Categorial Logic – Paracompleteness versus Paraconsistency. Thought of the Day 46.2

The fact that logic is content-dependent opens a new horizon concerning the relationship of logic to ontology (or objectology). Although the classical concepts of a priori and a posteriori propositions (or judgments) has lately become rather blurred, there is an undeniable fact: it is certain that the far origin of mathematics is based on empirical practical knowledge, but nobody can claim that higher mathematics is empirical.

Thanks to category theory, it is an established fact that some sort of very important logical systems: the classical and the intuitionistic (with all its axiomatically enriched subsystems), can be interpreted through topoi. And these possibility permits to consider topoi, be it in a Noneist or in a Platonist way, as universes, that is, as ontologies or as objectologies. Now, the association of a topos with its correspondent ontology (or objectology) is quite different from the association of theoretical terms with empirical concepts. Within the frame of a physical theory, if a new fact is discovered in the laboratory, it must be explained through logical deduction (with the due initial conditions and some other details). If a logical conclusion is inferred from the fundamental hypotheses, it must be corroborated through empirical observation. And if the corroboration fails, the theory must be readjusted or even rejected.

In the case of categorial logic, the situation has some similarity with the former case; but we must be careful not to be influenced by apparent coincidences. If we add, as an axiom, the tertium non datur to the formalized intuitionistic logic we obtain classical logic. That is, we can formally pass from the one to the other, just by adding or suppressing the tertium. This fact could induce us to think that, just as in physics, if a logical theory, let’s say, intuitionistic logic, cannot include a true proposition, then its axioms must be readjusted, to make it possible to include it among its theorems. But there is a radical difference: in the semantics of intuitionistic logic, and of any logic, the point of departure is not a set of hypothetical propositions that must be corroborated through experiment; it is a set of propositions that are true under some interpretation. This set can be axiomatic or it can consist in rules of inference, but the theorems of the system are not submitted to verification. The derived propositions are just true, and nothing more. The logician surely tries to find new true propositions but, when they are found (through some effective method, that can be intuitive, as it is in Gödel’s theorem) there are only three possible cases: they can be formally derivable, they can be formally underivable, they can be formally neither derivable nor underivable, that is, undecidable. But undecidability does not induce the logician to readjust or to reject the theory. Nobody tries to add axioms or to diminish them. In physics, when we are handling a theory T, and a new describable phenomenon is found that cannot be deduced from the axioms (plus initial or some other conditions), T must be readjusted or even rejected. A classical logician will never think of changing the axioms or rules of inference of classical logic because it is undecidable. And an intuitionist logician would not care at all to add the tertium to the axioms of Heyting’s system because it cannot be derived within it.

The foregoing considerations sufficiently show that in logic and mathematics there is something that, with full right, can be called “a priori“. And although, as we have said, we must acknowledge that the concepts of a priori and a posteriori are not clear-cut, in some cases, we can rightly speak of synthetical a priori knowledge. For instance, the Gödel’s proposition that affirms its own underivabilty is synthetical and a priori. But there are other propositions, for instance, mathematical induction, that can also be considered as synthetical and a priori. And a great deal of mathematical definitions, that are not abbreviations, are synthetical. For instance, the definition of a monoid action is synthetical (and, of course, a priori) because the concept of a monoid does not have among its characterizing traits the concept of an action, and vice versa.

Categorial logic is, the deepest knowledge of logic that has ever been achieved. But its scope does not encompass the whole field of logic. There are other kinds of logic that are also important and, if we intend to know, as much as possible, what logic is and how it is related to mathematics and ontology (or objectology), we must pay attention to them. From a mathematical and a philosophical point of view, the most important logical non-paracomplete systems are the paraconsistent ones. These systems are something like a dual to paracomplete logics. They are employed in inconsistent theories without producing triviality (in this sense also relevant logics are paraconsistent). In intuitionist logic there are interpretations that, with respect to some topoi, include two false contradictory propositions; whereas in paraconsistent systems we can find interpretations in which there are two contradictory true propositions.

There is, though, a difference between paracompleteness and paraconsistency. Insofar as mathematics is concerned, paracomplete systems had to be coined to cope with very deep problems. The paraconsistent ones, on the other hand, although they have been applied with success to mathematical theories, were conceived for purely philosophical and, in some cases, even for political and ideological motivations. The common point of them all was the need to construe a logical system able to cope with contradictions. That means: to have at one’s disposal a deductive method which offered the possibility of deducing consistent conclusions from inconsistent premisses. Of course, the inconsistency of the premisses had to comply with some (although very wide) conditions to avoid triviality. But these conditions made it possible to cope with paradoxes or antinomies with precision and mathematical sense.

But, philosophically, paraconsistent logic has another very important property: it is used in a spontaneous way to formalize the naive set theory, that is, the kind of theory that pre-Zermelian mathematicians had always employed. And it is, no doubt, important to try to develop mathematics within the frame of naive, spontaneous, mathematical thought, without falling into the artificiality of modern set theory. The formalization of the naive way of mathematical thinking, although every formalization is unavoidably artificial, has opened the possibility of coping with dialectical thought.

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Conjuncted: Internal Logic. Thought of the Day 46.1

So, what exactly is an internal logic? The concept of topos is a generalization of the concept of set. In the categorial language of topoi, the universe of sets is just a topos. The consequence of this generalization is that the universe, or better the conglomerate, of topoi is of overwhelming amplitude. In set theory, the logic employed in the derivation of its theorems is classical. For this reason, the propositions about the different properties of sets are two-valued. There can only be true or false propositions. The traditional fundamental principles: identity, contradiction and excluded third, are absolutely valid.

But if the concept of a topos is a generalization of the concept of set, it is obvious that the logic needed to study, by means of deduction, the properties of all non-set-theoretical topoi, cannot be classic. If it were so, all topoi would coincide with the universe of sets. This fact suggests that to deductively study the properties of a topos, a non-classical logic must be used. And this logic cannot be other than the internal logic of the topos. We know, presently, that the internal logic of all topoi is intuitionistic logic as formalized by Heyting (a disciple of Brouwer). It is very interesting to compare the formal system of classical logic with the intuitionistic one. If both systems are axiomatized, the axioms of classical logic encompass the axioms of intuitionistic logic. The latter has all the axioms of the former, except one: the axiom that formally corresponds to the principle of the excluded middle. This difference can be shown in all kinds of equivalent versions of both logics. But, as Mac Lane says, “in the long run, mathematics is essentially axiomatic.” (Mac Lane). And it is remarkable that, just by suppressing an axiom of classical logic, the soundness of the theory (i.e., intuitionistic logic) can be demonstrated only through the existence of a potentially infinite set of truth-values.

We see, then, that the appellation “internal” is due to the fact that the logic by means of which we study the properties of a topos is a logic that functions within the topos, just as classical logic functions within set theory. As a matter of fact, classical logic is the internal logic of the universe of sets.

Another consequence of the fact that the general internal logic of every topos is the intuitionistic one, is that many different axioms can be added to the axioms of intuitionistic logic. This possibility enriches the internal logic of topoi. Through its application it reveals many new and quite unexpected properties of topoi. This enrichment of logic cannot be made in classical logic because, if we add one or more axioms to it, the new system becomes redundant or inconsistent. This does not happen with intuitionistic logic. So, topos theory shows that classical logic, although very powerful concerning the amount of the resulting theorems, is limited in its mathematical applications. It cannot be applied to study the properties of a mathematical system that cannot be reduced to the system of sets. Of course, if we want, we can utilize classical logic to study the properties of a topos. But, then, there are important properties of the topos that cannot be known, they are occult in the interior of the topos. Classical logic remains external to the topos.

Hegel and Topos Theory. Thought of the Day 46.0

The intellectual feat of Lawvere is as important as Gödel’s formal undecidability theorem, perhaps even more. But there is a difference between both results: whereas Gödel led to a blind alley, Lawvere has displayed a new and fascinating panorama to be explored by mathematicians and philosophers. Referring to the positive results of topos theory, Lawvere says:

A science student naively enrolling in a course styled “Foundations of Mathematics” is more likely to receive sermons about unknowability… than to receive the needed philosophical guide to a systematic understanding of the concrete richness of pure and applied mathematics as it has been and will be developed. (Categories of space and quantity)

One of the major philosophical results of elementary topos theory, is that the way Hegel looked at logic was, after all, in the good track. According to Hegel, formal mathematical logic was but a superficial tautologous script. True logic was dialectical, and this logic ruled the gigantic process of the development of the Idea. Inasmuch as the Idea was autorealizing itself through the opposition of theses and antitheses, logic was changing but not in an arbitrary change of inferential rules. Briefly, in the dialectical system of Hegel logic was content-dependent.

Now, the fact that every topos has a corresponding internal logic shows that logic is, in quite a precise way, content-dependent; it depends on the structure of the topos. Every topos has its own internal logic, and this logic is materially dependent on the characterization of the topos. This correspondence throws new light on the relation of logic to ontology. Classically, logic was considered as ontologically aseptic. There could be a multitude of different ontologies, but there was only one logic: the classical. Of course, there were some mathematicians that proposed a different logic: the intuitionists. But this proposal was due to not very clear speculative epistemic reasons: they said they could not understand the meaning of the attributive expression “actual infinite”. These mathematicians integrated a minority within the professional mathematical community. They were seen as outsiders that had queer ideas about the exact sciences. However, as soon as intuitionistic logic was recognized as the universal internal logic of topoi, its importance became astronomical. Because it provided, for the first time, a new vision of the interplay of logic with mathematics. Something had definitively changed in the philosophical panorama.

Noneism. Part 2.

Noneism is a very rigourous and original philosophical doctrine, by and large superior to the classical mathematical philosophies. But there are some problems concerning the different ways of characterizing a universe of objects. It is very easy to understand the way a writer characterizes the protagonists of the novels he writes. But what about the characterization of the universe of natural numbers? Since in most kinds of civilizations the natural numbers are characterized the same way, we have the impression that the subject does not intervene in the forging of the characteristics of natural numbers. These numbers appear to be what they are, with total independence of the creative activity of the cognitive subject. There is, of course, the creation of theorems, but the potentially infinite sequence of natural numbers resists any effort to subjectivize its characteristics. It cannot be changed. A noneist might reply that natural numbers are non-existent, that they have no being, and that, in this respect, they are identical with mythological Objects. Moreover, the formal system of natural numbers can be interpreted in many ways: for instance, with respect to a universe of Skolem numbers. This is correct, but it does not explain why the properties of some universes are independent from subjective creation. It is an undeniable fact that there are two kinds of objectual characteristics. On the one hand, we have the characteristics created by subjective imagination or speculative thought; on the other hand, we find some characteristics that are not created by anybody; their corresponding Objects are, in most cases, non-existent but, at the same time, they are not invented. They are just found. The origin of the former characteristics is very easy to understand; the origin of the last ones is, a mystery.

Now, the subject-independence of a universe, suggests that it belongs to a Platonic realm. And as far as transafinite set theory is concerned, the subject-independence of its characteristics is much less evident than the characteristic subject-independence of the natural numbers. In the realm of the finite, both characteristics are subject-independent and can be reduced to combinatorics. The only difference between both is that, according to the classical Platonistic interpretation of mathematics, there can only be a single mathematical universe and that, to deductively study its properties, one can only employ classical logic. But this position is not at all unobjectionable. Once the subject-independence of the natural numbers system’s characteristics is posited, it becomes easy to overstep the classical phobia concerning the possibility of characterizing non-classical objective worlds. Euclidean geometry is incompatible with elliptical and hyperbolic geometries and, nevertheless, the validity of the first one does not invalidate the other ones. And vice versa, the fact that hyperbolic and other kinds of geometry are consistently characterized, does not invalidate the good old Euclidean geometry. And the fact that we have now several kinds of non-Cantorian set theories, does not invalidate the classical Cantorian set theory.

Of course, an universally non-Platonic point of view that includes classical set theory can also be assumed. But concerning natural numbers it would be quite artificial. It is very difficult not to surrender to the famous Kronecker’s dictum: God created natural numbers, men created all the rest. Anyhow, it is not at all absurd to adopt a whole platonistic conception of mathematics. And it is quite licit to adopt a noneist position. But if we do this, the origin of the natural numbers’ characteristics becomes misty. However, forgetting this cloudiness, the leap from noneist universes to the platonistic ones, and vice versa, becomes like a flip-flop connecting objectological with ontological (ideal) universes, like a kind of rabbit-duck Gestalt or a Sherrington staircase. So, the fundamental question with respect to the subject-dependent or subject-independent mathematical theories, is: are they created, or are they found? Regarding some theories, subject-dependency is far more understandable; and concerning other ones, subject-independency is very difficult, if not impossible, to negate.

From an epistemological point of view, the fact of non-subject dependent characteristic traits of a universe would mean that there is something like intellectual intuition. The properties of natural numbers, the finite properties of sets (or combinatorics), some geometric axioms, for instance, in Euclidean geometry, the axioms of betweenness, etc., would be apprehended in a manner, that pretty well coincides with the (nowadays rather discredited) concept of synthetical a priori knowledge. This aspect of mathematical knowledge shows that the old problem concerning the analytic and the a priori synthetical knowledge, in spite of the prevailing Quinean pragmatic conception, must be radically reset.