Questions and Tasks for self-control

1. What is the basis of historical periodization “modern” – “postmodern”?

2. Contrast notions “postmodern” and “postmodernism”.

3. What phases in Postmodernity could be defined?

4. Classify the main global problems.

5. Explain why the nature of globalization is objective.

6. What are the negative trends of contemporary globalization processes?

7. Show the differences between global problems and globalization.

8. What does Club of Rome offer as the solutions to global problems offers Club of? Do you agree with these proposals?

Literature

Basic:

Globalization and Social Change / Johannes Dragsbaek Schmidt and Jacques Hersh. — Lonond : Routledge, 2000. — 303 p.

Jean-François Lyotard / S. Malpas. — New-York : Publication Year, 2002. — P. 15−32.

Knowledge Societies: Information Technology for Sustainable Development. — Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1998. — 323 p.

Modernity and Postmodern Culture / J. McGuigan. – N.-Y.: Open University Press, 1999. — 189 p.

Toward Genuine Global Governance. Critical Reactions to “Our Global Neighborhood” / Errol E. Harris, J. A. Yunker. – Praeger : Westport, 1999. — 211 p.

Supplementary:

Globalization and National Identities: Crisis or Opportunity? / P. Kennedy. – New-York : Palgrave, 2001. — 125 p.

Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern / D. Kellner. – L.: Routledge, 1995. — 352 p.

The Challenge of the 21th Century: Managing Technology and Ourselves in a Shrinking World / A. Linstone, I.I. Mitroff. – Albany : State University of New York Press, 1994. — 406 p.

Primary sources:

A.Toffler. Creating a New Civilization : the Politics of the Third Wave / A.Toffler. — Atlanta : Turner Pub. ; Kansas City, Mo. — 112 p.

A.J. Toynbee. Civilization on Trial / A.J. Toynbee. — Oxford University Press; First Edition, 1948. — 263 p.

M. Castells. The Internet Galaxy / M. Castells. − U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2001. — 292 p.

J.-F. Lyotard. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge / J.-F. Lyotard. — Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1984. — 110 p.

Part II logic

Unit 19

Logic as philosophical and scientific discipline

The aim of the theme is to reveal the peculiarity of logic as the philosophical science, to demonstrate the logical laws of thinking, to point out different types of logic.

Key words of the theme: logical law of thinking, truth, formalization, conjunction, disjunction, equivalence, implication, negation.

19.1. Subject of Logic. Sensual and Abstract Cognition

The cognition of the world begins with sensual cognition. The forms of sensual cognition are senses, perception and representation. There is no firm agreement among neurologists as to the number of senses because of differing definitions of what constitutes a sense. One definition states that a sense is a faculty by which outside stimuli are perceived. The traditional five senses are sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, a classification attributed to Aristotle. Senses are the physiological capacities within organisms that provide inputs for perception.

Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. The word "perception" comes from the Latin word perceptio, and means "receiving, collecting, and action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind or senses".

Representation is a term that refers to a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality. David Marr defines representation as "a formal system for making explicit certain entities or types of information, together with a specification of how the system does this”.

The forms of sensual cognition are not sufficient for understanding the inner essences of things, general tendencies and links between the processes in nature and society. That is why the highest level of cognition is abstract thinking. The characteristic features of abstract thinking are generalization, mediation (indirection) and the language. The results of abstract thinking are fixed in logical forms of thinking such as concept, proposition and reasoning. We shall consider each of these forms in details in the next lecture. Now let us give a brief explanation of these terms.

Concept is a cognitive unit of meaning, an abstract idea or a mental symbol sometimes defined as a "unit of knowledge," built from other units which act as a concept's characteristics.

Proposition is the pattern of symbols, marks, or sounds that make up a meaningful declarative sentence.

Reasoning is a logical form of thinking that consists of premises and conclusion and based on logical laws.

Deductive reasoning is reasoning which constructs or evaluates deductive arguments. Deductive arguments are attempts to show that a conclusion necessarily follows from a set of premises.

Inductive reasoning is a kind of reasoning that allows for the possibility that the conclusion is false even where all of the premises are true

Reasoning by analogy is a kind of reasoning that has the following form:

I has attributes A, B, and C

J has attributes A and B

So, J has attribute C

It should be mentioned that the subject of logic is studying the forms of abstract thinking. Logic is the study of arguments. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, and computer science. Logic examines general forms (valid and fallacies) of arguments. It is one kind of critical thinking. In philosophy, the study of logic falls in the area of epistemology, which asks: "How do we know what we know?" In mathematics, it is the study of valid inferences within some formal language.

Logic has origins in several ancient civilizations, including ancient India, China and Greece. Logic was established as a discipline by Aristotle, who established its fundamental place in philosophy. The study of logic was a part of the classical trivium. Averroes defined logic as "the tool for distinguishing between the true and the false"; Richard Whately, '"the Science, as well as the Art, of reasoning"; and Gottlob Frege, "the science of the most general laws of truth".

Logic is often divided into two parts, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. The first is drawing general conclusions from specific examples, the second drawing logical conclusions from definitions and axioms. A similar dichotomy, used by Aristotle, is analysis and synthesis. Here the first takes an object of study and examines its component parts. The second considers how parts can be combined to form a whole.

Types of logic

Informal logic is the study of natural language arguments. The study of fallacies is an especially important branch of informal logic. The dialogues of Plato are good examples of informal logic.

Formal logic is the study of inference with purely formal content. An inference possesses a purely formal content if it can be expressed as a particular application of a wholly abstract rule, that is, a rule that is not about any particular thing or property. Traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic and modern symbolic logic are examples of formal logics.

The works of Aristotle contain the earliest known formal study of logic. “The Organon” was Aristotle's body of work on logic, with the Prior Analytics constituting the first explicit work in formal logic, introducing the syllogistic. The parts of syllogistic logic are the analysis of the judgments into propositions consisting of two terms related by one of a fixed number of relations, and the expression of inferences by means of syllogisms that consist of two propositions sharing a common term as premise, and a conclusion with the two unrelated terms from the premises.

Modern formal logic follows and expands on Aristotle. In many definitions of logic, logical inference and inference with purely formal content are the same. This does not render the notion of informal logic vacuous, because no formal logic captures the entire nuance of natural language.

Symbolic logic is the study of symbolic abstractions that capture the formal features of logical inference. Symbolic logic is often divided into two branches: propositional logic and predicate logic.

Mathematical logic is an extension of symbolic logic into other areas, in particular to the study of model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory.

Modal logic. In languages modality deals with the sub-parts of a sentence that may have their semantics modified by special verbs or modal particles. For example, "We go to the games" can be modified to "We should go to the games" and "We can go to the games" and perhaps "We will go to the games". More abstractly, we may say that modality affects the circumstances in which we take an assertion to be satisfied. The logical study of modality dates back to Aristotle, who was concerned with the modalities of necessity (must, have to, ought to) and possibility (could, may, might), which he observed to be dual.

Dialectical logic (founded by G. Hegel) is a study about general development of absolute spirit. The main principles of dialectical logic are:

1. Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time.

2. Everything is made out of opposing forces/ opposing sides (contradictions).

3. Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one force overcomes the other (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).

4. Change moves in spirals, not circles (sometimes referred to as "negation of the negation").

Now let’s concentrate on the formal logic. Logic is generally accepted to be formal when it aims to analyze and represent the form (or logical form) of any valid argument type.

The structure of argument and reasoning

The form of an argument is displayed by representing its sentences in the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical language to make its content usable in formal inference. We know that sentences of ordinary language show a considerable variety of form and complexity that makes their use in inference impractical. It requires:

1) ignoring those grammatical features which are irrelevant to logic (such as gender), replacing conjunctions which are not relevant to logic (such as 'but') with logical conjunctions like 'and' and replacing ambiguous or alternative logical expressions ('any', 'every', etc.) with expressions of a standard type (such as 'all', or the universal quantifier ∀);

2) certain parts of the sentence must be replaced with schematic letters. Thus, for example, the expression 'all As are Bs' shows the logical form which is common to the sentences 'all men are mortals', 'all Greeks are philosophers' and so on.

In the traditional view, the form of the sentence consists of (1) a subject (e.g. 'man') plus a sign of quantity ('all' or 'some' or 'no'); (2) the copula which is of the form 'is' or 'is not'; (3) a predicate (e.g. 'mortal'). Thus: all men are mortal. The logical constants such as 'all', 'no' and sentential connectives such as 'and' / 'or' were called “syncategorematic” terms (from the Greek 'kategorei' – to predicate, and 'syn' – together with). This is a fixed scheme, where each judgement has an identified quantity and copula, determining the logical form of the sentence.

The reasoning consists of premises and conclusion. In correct reasoning (i.e. reasoning based on logical laws of thinking) from true premises derives true conclusion and from false premises derives the false conclusion. In non-correct reasoning from either true or false premises derive unknown conclusion. Thus we see that truth and falsehood are basic notions of Logic. Then a question comes – what is truth? In a common archaic usage truth also meant constancy or sincerity in action or character.

Correspondence theories state that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs. This type of theory posits a relationship between thoughts or statements on the one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional model which goes back at least to some of the classical Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle solely by how it relates to "things", by whether it accurately describes those "things". An example of correspondence theory is the statement by philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas: "Truth is the equation of things and intellect".

Correspondence theory practically operates on the assumption that truth is a matter of accurately copying "objective reality" and then representing it in thoughts, words and other symbols. The opposite of truth is falsehood, which can correspondingly take logical, factual or ethical meanings.