Malcolm Ocean's roamblog

Empty Logic

created 2020-06-15 · edited 2020-06-15 · open in Roam
  • status: floetry
  • last updated: June 14th, 2020
  • Formal logic is logic based on form.
  • Empty logic is logic based on emptiness.
  • Form and emptiness are opposites, and also the same.
  • I had a long conversation with a friend about this notion December 19th, 2019. I forget now (ie June 14th, 2020) what exactly we talked about but one thing that should already be clear is the need for empty logic to handle paradox.
  • Diamond: A Paradox Logic does so:
    • t = true
    • f = false
    • i = true, but false ("this sentence is true")
    • j = false, but true ("this sentence is false")
    • It can be used to model real-world scenarios like a electric buzzer that functions by having a circuit where the behavior of the circuit when on is "break the circuit" and the behavior of the circuit when off is "restore the circuit". Like j = false, but true ("this sentence is false"), it oscillates back and forth.
      • "Is this circuit on? yes, but no, but yes, but no..."
  • David Chapman also talks about emptiness (the buddhist concept, more unambiguously referenceable using the Sanskrit word sunyata) as "nebulosity" which also thus suggests that Fuzzy Logic may be relevant here, as it can handle ambiguity such as something being partially true or an element being somewhat a member of a set/category, versus a boolean "in or out".
  • However! It seems to me that a lot of these sorts of explanations are still starting from form and moving towards emptiness. It seems there might be able to be something analogous to formal logic that is fully right hemisphere-based rather than being left hemisphere-based.
  • Creating logics that are still formal but can handle paradox and ambiguity has, perhaps, upsides and downsides.
    • On the one hand, it can give the left hemisphere a more native grasp of issues like paradox & ambiguity, rather than it simply rejecting them altogether.
    • On the other hand, it can reinforce the left hemisphere's sense that everything worth knowing can be known formally (and by the left hemisphere) whereas there are other kinds-of-knowing that are not captured by this.
  • Related explorations
    • Fuzzy Logic
    • Diamond: A Paradox Logic
    • Buddhism
      • There's a Buddhist book called Empty Logic (amazon) (google books)
        • I haven't read it but it's probably related!
      • Also
        • Beyond true and false
          • Buddhist philosophy is full of contradictions. Now modern logic is learning why that might be a good thing