Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Where There's Smoke

I was just reading an interesting article on Indian philosophy by James Carey, in The St. John's Review. He touched on an Indian system of logical disputation from the 2nd century B.C. It featured a 5 part syllogism.

Here's an example, simplified from Wikipedia.
  1. This hill is fiery
  2. Because it is smoky
  3. Whatever is smoky is fiery, as is a kitchen
  4. So is this hill
  5. Therefore this hill is fiery
The Aristotelian premises are in place, just reordered a bit, but what really jumps out is the presence of the example in the 3rd step.

Carey writes: "If the opponent cannot at this point name a counter example invalidating the major premise, the latter has to count as established and true."

It reminds me of Popper's view of science as a contest of conjecture and refutation. You put forth an idea, and see if anyone can disprove it.

Thus, a single example
Stands as inductively ample
Until and unless a counter is found
In which case the theory comes tumbling down.
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:27 AM

    Very interesting! This makes me wanna study proper Indian philosophy in some detail. Unfortunately, most of passes as "philosophy" in India--going by what I see in Indian bookstores--is the mystical, occult, astrological, or pop-Buddhist (Deepak Chopra) type nonsense.
    When I say "nonsense", I don't mean it derisively, but in the sense that the material really makes no sense to me, and they are so far unconnected to normal and sensible ways of thinking.

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  2. John Enright12:30 AM

    Yes, I see that same stuff when I visit Indian bookstores on Devon Ave. But there's some older stuff that can be quite interesting at times.

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