures and that in every culture , “in any society at any time there is heterogeneity of logics among individuals”(Ibid). However one specific type of logic normally becomes dominant in a culture.
Nevertheless, the existence of individuals of other types in the culture always opens the way for possible switches.
See also
Mindscapes