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Günther Philosophy Web IM KONTEXT:
Gotthard Günther
2000 Special
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GÜNTHER - 2000
A contribution in three parts
to the 100th aniversary of Gotthard Günther
Topic of Part 1:
"Erkennen und Wollen - Cognition and Volition"
by Eberhard von Goldammer
The philosopher and logician Gotthard Günther who was born in 1900 and
who died in 1984 can be seen as one of the most distinguished thinkers of
the 20th century comparable to Albert Einstein. This holds even if one
considers that by scientific mainstream no great notice of Günther´s work
has been taken yet. There are several possible reasons for this situation:
1) as a German emigrant Günther lived in the USA and was working at the
Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) at the University of Illinois (Urbana);
2) the far most parts of his work are written in German and were funded by
US air force;
3) his work introduces a new and extended concept of logic
which is related to Hegel´s dialectics, i.e. Günther´s work strongly
reflects the ideas of the Occidental philosophical tradition.
In his
autobiography [1] he describes a situation giving a lecture at the
University of Hamburg in 1955/56 on ´the philosophical consequences of
cybernetics´ that more than fifty percent of the audience never heard
something about ´cybernetics´, and the rest only had some very vague ideas
about ´cybernetics´ as a field of engineering and mathematics without any
contacts to human sciences and philosophy. This was the beginning and the
end of Günther´s academic career in Germany. In 1960 Dr. John Ford (who
was at that time at the George Washington University, Washington D.C.)
arranged a meeting between Gotthard Günther and Warren S. McCulloch. As
Günther himself quoted this was the beginning of a deep friendship [2] and
an extremely fruitful cooperation at the Department of Electrical
Engineering of the University of Illinois (Urbana, Ill.). The German
philosopher became a professor of electrical engineering ! Although
Günther´s work radiates some kind of American ´frontier's spirit´ it was
not really admitted by the scientific community in the USA - maybe this is
caused by natural language problems. Gordon Pask once made the following
remark: "Although my German is very poor, I have the feeling that
Günther´s articles which are written in English are more difficult to
understand than the corresponding articles written in German". The
non-reception of Günther´s work of the German academic circles was
strongly influenced by Jürgen Habermas´ remarks on Günther´s article
"Kritische Bemerkungen zur gegenwärtigen Wissenschaftstheorie - Aus
Anlaß von Jürgen Habermas "Zur Logik der
Sozialwissenschaften"" [3]. It is rumored that Habermas himself
commented on this article with his name in the title, that one can ignore
Günther´s work because the author (Günther) is paid by the US air force.
Although this article was published more than 30 years ago it is still up to
date. It is incredible that the German social scientists and the majority of
their colleagues from the faculty of philosophy have successfully ignored
Günther´s work [4] for more than fifty years. This certainly reflects
something about the level of the German intellectual life after World War
II, which we will not comment further. In order to get a short overview on
Günther´s work, we have copied the contents of the "Beiträge zur
Grundlegung einer operationsfähigen Dialektik" as well as the foreword
of volume 2 of this series.
Günther has founded the basis of a formal theory which goes far beyond
the Aristotelian logic and all its (mono-contextural) derivatives which have
been developed mainly in the last century.[5] The basic idea of the concept
of poly-contextural logic (pcl) is given by the introduction of new
operators in order to mediate different logical domains (contextures) in a
complex compound which allows to describe self-referential processes
formally without the problem of generating antinomies and ambiguities. In
other words, Günther introduced the concept of a non-Aristotelian logic.
What is a non-Aristotelian logic ?
The American philosopher Oliver L. Reiser has given the following
answer [6]: "... any abandonment of the three laws of thought would
constitute a non-Aristotelian logic". Reiser was well aware about the
consequences of this radical statement, which means that not only the
"law of the excluded middle" but also the "the law of
identity" and "the law of contradiction" have to be
questioned. He wrote: "If the laws of thought should fall, then the
most profound modification in human intellectual life will occur, compared
to which the Copernican and Einsteinian revolutions are but sham
battles." Reiser already described one of the most interesting
physiological aspect behind the Aristotelian logic, namely: "... the
impossibility of simultaneous innervation of reciprocal neuro-muscular
patterns. If the bodily process underlying the thought of ´A´ is in
process, the bodily process underlying the thought of ´non-A´ cannot also
be in process at the same time." In other words, a neuron which is
stimulated within a certain process cannot execute the negation of this
process at the same time.
On the other hand there are parallel simultaneously interacting processes
in living systems which cannot be described separately or sequentially. One
example is given by the processes of cognition and volition. In his the
article "Cognition and Volition" Günther describes this very old
intellectual problem from a more philosophical point of view. For more
information on this particular problem it is referred to the literature (
cf. Ref. [7] ).
Now we have to ask for the meaning of a ´contexture´.
A contexture is a logical domain were all classical logical rules hold
rigorously. The essential point or poly-contexturality results from the
mediation by order and exchange relations between different (at least three)
contextures. It is important to realize that the contextures do not exist in
isolation, but are mediated with each other by new and non-classical logical
operators, such as for example, the ´transjunction´, which allows the
modeling of bifurcation from one logical domain into at least two parallel,
simultaneously existing contextures. In summary, the poly-contextural logic
represents an intrinsic parallel (multi-negational) calculus with different
logical domains (contextures) closely interwoven with one another by means
of new logical operators. In contrast, all non-polycontextural logical
systems are mono-contextural. In other words, the Aristotelian logic and all
its derivatives are mono-contextural concepts. It is impossible to describe
living processes without antinomies and ambiguities in a mono-contextural
logical concept. All the laws of physics belong to a mono-contextural
concept, and even the models of neural nets are mono-contextural models.
They never will teach us anything about cognition (cf. Ref. [7]).
Mono-contextural formal models are always hierarchically structured,
i.e., they are organized ultrametrically [8]. Hierarchy constitutes itself
intra-contextural, i.e. within a contexture. Hierarchical models reflect
sub-ordination. On the other hand, heterarchy constitutes itself
inter-contextural, i.e. by transitions between different contextures in
poly-contextural formal models (heteros := the other, and archein := the
rule). Heterarchically organized structures or processes belong to the
category of autonomous systems. Heterarchical structured models reflect
co-ordination.
Without going into details we only would like to mention that an
inter-contextural transition - a transjunction - is a process where the
´law of the excluded middle´ is rejected within a contexture. The law of
identity in its classical sense only can be used within a contexture.
Despite of its importance for mathematical proofs ´the law of identity´ in
its classical form
becomes useless for modeling living systems. It was Heraclitus who
already realized in his famous principle "everything flows" that
identity is a kind of "divided unity", an identity which contains
the difference.
Within a poly-contextural scientific concept it is possible to model
"identity" as a property distributed among several contextures
which is of necessity for the development of any ´theory of the living´ or
a ´theory of subjectivity´.
For more details on the poly-contextural theory, i.e., the relation
between kenogrammatics, graphematics and poly-contextural logic is referred
to the literature [9]. For the terminology see also
"Glossary of PCL" [10].
In part_1 of the series "Günther_2000" we present a complete
version of "Cognition and Volition" in German as well as in
English. In addition we present two conference contributions of Gotthard
Günther: "Als Wille verhält der Geist sich praktisch" and
"Bewußtsein als Informationsraffer". Then there is the
introduction of volume 2 (Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer operationsfähigen
Dialektik) and the contents of volume 1-3. The article of the philosopher
Willy Hochkeppel "Negativsprache zur Erfassung der Welt ? - Der
Philosoph Gotthard Günther wird achtzig Jahre alt" was published 1980
in ´DIE ZEIT´ and gives an excellent picture about the philosopher Gotthard
Günther.
In part 2 of the series "Günther 2000" we will present more
theoretical aspects of the poly-contextural theory. Part 2 will be presented
in February´2000. In part 3 a contribution about the concept of
"time" within a poly-contextural theory will be presented.
References:
[1] Gotthard Günther, in: "Philosophie in Selbstdarstellung",
Vol. II, Felix Meiner, Hamburg, 1975, p. 1-76.
[2] Gotthard Günther, Number
and Logos, für die MCCUlloch-Festschrift ~ 1975
[3] Gotthard Günther, "Kritische Bemerkungen zur gegenwärtigen
Wissenschaftstheorie - Aus Anlaß von Jürgen Habermas ´Zur Logik der
Sozialwissenschaften´", in: Soziale Welt Bd. 19, 1968, 328?341 -
translated: "Critical remarks about the contemporary theory of sciences
- on the occasion of Jürgen Habermas´ "To The Logic of Social
Sciences"".
([download] as PDF-file)
[4] Gotthard Günther : - "Grundzüge einer neuene Theorie des
Denkens in Hegels Logik", Felix Meiner, Hamburg, 1933/1973 - "Idee
und Grundriß einer nicht-Aristotelischen Logik", Felix Meiner,
Hamburg, 1959/1978 - "Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer
operationsfähigen Dialiktik", Band 1-3, Felix Meiner, Hamburg, 1976/80
Einige Beiträge Gotthard Günther´s finden sich auch im Internet hier im
vordenkler webforum und unter: http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl//
[5] Such as:
- the
many-valued logics of Lukasiewicz : J. Lukasiewicz, in: Selected Logical
Papers, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1970 , - the fuzzy logic: L.A. Zadeh,
"A new approach systems analysis", in: Man and Computer (M.Marois,
ed.), North Holland, Amsterdam 1974, p.55-94.
- the quantum logic : C.F.von
Weizsäcker, "Classical and Quantum Description", in: The Physics
Conception of Nature, (J.Mehra, ed.), Reidel Publ., Dodrecht, 1973.
- the
modal- or temporal- logic concepts,
- the combinatorical logic : H.B.Curry,
R. Feys, "Combinatory Logic", North Holland, Amsterdam, 1969
- the
dialogue logic : P.Lorenzen, K.Lorenz, "Dialogische Logik",
Darmstadt, 1978.
- the calculus of indication : G. Spencer-Brown, "The
Laws of Form", Julian Press, N.Y.1972
- the calculus for self-reference
: F.J.Varela, "A Calculus for Self-Reference", Int.J.General
System, Vol.2, 1975, p.5-24.
An analysis of the different logical-concepts
has been given by: R. Kaehr, "Neue Tendenzen in der KI-Forschung -
metakritische Untersuchungen über den Stellenwert der Logik in der neuen
Künstlichen-Intelligenz-Forsschung", Stiftung Warentest, Berlin, 1980
(A reprint will be given in: www.vordenker.de
- from Feb.´2000) R. Kaehr,
"Zur Logik der Second Order Cybernetics - Von den Laws_of_Form zur
Logik der Reflexion" in: Kybernetik und Systemtheorie, Dresdner
Symposium, 1991, p.129-154. ( see also : www.vordenker.de)
[6] O.L. Reiser, "Non-Aristotelian logic" in: The Monist 45
(1935) p.103
[7] For further publications in this field see also: R. Kaehr and E.von
Goldammer, "Poly-contextural modelling of heterarchies in brain
functions", in: Models of Brain Functions, (R.M.J. Cotterill ed.)
Cambridge Universty Press 1989, S. 483-497. (siehe auch :
http://www.vordenker.de ) and R. Kaehr und E. von Goldammer, "Again,
Computers and the Brain", Journal of Molecular Electronics 4, 1988,
S. 31-37 ( see also in publication area of ICS )
[8] R.Rammal, G.Toulouse und M.A.Virasoro, "Ultrametricity for
physicists", Rev.Mod.Phys.58 (1986) 765-788. P. Erde, "On the
Ultrametric Structure or Semantic Memory: Scope and Limits", in:
Cybernetic and Systems, (R.Trappel, ed.), Kluver Acad.Publ., 1988,
p.329-336.
[9] a) R. Kaehr, "Materialien zur Formalisierung der dialektischen
Logik und der Morphogrammatik 1973-75." in: G. Günther "Idee und
Grundriß einer nicht-Aristotelischen Logik.", 2. Aufl., Felix Meiner
Verlag, Hamburg 1978, 117 S. b) R. Kaehr und T. Mahler,
"Morphogrammatik - Eine Einführung in die Theorie der Form" in:
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl//
[10] Glossary of
PCL: within vordenker
webforum or under http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl//
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