Since scale (of humankind, of groups performing coherent
activities, of activities themselves) plays such an important
role in the dynamics of human self-constitution through
practical activities involving language, it is only fair to
question whether logic is affected by scale. Again, the answer
will depend upon who is asked. Logic as we study it has nothing
to do with scale. An inference remains preserved no matter how
many people make it, or study it, for that matter. But this
reflects the universalistic viewpoint. Once we question the
constitution of logic itself, and trace it to practical
experiences resulting in the awareness of connections, it
becomes less obvious that logic is independent of scale.
Actually, some experiences are not even possible without having
reached a critical mass, and the relation between simple and
complex is not one of progression. But it is certainly a
multi-valued relation, granted with elements of progression.
The practical experience of a tribe (in Africa, North America,
or South America) is defined at the scale of relations inside
the tribe, and between the tribe and the relatively limited
environment of existence. The logic (or pre-logic, to adapt the
jargon of some anthropologists) specific to this scale
corresponds to the dominance of instincts and intuitions, and is
expressed within the visually dominant means of expression and
communication characteristic of what is called the primitive
mentality. From all we know, memory plays a major role in
shaping patterns of activity. The power of discrimination
(through vision, hearing, smell, etc.) is extraordinary;
adaptability is much higher than that of humans in modern
societies. These tribe members live in a phase of disjoint
groups, unaware even of biological commonalties among such
groups, focused on themselves in pursuing survival strategies
not much different from those of other living creatures who
share the same environment. Once these groups start relating to
each other, the practical experiences of self-constitution
diversify. Cooperation and exchange increase, and language, in
many varieties, becomes part of the self-constitution of
various human types.
Languages originate in areas associated with the early nuclei of
agriculture. These are places where the population could
increase, since in some ways the pragmatics was effective enough
to provide for a greater number of people. Probably primitive
agriculture is the first activity in which a scale threshold was
reached and a new quality, constituted in the practical
experience of language, emerged. It is also an activity with a
precise logic embodied in the awareness of a multitude of levels
where connections are critical for the outcome of the activity,
i.e., for the well being of those practicing it. The sacredness
of place, to which the Latin root of the word culture (cultus)
refers, is embodied in the practical activity with everything
pertinent to human experience. Logic captures the connection
between the place and the activity. In a variety of
embodiments-from ways to sequence an action to the use of
available resources, how to pursue a plan, craft tools,
etc.-logic is integrated in culture and, in turn, participates
in shaping it. It is a two-way dependency which increases over
time and results in today's logical machines that define a
culture radically different from the culture of the mechanical
contraption. There are differences in the type of intelligence,
which need to be acknowledged. And there are differences
resulting from the variety of natural contexts of practical
life, which we need to consider. Commonalties of the survival
experience and further development should also be placed in the
equation of human self-constitution.
Within the pragmatics of the post-industrial, the logic extracted
from practical experiences of self-constitution in the world and
the logic constituted in experiences defining the world of the
human are increasingly different. We no longer read the logic of
language and infer from it to the experience, but project our own
logic (itself a practical result of self-constitution) upon the
experience in the world. The algebra of thought, a cross section
of rational thinking that Boole submitted with his calculus of
logics, is a good example, but by no means the only one.
Languages are created in order to support a variety of logical
systems, e.g., autoepistemic, temporal and tense propositional,
modal, intuitionist.
One would almost expect the emergence of a universal logic and a
universal language (attempts were and are made to facilitate
such a universalism). Leibniz had visions of an ideal language,
a characteristica universalis and a calculus ratiocinator. So
did many others, from the 17th century on, not realizing that in
the process of diversification of human experiences, their dream
became progressively less attainable. In parallel, we gave up
the logical inheritance of the past: logic embedded in a variety
of autarchic primitive practical experiences that various groups
(in Africa, Asia, Europe, etc.) had up to our time is rapidly
becoming a cultural reference. The scale that such experiences
embody and the logic appropriate to that scale are simply
absorbed in the larger scale of the global economy. We are
simply no longer in the position to effectively unveil the logic
of magical experiences, not even of those rational or
rationalizable aspects that refer to the plants, animals, and
various minerals used by the peoples preceding us for avoiding
disease or treating illness.
In our days, the cultures swinging from the sacred to the
profane, from the primitive to the over-developed, come closer
together. This happens not because everyone wants this to
happen, not even because all benefit (in fact, many give up an
identity-their own way of life-for a condition of non-identity
that characterizes a certain style of living). The process is
driven by the need to achieve levels of efficiency appropriate
to the scale humankind reached. The various groups of people are
integrated as humans in the first place (not as tribes, nations,
or religions), and consequently a pragmatic framework of
increasing integration is progressively put in place.
The Euro-centrist (or Western) notion that all types of
intelligence develop towards the Western type (and thus the
Western practice of language culminating in literacy) has been
discredited many times. The plurality of intellectual structures
has been acknowledged, unfortunately either demagogically or in
lip-service to the past, but never as an opening to the future.
Literacy eradicated, for valid practical reasons- those of the
Industrial Revolution-heterogeneity, and thus variety from among
the experiences through which people constitute themselves in
the universe of their experience. When those reasons are
exhausted, because new circumstances of existence and work
require a new logic, literacy becomes a hindrance, without
necessarily affecting the role of the logic inhabiting it.
The scale of human life and activity, and the associated
projection of expectations beyond human survival and
preservation, lead less to the need for universal literacy than
to the need for several literacies and for a rich variety of
logical horizons. Since the coordinating mechanism consists of
logic, rhetoric, heuristics, and dialectics, the new scale
prompts the emergence of new rhetorical devices, among other
things. It suffices to think about persuasion at the level of the
global village, or about persuasion at the level of the
individual, as the individual can be filtered in this global
village through mechanisms of networking and multimedia
interactivity. Logical mechanisms of mass communication are
replaced by logical considerations of increased individual
communication. Think about new heuristic procedures at work on
the World Wide Web, as well as in market research and in
Netconomy transactions. Consider a new dialectic, definitely
that of the infertile opposition between what is proclaimed as
very good and excellent, as we try to convince ourselves that
mediocrity is eradicated by consensus. Fascinating work in
multi-valued logic, fuzzy logic, temporal logic, and many areas
of logical focus pertinent to computation, artificial
intelligence, memetics, and networking allow progress well
beyond what the science fiction of the world of non A presented
us with.