CHAOTIC LOGIC 1 CHAOTIC LOGIC: Language, Mind and Reality from the Perspective of Complex Systems Science By Ben Goertzel Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com CHAOTIC LOGIC 2 Logic ... an imperative, not to know the true, but to posit and arrange a world that shall be called true by us. -- Friedrich Nietzsche PREFACE This book summarizes a network of interrelated ideas which I have developed, off and on, over the past eight or ten years. The underlying theme is the psychological interplay of order and chaos. Or, to put it another way, the interplay of deduction and induction. I will try to explain the relationship between logical, orderly, conscious, rule-following reason and fluid, self-organizing, habit-governed, unconscious, chaos-infused intuition. My previous two books, The Structure of Intelligence and The Evolving Mind, briefly touched on this relationship. But these books were primarily concerned with other matters: SI with constructing a formal language for discussing mentality and its mechanization, and EM with exploring the role of evolution in thought. They danced around the edges of the order/chaos problem, without ever fully entering into it. My goal in writing this book was to go directly to the core of mental process, "where angels fear to tread" -- to tackle all the sticky issues which it is considered prudent to avoid: the nature of consciousness, the relation between mind and reality, the justification of belief systems, the connection between creativity and mental illness,.... All of these issues are dealt with here in a straightforward and unified way, using a combination of concepts from my previous work with ideas from chaos theory and complex systems science. My approach to the mind does not fall into any of the standard "schools of thought." But neither does it stand completely apart from the contemporary scientific and intellectual scene. Rather, I draw on ideas from a variety of disciplines, and a host of conflicting thinkers. These ideas are then synthesized with original conceptions, to obtain a model that, while, fundamentally novel, has many points of contact with familiar ideas. Perhaps the most obvious connections are with Kampis's (1991) component-system theory, Edelman's (1987) theory of neuronal group selection, Nietzsche's (1968) late philosophy of mind, Chaitin's (1988) algorithmic information theory, Whorf's (1948) well-known analysis of linguistic thought, and the dynamical psychology of Ralph and Fred Abraham (1992). But there are many other important connections as well. The ideas of this book range wide over the conceptual map; indeed, the selection of topics may appear to the reader to obey a very chaotic logic. And the intended audience is almost equally wide. The ideas contained here should be thought-provoking not only to theoretical Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com CHAOTIC LOGIC 3 psychologists and general systems theorists, but also to anyone with an interest in artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, social science, biology, philosophy or human personality. Unfortunately, the nature of the material is such that certain sections of the book will not be easy going for the general reader. However, I have done my best to minimize the amount of technical terminology, and I have flagged with (*)'s those few sections containing a significant amount of formalism. These sections can be skipped without tremendous loss of understanding. In sum, I am well aware that this book will draw criticism for its ambitious choice of topic. I also realize that my approach defies the norms of every academic discipline (sometimes quietly, sometimes ostentatiously). However, I believe that one must follow one's scientific intuition where it leads. All that I ask of you, as a reader, is that you consider the ideas given here based on their own intrinsic merits, rather than how "orthodox" or "unorthodox" they may appear. The symbiosis between logic and intuition is a very tricky thing; perhaps the subtlest phenomenon we humans have ever tried to comprehend. In order to make progress toward an understanding of this strange, fundamental symbiosis, we must summon all our powers of analysis and imagination -- and check our preconceptions at the door. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The ideas presented here were developed as a solo project. There was very little collaborative thinking involved, and what little there was involved peripheral issues. Over the years, however, many people, institutions and organizations have helped my work in less direct ways. First of all, a few sections of this book overlap significantly with previously published articles. Thanks are due to the relevant editors and publishers for their permission to duplicate the odd section, page or paragraph here. The Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, Volume 15-1, edited by Paul Levinson, contains the papers "Psychology and Logic" and "Self-Reference, Computation and Mind" which overlap considerably with Chapter 4 and Section 7.3 respectively. Paul Levinson is an excellent editor who has been very supportive of my work. The Proceedings of the First, Second and Third Annual Conferences of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology, edited by Robin Robertson and Allan Combs (to be published shortly by Erlbaum, perhaps with a more felicitous title), contains the papers "A Cognitive Equation of Motion" and "Belief Systems as Attractors," which overlap with parts of Chapters Eight and Nine. Next there are more personal acknowledgements. My previous two books did not include "acknowledgements" sections, so the thanks given here apply not only to Chaotic Logic but also to its prequels: The Structure of Intelligence (Springer-Verlag, 1993), and The Evolving Mind (Gordon and Breach, 1993). In no particular order, I would like to acknowledge debts of one kind or another to: Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com CHAOTIC LOGIC 4 Simon's Rock College, which I attended from 1982-85 and where I was introduced to Nietzsche, Whorf, Peirce, formal logic, dynamical systems theory and the philosophy of science, among other things. My unorthodox approach to intellectual work owes a lot to two Simon's Rock instructors, George Mandeville and Ed Misch, and also to the remarkably intelligent group of students who were my classmates at the Rock, especially Dave Goldberg, Bill Meinhardt, John Hancock, Mike Glanzberg, Scott Hughes, Ed Keller and Mike Duncan. The mathematics faculty of Temple University -- their friendliness helped to restore my passion for mathematics, which, after a year-and-a-half at the Courant Institute, had nearly vanished for good. In particular, Donald Newman supported me at every stage of the arduous process of obtaining a Ph.D. in Mathematics. Those few members of the UNLV Mathematics department who have supported me in my unusual choice of research topics: Harold Bowman, Malwane Ananda, Rohan Dalpatadu, Ashok Singh and George Miel. The computer science department of Waikato University, where I am currently lecturing, particularly Lloyd Smith, the former department head, who made my schedule for this year! This book was written in Las Vegas but it was proofread in Hamilton; if it has fewer errors than my previous books this is because of the research-friendly New Zealand work schedule. Fred Abraham, Sally Goerner, Larry Vandervert, Robin Robertson and Terry Marks, all affiliated with the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology, for being so supportive of my work (and also for helping me to improve my sometimes too-dense exposition). Thanks especially to Sally and Fred. My mother Carol Goertzel and my grandfather Leo Zwell for their unflagging warmth and encouragement; also my father, Ted Goertzel, for his encouragement and for reading and critiquing my manuscripts despite their distance from his areas of expertise. George Klir and George Kampis for placing my book in this series. And finally, my son Zarathustra, my wife Gwen, and my brand new son Zebulon, for providing a warm, comfortable atmosphere in which to think, write and live. Ben Goertzel Hamilton, New Zealand April 1994 Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com CHAOTIC LOGIC 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. PATTERN AND PREDICTION 3. THE STRUCTURE OF THOUGHT 4. PSYCHOLOGY AND LOGIC 5. LINGUISTIC SYSTEMS 6. CRUCIAL CONNECTIONS 7. SELF-GENERATING SYSTEMS 8. THE COGNITIVE EQUATION 9. BELIEF SYSTEMS 10. BIOLOGICAL METAPHORS OF BELIEF 11. MIND AND REALITY 12. DISSOCIATIVE DYNAMICS AFTERWORD REFERENCES Chapter One INTRODUCTION "Chaos theory" has, in the space of two decades, emerged from the scientific literature into the popular spotlight. Most recently, it received a co-starring role in the hit movie Jurassic Park. Chaos theory is billed as a revolutionary new way of thinking about complex systems -- brains, immune systems, atmospheres, ecosystems, you name it. Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com CHAOTIC LOGIC 6 It is always nice to see science work its way into the mass media. But I must admit that, as a mathematician trained in chaotic dynamics, I find this sudden interest in chaos theory a little odd. The excitement about chaos theory stems from a perception that it somehow captures the complex "disorganized order" of the real world. But in fact, chaos theory in the technical sense has fewer well-developed real world applications than obscure areas of applied math like Lotka- Volterra equations, Markov chains, Hilbert spaces, and so forth. Where chaos is concerned, there is a rather large gap between the philosophical, prospective hype and the actual, present-day science. To understand this gap in more detail, consider what one studies in a first course on chaos theory: discrete iterations like the tent map, the Baker map and the logistic iteration (Devaney, 1988); or else elementary nonlinear differential equations such as those leading to the Lorentz attractor.