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Philosophical Perceptions
on Logic and Order

Jeremy Horne
International Institute of Informatics and Systemics, USA

A volume in the Advances in Knowledge

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Published in the United States of America by
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Title: Philosophical perceptions on logic and order / Jeremy Horne, editor.
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Identifiers: LCCN 2017010707| ISBN 9781522524434 (hardcover) | ISBN
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 1

Chapter 1
The Core of Logics
Jeremy Horne
International Institute of Informatics and Systemics, USA

ABSTRACT
Like mathematics so often logic is taught to introductory students in a very mechanical way, the emphasis
being on memorization and working problems. Particularly egregious is that the logic taught in philoso-
phy departments is devoid of philosophy. Students rarely encounter the deep philosophy underpinning
the structures. Logic is the theory of innate order in the universe and is the language of that order. More
explicitly the foundation of that order is binary, based on the most fundamental law of all: dialectics.
Something is apprehended because of what it is not. This chapter summarizes the development of think-
ing underpinning this idea of the innate binary structure. It is an ordered binary space starting in one
dimension and progressing through three, and beyond. The philosophical basis of single, two (Table of
Functional Completeness), and three (three-dimensional hypercube) dimension space provides coherency
to ideas like deduction, induction, and inference, in general. The ordering in these spaces is founded
on the same thinking giving rise to numbers and arithmetic. An exposition of how binary logical space
develops sets the stage for discussing foundational ideas like the relationship between arithmetic (and
its follow-on, mathematics) and logic, pattern recognition, and even whether we may be a simulation,
a conjector made by Nick Bostrom. Research directions are proposed such as questioning the nature of
axioms, exploring the insufficiency of Peano’s postulates, proof theory, and ordering of operators based
on intellectual complexity.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter appears as a description of how logic should be introduced. Stylistically, it is more conver-
sational in hopes that those reading it, especially students, will feel more at ease and not be intimated
by academic formalisms. Yet, it is critical that academic rigor be maintained, such as references and
integrity of argumentation. There are some paragraphs that repeat the content of others, but it is normal
in a course for the instructor to do the same to emphasize importance. Students are to do likewise here,
and it is hoped that instructors will appreciate the pedagogy, rather than focusing on editorial style,
informality, academic nitpicking, and abbreviated expression.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-2443-4.ch001

Copyright © 2018, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
 
The Core of Logics

As to pedagogy, a number f readers may find sections as “obvious” or elemental. However, there
are three reasons why they are written. First, this chapter is supposed to appeal to a universal audience,
tricky, inasmuch as the beginners will jot be able to apprehend the complex sections, and those able to
read the complexity may be annoyed at the elemental. Yet, not only do we often forget the obvious but
it is worthy to see how the complex has been reached through an exposition of the elemental. Touring
our grammar school exercises often can be prove to be very instructive. Indeed, university-level often
review such basic knowledge, set theory courses revisiting what was learned in grade school arithmetic.
Speculative excursions dot this chapter, but students should be reminded that the philosophical treat-
ment of logic is supposed to initiate these explorations. The conclusions reached in this chapter may or
may not be ultimately correct. It is that student should be thinking about them, prompted by the logic
courses that is the central focus. That is, logic is a method, a pathway, an epistemology (a way of knowing),
a prompt, a motivation to explore who we are, we are here, and, in general the nature of the Universe.
By nature any logic system is bootstrapped. There is a starting point, often chosen by custom or
arbitrarily, assumptions are simply built in, or there is a select epistemology (justified belief), and the
content unfolds from that. It is argued in this chapter why and how for both the introductory course
and its normal follow-on, symbolic logic, should include not only a survey of current topics but also
attention to computer science, psychology (logic and learning theory), systems theory (modeling and
simulation), linguistics (deep syntactical structures), and physics (e.g.: digital physics and quantum cos-
mology), among other fields. Students should realize that logic permeates areas much outside ordinary
language translations, scientific methods, and mathematics. Right out of the box a student should reject
the view that philosophy has no place in mathematics, science, or logic. Particularly obnoxious is: “I do
not believe mathematics either has or needs ‘foundations’ . . . that the various systems of mathematical
philosophy, without exception, need not be taken seriously” (Putnam, 2017, p. 2).
More to the truth, however, is, “... almost all of us must sometimes wonder: Why are we here? Where
do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophers
have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics (Hawking, 2017)”. As long
a philosophers teaching logic ignore the thinking behind what they are teaching, they will be like the
Medieval Scholastics, reduced to nothing more significant that recording and playback machines.
Inasmuch as any course should emphasize process, rather than circumscribed content, the present
chapter is to have that approach. One may also use the original call for participation in this book project
as an outline of sample topics. Perhaps the most important conclusions are that order may be innate in our
world, that there are many logics expressing it, and there could be in the lifetime left of the human species
that final completeness of that order. An introductory textbook for logic taught in the philosophy depart-
ments should cover in an interdisciplinary way how structure appears and why it may appear that way.
How might an introductory logic course be taught? First, there is a need to present not only a robust
definition of the word “logic”, but its context and becoming, i.e., etymology. Second, the student needs
to know that the field is more vast than common definitions allow. That is, like mathematics, there are
logics – plural. Third, and here is an emphasis on a special way of presenting the subject and which is
in the title of this book (Philosophical Perceptions of (on) Logic and Order), there needs to be a focus
on the “why”, as well of the “what”. Discussing order is what students do not see in their courses – even
whether it exists. Yet, logic can be seen as a gateway into that intellectual world. Logic is a discovery,
the language that innate order uses to describes itself.
Years before and leading up to entering into this project through IGI, I was working on what was to
be an introductory logic text. The original version was to treat the contemporary material of Aristotelian

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The Core of Logics

syllogisms, propositional and quantifier logic, and inductive reasoning techniques as forms of systems
analysis. In the background was to be the philosophy of order and how it was related to quantum cosmol-
ogy. In terms of mechanics, the texts are fairly much alike and seem to do an adequate job of covering the
fundamentals, albeit minus the philosophy. Then, there are the vast sets of exercises that are needed for
such a text, with this number vastly increasing along with the field of topics. Enumerating those topics
would not be unlike identifying and describing every tree in a country to apprehend the idea of there
being a forest there. Instead, given the nature of induction and statistics, one samples what is in the field
and extrapolates from the data the idea of logic being a process just as much as the object that process
identifies. Indeed, there will be many “rabbit trails” marked by an incomplete discussion of topics in
this chapter, but it hoped – and even expected – that the naturally curious will go down them, learning
all the more that this rich subject of logic has to offer.
Years after having left the classroom, I now step back into it in the first person, admittedly eschewing
the formalism of what academicians might expect in this book. Perhaps this conversational and informal
presentation will put students more at ease and not feel so much the math/logical/technical anxiety often
purveyed by instructors in their insecurity “lording it over” their already intimidated charges.
Suggestions to the readers are the following. For students, read the following as how a former logic
professor views the field and observe that the subject encompasses a world far greater than the one
narrowly and typically presented in courses. That you do not understand all the technicalities hopefully
will goad you to further exploration. However, there is more than enough of what one can understand
to realize that there is a philosophy of process underpinning the discipline. For the logic instructor and
beyond, the content up to the heading “Future research directions” provides a basis for closer examina-
tion of some topics needing closer inspection by those appreciating that there is a philosophy of logical
inquiry. So, let us proceed.
In this core chapter of Philosophical Perceptions of Logic and Order, I begin my exposition of the most
basic world of all, the binary one, providing a rationale for this approach, and end with a description of
a three-dimensional binary world that sets the stage for the multidimensional one used to describe more
completely the quantum-cosmological one (Stern, 1988; Rapoport, 2009). Yes, there are multivalent
logics, fuzzy sets, modal logics, and all that, areas to which logic students should be acquainted, but
the purpose here is taking Cartesian reduction to its maximum extent and exploring how bivalent logic
expresses that reductionism. This is used as a way of exploring philosophical problems that have been
with us since at least Classical times, such as movement versus stasis, temporality, the substratum, and
existence, itself.

What Is Logic?

So, what is “logic”, in general? This seems like a bizarre question to ask a student. Don’t they know what
course they signed up for? Rarely, neither the instructor nor textbook can give a very comprehensive
answer, as will be seen shortly. Generically, “logic” is defined … well, it depends upon one’s point of
view, or perception. A dictionary definition is:

Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, but coming
to mean thought or reason) is most often said to be the study of arguments, although the exact definition
of logic is a matter of controversy amongst philosophers (see below). (Logic definition, 2017))

3
 
The Core of Logics

Reason, word, speech, and rationale are often associated with logic. In Greek, “logike” means, “be-
longing to or speaking of reason.” Aristotle, himself does not define explicitly what logic is, although
his Organon constitutes its substance. Aristotle says, “And the attempts of some of those discuss the
terms on which truth should be accepted, are due to a want of training in logic; (Ross, 2271). That is,
logic concerns the terms on which truth should be accepted. Aristotle also refers to the “the science of
logic” (Ross, 3146).
Through the years logic textbook writers have characterized logic as setting the “standards for the
ways in which people ought to reason” and “evaluating this reasoning” (Baum, 1981, p. 3). In a similar
vein, another writer says “Logic is the study of the methods and principles used to distinguish good
(correct) from bad (incorrect) reasoning” (Copi, 1982, p.3). A third variation states, “Natural logic is an
aptitude for reasoning” (Saenz, 1983, p. 12). Another says that logic is “the analysis of the methods for
reasoning” (Mendelson, 2015). “Reasoning” is the feature common to these outlooks. “Logic is con-
cerned with arguments, good and bad” (Kalish, 1984, p.1). Looking for the root meaning of “reasoning”
and “reason”, one finds”

… early 14c., resunmen, “to question (someone),” also “to challenge,” from Old French raisoner “speak,
discuss; argue; address; speak to,” from Late Latin rationare “to discourse,” from ratio (see reason
(n.)). Intransitive sense of “to think in a logical manner” is from 1590s; transitive sense of “employ
reasoning (with someone)” is from 1847. Related: Reasoned; reasoning.

reason (n.)

c. 1200, “intellectual faculty that adopts actions to ends,” also “statement in an argument, statement of
explanation or justification,” from Anglo-French resoun, Old French raison “course; matter; subject;
language, speech; thought, opinion,” from Latin rationem (nominative ratio) “reckoning, understanding,
motive, cause,” from ratus, past participle of reri “to reckon, think,” from PIE root *re(i)- “to reason,
count” (source of Old English rædan “to advise;” see read (v.)). (Reasoning, 2017).

Each of these three words conveys a different meaning. “Reckon” means, “taking account of”. Be-
lieving and thinking are two different areas of concern. When one holds something to be true, then that
person probably believes it to be so. The process by which belief comes is thinking. One may rightly ask
whether a person believing dogmatically is just as “reasonable” or logical as an individual who thinks.
After all, some of the logics emerging from the Medieval period were based on a rigid and well-entrenched
Catholic ideology. Epistemology, though, is an area of philosophy that concerns justified belief, or how
we know something. Can “logic” incorporate both extremes? A study of logic normally doesn’t examine
the intensity with which an idea is held, but it looks at the idea and its relationship to other ideas.
Logic also means “logos”:

The Greek word λόγος or logos is a word with various meanings but which is often translated into Eng-
lish as “Word” but can also mean thought, speech, reason, principle, standard, or logic among other
things. (Logos, 2017)

The Oxford dictionary says that “logos” refers to “ground”, “plea”, “opinion”, “expectation”, “word”,
“speech”, “account”, “reason”, and “discourse”. – Root word is “racio” – to divide (Logos, 2017).

4

The Core of Logics

Bradley and Schwartz say that logic is “the modal properties and relations which propositions have as
determined by the ways in which their truth-values are distributed across the set of all possible worlds”
(Bradley and Schwartz, 1979, p. 129). Quine says that logic is the “pursuit of truth” (Quine, 1990).
Goble says that “Logic is the theory of consequence relations, of valid inferences” (Goble, 2001, p.1).
Logic in traditional Introduction to Logic texts often is described by phrases, such as:

….organized body of knowledge, or science, that evaluates arguments. (Hurley, 2004, p. 1)

… study of the method and principles used to distinguish good (correct) from bad (incorrect) reasoning.
(Copi and Cohen, 2000, p. 4)

What supports reason, possible worlds, language, inferences, and so forth? What is most fundamental?
What does one have to have before any of this is possible?
“Logic...is the theory of order,” said James K. Feibleman (1979, p. 89). It is the “...theory of abstract
structures” (Ibid., p. 14). This is my axiom in this book, and this concept will reverberate throughout,
along with a detailed explanation about why it is critical. Coupled with logic being the theory of order
is that logic is a discovery more than a creation.
The following is not to be construed as a literature search, but here is what seems to be the typical
outline of study:

• Introduction – Deductive vs. Inductive and basic terms.

• Language – Uses, Meaning etc.
• Informal Fallacies.
• Categorical Propositions.
• Propositional Logic.
• Induction – Mills Methods, Statistics and Scientific Methods.

Yet, there are two representative deviations from this path. Goble presents an excellent overview of
the types of logic, such as deontic, intuitionist, temporal, and modal. Schwartz perhaps is the among
best in discussing possible worlds, types of truth, necessity and sufficiency in various contexts. Both,
it can be argued, raise more questions that tend to confuse and go nowhere than provide answers. Yet,
it is correct to say that knowing a problem exists is half the solution, and science is rife with examples
of persons continuing on the path of incorrect methods because larger issues have not been considered
about ultimate correctness. (Kuhn, 1962). Yet, the uncertainties raised by these authors may be repre-
sentatives of the motivations underpinning Putnam-like attacks on philosophy. As we will see, though,
the defense will come more from the mathematical than philosophical realm.

A Diversity in Logic: Logics

One has to be careful in referring to the English language in drawing a linguistic parallel between logic
and mathematics, as in referring to “maths”, possibly meaning several branches of mathematics – ge-
ometry, calculus, etc. (as discussed by Bernadette Russek, Ph.D. in mathematics and statistics (Russek,
2017). Mine is more parallel to a field like biology, chemistry, or, as Russel would refer to the French, “la
mathematique”. Logic is taught mainly in the philosophy, mathematics, or computer science departments.

5
 
The Core of Logics

The former emphasizes the structuralization of thoughts expressed by language; the latter is more
precisely regarded as mathematical or computer logic. The former is what this core is not about; the latter
raises a more technical discussion about discrete structures. This is the path that will lead us to ways of
answering whether order is innate in the Universe and whether discrete logic is the language expressing
it. In modern times, logicians have created a rat’s nest of vaguenesses found in the logic as expressing
ordinary language thoughts more easily discernible and analyzable through symbolic techniques and
mathematical principles. We now are oriented more towards quantifiable entities than puzzling over
shades of meaning, incompletely defined relationships, and modalities.
During the last 150 years, Augustus DeMorgan, Charles Sanders Pierce, Frege, Bertrand Russell,
George Boole, and Charles Barkley Rosser (among others) helped establish the foundations for modern
symbolic logic. Logic may be said to clarify mathematical ideas, and mathematical ideas often amplify
logical operations, but can one argue that mathematical thinking precedes logical thinking, or vice versa?
Russell said:

The distinction of mathematics from logic is very arbitrary, but if a distinction is desired, it may be made
as follows. Logic consists of the premises of mathematics, together with all other propositions which are
concerned exclusively with logical constants and with variables but do not fulfill the above definition
of mathematics (§ 1). Mathematics consists of all the consequences of the above premisses which assert
formal implications containing variables, together with such of the premisses themselves as have these
marks. (Russell, Principles of Mathematics, 1938, p.9)

Clarence Irving Lewis and Cooper Harold Langford argue “…primitive ideas and postulates for
logic are the only assumptions required for the whole of mathematics” (Newman, 1956, p. 1875). Carl
Hempel said: “Mathematics is a branch of logic” (Newman, 1956, p.1631). Charles Sanders Pierce,
(1839-1914), major logician and pragmatist, on the other hand said, “…logic cannot possibly attain the
solution of its problems without great use of mathematics” (Newman, 1956, Newman, p.1773). Formal
logician, modern cyberneticist John Von Neumann asserts, “(formal logic)… is one of the technically
most refractory parts of mathematics” (Newman, 1956, p.2083). Which is it then? Does logic merely
clarify mathematics, or does logic make mathematics possible?
For the logic taught in philosophy departments, numerous problems arise centering on whether such
symbolization is adequate for analyzing these thoughts. Numerous and interesting ideas can be presented
to students, as in what constitutes truth, contrasting deduction with induction, and some problems with
implication.
Yet, there are many persons writing logic textbooks that will cover both the logic taught in philoso-
phy departments with that in the mathematics departments by attempting to discuss the symbolization
of thoughts expressed by the language and then proceed to set forth the symbolization of mathematical
thoughts.
The “Rosser System” is the basis of modern renditions of symbolic logic. Rosser in 1984 came to
present “Boole’s Concept of A Function”, to his alma mater, the University of Florida Gainesville,
where this author was teaching logic, and I asked whether it was worthwhile to teach students how to
translate ordinary language into symbolic form. He related the content of his prefatory remarks in Logic
for Mathematicians:

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The Core of Logics

The General Nature of Symbolic Logic

The aim in constructing our symbolic logic is that it shall serve as a precise criterion for determining
whether or not a given instance of mathematical reasoning is correct. The symbolic logic which we shall
present is primarily intended to be a tool in mathematical reasoning. Of course, many of the logical
principles involved have general application outside of mathematics, but there are many fields of human
endeavor in which these principles are of little value. Politics, salesmanship, ethics, and many such fields
have little or no use for the sort of logic used in mathematics, and for these our symbolic logic would
be quite useless. … For one thing, no adequate symbolic treatment of the relationship involving cause
and effect has yet been devised. (Rosser, 1953, pp. 5-6)

Yet, Copi (1973, p. 170), who refers to the “R.S” (Rosser System) like many textbook writers devotes
extensive space to that which Rosser strictly cautions against. Symbolic logic, then, is useful for exploring
and expressing deep structures, such as found in mathematics and the sciences. It should be said, however,
that works in transformational grammar suggest deep structures of various languages expressing ideas
(Transformational grammar, 2017). The originator of the term, Noam Chomsky, also has argued that
there is a genetic basis of language, i.e., “universal grammar” (2017). It perhaps is here where a more
scientific approach to the relationship of logic to representing ordinary language should begin. Neural
correlations found through imaging offer an exciting research direction.
More recently, there has been a breakout, or, one might say more accurately, a breakaway from the
philosophy department, given the plethora of literature emerging on mathematical philosophy (Mathemati-
cal Philosophy examples, 2017), and even more recent, systems theory. Philosophy seems to be present
more in the physics and math departments than where it should be expected: the philosophy department.
The queen of all sciences one could think has become a whore for popular sentiment. However, it may
be argued (as is done later) that both arithmetic (and its descendant, mathematics) and logic are based
upon the same thinking about orders of magnitude and comparison, both having the same philosophy
about order.
Now, what is order?

THE ORIGINS OF ORDER?

Note that the heading for this section is in the form of a question. Is order something that humans impose
on the world? Does it even exist, or is it an illusion? Etymologically, “order” is derived “...from Latin
ordinem (nominative ordo) “row, line, rank; series, pattern, arrangement, routine,” originally “a row
of threads in a loom...” (Order - Etymology, 2017). To arrange, one needs minimally two entities, one
preceding or succeeding the other in the minimal first dimension. That is, one is apart from the other.
There are other aspects of order, such as assigning symbols to ideas and objects (abstract order), as well
as as a regularity emanating from rule-directed arrangement (operative ordering), something that is in-
nate in our environment. It is a regularity, repetition, and allows one to predict. For the next few pages is
a description of the most fundamental law of all, that of dialectics. Here, and in numerous other places
in this chapter, there will be a re-explication of this idea, almost to the point of boring repetition, but
dialectics needs to be internalized if the discussion of the philosophy underpinning logics is to have any

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The Core of Logics

meaning. A critique of Western philosophy is that persons tend to apprehend the world only in terms of
distinct objects. There is also process.
Let’s break our world down to its simplest and most abstract levels. What we perceive may or may
not be illusory, but whatever we do perceive cannot be done so in isolation. One may enter a room in
which everything is the same shade of blue (or any other color), and visually it would be impossible to
detect one object from the other, if the lighting is equally distributed. Turn off all the lights save one
and the shadowing reveals the objects. One needs contrast, contradiction, or difference to identify what
it is. Something appears to us because of what it is not. Something cannot be apprehended in isolation;
it needs context. One should be reminded that we are not apprehending this or that statically, but appre-
hending because a dynamic between what it is and what it is not. This is bipolarity at its simplest level.
This is a reflection of dialectics.
One has in front a whole. How does one understand it? One may contemplate it, but “what’s inside?”,
a natural question by anyone with minimal curiosity. Too, given our blue room example, that whole can
be apprehended only in terms of what it is not – either its environment or the whole, itself, or in pieces.
Herein is the most fundamental law that allows us to discern what and what does not exist, a law of
process, the law of dialectics. Descartes said, “...we cannot conceive body unless as divisible ... body is
by nature always divisible... ” (Descartes, 1641). Apprehension is a process, not a fixation on an object.
Such apprehension is dialectical. This what it is in terms of what it is not is inherently bivalent. It is a
single step from the whole to regarding it in terms of its environment, or context, or the first Cartesian
subdivision sets forth two entities which are dialectically and inherent bound with each other, describing
the most fundamental relation of all: existence.
As an aside, one may refer to South Asian philosophical literature about deep meditation, where can
be a one-pointed focus on nothingness, placing oneself in a mental vacuum (South Asian Meditation,
2017). Such states of mind reputedly are devoid of ego, bias, and distractions, the only element left being
contemplation and sense of process. The eighth limb of yoga refers to the Samadhi limb, the union with
the divine (Nirvikalpa Samadhi, 2017). To be more explicit, the Nirvikalpa Samadhi yogi undergoes
yoga at this stage as a death exercise, in essence meditating her or himself to death. To be stark about all
this and perhaps to remove some of the romanticism from the New Age generation types practicing the
popular forms of yoga, each limb, or stage of yoga is a preparation for the next, a series of steps where
a person prepares the body and then the mind to die. [As an aside, the famous tone bowls train a yogi
to hum the sound at death, it being thought that the vibrational frequency is most compatible or best
enables the person’s inner consciousness to merge with universal conscious.] That is, the frequencies
are the same. Logic students reading about the origin of order as giving rise to bivalency and its process
should think about how order is counterpoised against the lack of it in this manner.
Well read philosophers have known Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1805) and his Phenomenology
of Mind, as well as major philosophies of South Asia and Asia, primarily Buddhism, Hinduism, and
Taoism. A modern rendition is Alfred North Whitehead’s (1929/1978) Process and Reality. Everything
exists contextually, and that apprehension is dynamic, a process, the process being just as much a part of
an object as the object, itself. There is a simultaneousness of apprehension of something and what it is
not, perhaps analogous to quantum superposition. It may be the limitations of our dimensions that does
not allow us to step back and identify this process, and we are reduced to providing crude analogies like
“simultaneously switching back and forth” to apprehend the whole. Following are some ways of describing
this dialectic, some that may seem repetitive, but it is not easy to grasp its sense by a single explanation.

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The Core of Logics

There are many dichotomies defining ranges of realities, one extreme existing in terms of what it is not.
Left exists because of right, up because of down, yes because of no. We see bivalency all about us, as in:

• Left-Right,
• Up-Down,
• Forward-Backward,
• Constructive-Destructive,
• Something-its reference frame,
• Yes-No,
• Outside-Inside,
• Domain-Application,
• Input-Output,
• Light-Dark,
• Hot-Cold,
• Idea-Reality,
• Form-Substance,
• Variable-Constant,
• Schema-Abbreviation,
• General-Specific,
• Potentiality-Actuality,
• Idealism-Realism.

In many, if not all these cases, exists a continuum of conditions, each condition being what defines
the relationship of the extremes. The mean is apprehended in terms of the extremes.
Our understanding comes through more than mere “contradiction” or an “opposite”. It is a process
that underpins what exists. It is what makes ontology – that which exists – possible. There is process
(motion) and object (stasis), the antipodes of classical philosophical debate – Heraclitus and Parmenides.
Things are always in motion; motion is an illusion. Yet, can even the idea exist without the other? Modern
philosophers may see the apparent wave-particle paradox as the wave existing because of the particle and
vice versa. Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason wrote of appearance and reality, the former is instances
(which might in a modern interpretation be analogous to “particles”) that we see of the totality of what
gives rise to them (“wave”). Paradoxes may be like this, where people see them because they focus on
only one aspect of the dialectic, while each exists because of the other. Too, that we cannot resolve what
appears to be contrary to “common sense” may mean that isolation is not possible in our dimension, an
observation astutely presented in Abbot’s Flatland (Abbott, 1884).
How about the world, universe, creation, and how we describe reality, itself? Ancient philosophers
in South Asia thought that the essence of the world is binary 4500 years ago. In the Vedic view (Rig
Veda, 2017), creation emanates from the self-consciousness of the primeval being (Purusha) that modern
philosophers of consciousness could equate with the universe, itself, being conscious (Kafatos, 1990). In
our discussion, we may regard mind, or soul (albeit the Hindu notion of soul being different from mind,
in that it is absolute reality that is all pervasive) as a continuum, and matter as discrete. The Creation
hymn in the Rig Veda says, “Whence all creation had its origin, he, whether he fashioned it or whether
he did not, he, who surveys it all from highest heaven, he knows--or maybe even he does not know (Rig
Veda, 2017 CXXIX – Creation – P. 1073. Book the Tenth)”. For Samkhya, the oldest form of Hinduism,

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the soul (Purusha) is counterpoised against matter (Prakriti), one in terms of the other; neither has it
own identity in isolation. In the West, it is the dualism of mind and matter. In the Samkhy philosophy,
everything started with an eternal unconscious as the universe and from it unfolded everything we have
today. From a whole emerges diversity, a law of cosmic order (rta), according to the Rig Veda.
The ancient I-Ching is predicated upon bivalency.

The binary notation in the I Ching is used to interpret its quaternary divination technique. It is based
on taoistic duality of yin and yang eight trigrams (Bagua) and a set of 64 hexagrams (“sixty-four” gua),
analogous to the three-bit and six-bit binary numerals, were in use at least as early as the Zhou Dynasty
of ancient China. (I Ching, 2017)

We find evidence of binary counting and computation extending back to the fifth through second
century BCE. Pingala, an Indian scholar who lived between the fourth and second BCE, depending which
researcher one accepts as authority, described the essence of binary numbers as short and long syllables
in his Mahabhashya (Van Nooten, 2010). The long syllables were twice as long as the short ones (Hall,
2005). All of the above are examples of the process of knowing something in terms of what it is not, a
way of knowing which ancient philosophers realized in South Asia millennia ago.
A world emerging from the inchoate also is told of in ancient Western philosophy. Hesiod (ca. 750
and 650 BCE) wrote of everything being born of chaos (Theogeny, Line 116). Lucretius (ca. 99 BC –
ca. 55 BC) stated:

In that long-ago
The wheel of the sun could nowhere be discerned
Flying far up with its abounding blaze,
Nor constellations of the mighty world,
Nor ocean, nor heaven, nor even earth nor air.
Nor aught of things like unto things of ours
Could then be seen--but only some strange storm
And a prodigious hurly-burly mass
Compounded of all kinds of primal germs,
Whose battling discords in disorder kept
Interstices, and paths, coherencies,
And weights, and blows, encounterings, and motions,
Because, by reason of their forms unlike
And varied shapes, they could not all thuswise
Remain conjoined nor harmoniously
Have interplay of movements. But from there
Portions began to fly asunder, and like

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With like to join, and to block out a world,

And to divide its members and dispose
Its mightier parts--that is, to set secure
The lofty heavens from the lands, and cause
The sea to spread with waters separate,
And fires of ether separate and pure
Likewise to congregate apart. (Lucretius, p. 119)

Is is too far from the modern concept of our universe having its origin in a singularity, where the four
forces of nature – strong, electroweak, electromagnetic, and gravitational – were as one, where there
was no distinguishing anything, a continuum? It is process that was bound up with the singularity giv-
ing rise to our universe and thus is its essence. There appears to be a deep structuralism in our thoughts
throughout history, starting with the Hindu Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva corresponding to the inchoate
– potential for creation, the whole that emerges from chaos, and Shiva, the division – or destruction.
Hesiod and Lucretius reflect similar ideas.
Gottfried Leibniz (1703) is credited with having formally created the binary counting system in his
Explication de l’Arithmétique Binaire over three hundred years ago.

A concept that is not easy to impart to the pagans, is the creation ex nihilo through God’s almighty
power. Now one can say that nothing in the world can better present and demonstrate this power than
the origin of numbers, as it is presented here through the simple and unadorned presentation of One
and Zero or Nothing. — Leibniz’s letter to the Duke of Brunswick attached with the I Ching hexagrams
(Binary number, 2017)

Indeed, Leibniz, in his quest to find that which is most fundamental in the world (Monadology) called
the binary language, “the simplest progression of all (Ibid.).”
Sustaining the observation about the world being fundamentally describable by bivalency, Piaget said:

There exist outline structures which are precursors of logical structures,... It is not inconceivable that a
general theory of structures will...be worked out, which will permit the comparative analysis of struc-
tures characterizing the outline structures to the logical structures characteristic of the higher stages of
development. The use of the logical calculus in the description of neural networks on the one hand, and
in cybernetic models on the other, shows that such a programme is not out of the question. (emphasis
included). (Piaget 1958, p. 48).

A physicist similarly concludes that the arrangement in the universe is according to a “pregeometry
as the calculus of propositions,” such that “...a machinery for the combination of yes-no or true-false
elements does not have to be invented. It already exists (Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, 1973, p. 1208 et
seq.).” Wheeler further said, “...it is not unreasonable to imagine that information sits at the core of phys-
ics, just as it sits at the core of a computer (Wheeler, 1998, p. 340).” Otherwise put in his “It from bit”,

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… every ‘it’—every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself—derives its function,
its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited
answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. ‘It from bit’ symbolizes the idea that every item of
the physical world has at bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source and
explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions
and the registering of equipment- evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-
theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe. (Wheeler, 1990)

Then, how may our world be described? In returning to the dialectic, there is process and object. As
an exercise in Cartesian understanding (Descartes, 1641) an instructor can place a piece of paper in front
of one of logic students, asking each to cut it in half. Then, s/he should cut it in half again … again …
well, s/he did not bring her microscope and micro blade .. .nor the atom smasher, and surely nothing to
regard entities at Planck scale (1.616229×10-35 meters).
Discussing order is similar to discussing the origins of our universe, the emergence of our world from
the inchoate. Indeed, our modern studies of chaos theory are about potential arrangement bound up in
what we see as undifferentiated. Herein is the key – that which is differentiated and how. The existence
of Planck scale or even smaller size perhaps depends upon how “particles flit in and out of existence”
of vacuum space, as Hawking would put it (Hawking, 2016 and 2017). In-out: THIS is binary in its es-
sence. Binary is how we regard processes in terms of objects; it is what makes ontology possible. Yet,
it is not the this or that in the binary that underpins existence. It is that “movement”, one making the
other exist. Dialectics is being, itself.
We have have appropriate process and objects, but if one says that the singularity originating our world
contained all that there is, we have neglected one major aspect: ideas, consciousness, thinking, and “all
that”. There are those like Kurzweil (2017) and Tipler (1994) who argue that everything is translatable
into binary-valued logic in arguing that humans can reconstruct themselves at the demise of the universe.
(Tipler, 124-128, 219-220). Meanwhile, consider how “logic” may address whatever these are. Turing
asked whether a machine can think. (Turing, 1950). However, what one might expect – a discourse on
what thinking is and whether an artificial device can do so, really did not come about, unless one regards
a set of instructions given to a tape reader as sufficient.
My extrapolation from the discussion above is that the simplest of orders (arrangements) is binary
because of the dialectic, and that this order occurs in the most basic of dimensions, the first, that which
is required to define a physical point. That is, the “minimum number of coordinates needed to specify
any point within it” (Dimension, 2017). Here, one might ask whether the word “coordinate” begs the
question of what is required to have a coordinate, i.e., a dimension. In mathematics a point has a dimen-
sion of 0, a line that of dimension 1, a surface a dimension of 2, volume 3, spacetime a dimension of 4,
etc. It is left as an exercise to explore what a dimension really is.
Bipolarity is conditioned by the quality of the relationship between the minimal two entities. More
complex or higher order are founded on this binary building block of simple order. Here, one may pro-
ceed to discussions of more complex orders, such as by Russell in Principles of Mathematics (op. cit.,
Chapt. 25, p. 209), where he discusses them in terms of “betweeness” and transitivity.
A dialectician might say that the process is just as much a part of the object as the object, itself. Here
is how and why we arrive at the present situation.

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How Do We Know All This?

A common retort to one presenting a major philosophical system (or just abut any discovery) is, “how do
you know?” Doesn’t this mean that “my opinion is just as good as yours?” Instructors rightly ask their
students to account for their assertions, such as by giving references, good logic, or at least pointing to
a history of development. There is the nagging background critique that knowledge is relative; there are
no absolutes, no systems grounded in certainty, and so forth. Logic, itself is predicated upon its own way
of knowing. It can be argued that any system of philosophy, logic, ideology, or other systematic way of
thinking, relies on a bootstrap method, where there does not appear to be any known universal truth on
which virtually and unequivocally agrees. For example,
According to a survey of professional philosophers and others on their philosophical views which was
carried out in November 2009 (taken by 3226 respondents, including 1803 philosophy faculty members
and/or PhDs and 829 philosophy graduate students) 44.9% of respondents accept or lean towards cor-
respondence theories, 20.7% accept or lean towards deflationary theories and 13.8% epistemic theories.
(Epistemic Theories, 2017)
If not for any other reason than we are bounded by a dimension – three, there is inherent uncertainty
in the world; human bias and interpretation issues abound; and surely the great controversy about Pla-
tonic and Aristotelian notions of reality has not been conclusively resolved. This is not to say there there
ARE no absolute truths, but given our ideas of “absolute” they are not known. However, it appears that
mathematical and logical truths are the most unshakable and more universally agreed upon. That is, they
seem to be built upon, rather than being changed over time. One selects by various devices one or more
starting points for constructing a system, and by the same standards by which the system was established
the outcome is judged. Some ways we know things are:

• Tradition: It was always done that way and it worked. Included may be tales, myths, parables, and
the like. Tradition more often than not is in the realm of environments in which there is no written
account of events, i.e., history.
• History: There is a record of the way it was done, and we rely on that for affirming an assertion.
Time transforms itself from being circular in the orally-based societies to being linear in written,
or historically-based ones.
• Reason: All knowledge comes from how we arrange things in our minds according to certain
rules, precepts, etc.
• Empiricism: We know things through observation, the senses, and experience.
• Science: We use a combination of the above in attempt to extrapolate from the past to project to
the future. A central method is hypothetico-deductive (hypothetico-deductive, 2017), where a
conjecture is ventured about the way something occurs based on what has been observed It is then
tested and if found to be correct is then used for explanation. (Epistemology, 2017)

Usually it is a combination of these approaches that provides an audit trail accounting for how and
why an assertion was made. The integrity of what one imparts to a system depends upon the integrity of
the epistemology. One may see emerging from justified belied the data-information-knowledge-wisdom
(DIKW) pyramid (DIK Pyramid, 2017). Data simply are not judged as identified entities. Information is

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an arrangement of data so as to be coherent and communicable. Knowledge is the evaluation of informa-

tion as to justifiability and integrity. Wisdom may considered synthesis. This cursory overview of ways
we think we come to know things sets the stage for identifying our limitations in perceiving something
vaguely appearing in our context as “order”. My question is how we can best purvey this process of
understanding to students.
So, how do I “know” all this? I really don’t. I just put my boots on, start walking, and see where the
path leads. Such is what we are doing here.

SOME PARAMETERS SHAPING OUR PERCEPTION OF ORDER

More often than not my experience has been that the logic instructor and the students march ahead
according to a textbook script, not aware that the subject they are studying in a more profound sense
perforce bespeaks of the nature of concepts not considered or taken for granted but shape various logics.
Some major ones are reality, reference frames and relativism, boundaries (versus continuum) and how we
determine such, how we know (or think we do), what exists (ontology), and what is meant by “relation”
(following on the heels of relativism). Each of these has shaped those logics, and their discussion, even
from a survey point of view, would place their introductory courses in a better context.

Reality and Its Representation

Magnitude begins with apprehending something; something exists because of what it is not - dialectics.
Perforce, there is more than one: something and its other. To communicate one’s apprehension, repre-
sentation is used. It is worthy to have this discussion now, as it enters into assessing how well a world
is expressed, as in constructing the foundations of scientific experiments, forming arguments, and just
plain simple descriptions of things.
Plato’s (427-327BCE) cave allegory is the classical Greek rendition of the problem of what constitutes
reality, but also is the foundation of how problems of describing how anything arises. His Republic (found
ubiquitously on the Internet or in libraries) depicted a cave in which persons were chained to the floor
so they were forced to look forward to a wall in front of them. Behind the people was a stage on which
persons paraded with cut-outs of objects in front of a fire, which caused shadows of the cutouts to be
projected on the wall in front of the people. When led out of the cave, the people would be greeted by
a blinding sunlight shining upon the real objects. This Light of Reason shines upon the “higher forms,”
while, in the cave it is only imagination that allows us to perceive sensible objects. Plato was saying that
all we see are representations of reality – shadows.
Plato referred to the distinction between substance and form. Plato was asserting that we know of
things not by the things themselves but by the manifestations of reality. The real things are forms, and
the things we see are instances, not unlike a formula expressing itself through examples, as in 3+9=12
representing the form of x+y=z. Logicians primarily are interested in forms and formal relationships
among entities. This is in contrast to the Aristotelian view of reality, where what we see is what is real.
Each thing has a form, that is a culmination of a world before it. For example, the oak tree is real, it is
a form, but its predecessors were the acorn, sapling, and so forth.

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Within the Platonic allegory is a pointing to a representation problem. Instead of attempting to

identify the form directly, we try to do so through examples, i.e., induction. This problem of induction
is in the form of one describing anything through language and even photographs. Newsprint works
this way, as well, where the small dots of varying color intensities are combined at a distance to create
a solid image. The actual object never is experienced or seen by the one to whom it is described, so we
have only what amount to data points that are samples of the object. Indeed, Plato talks of the form of
something, as in “tableness”, each table we see as being an example or shadow of the “real” thing, the
form. One analogy of this type of induction is a photograph contained in a newspaper, where dots of
varying shades (the examples) assembled by the brain to create an illusion of solidity (the form). Because
of quantum mechanics, we never will be able to see anything that is static and solid. There always will
be gaps between “particles”. In this sense, Plato described the “reality” of our world. Statistics follows
the same method, identifying as heterogeneous sample as possible and extrapolating from its analysis
what the whole. Here’s how.
Induction is innate in our visual architecture. Rod and cone assemblies detect photons and translate
them into neural signals. The signals travel down neural pathways to a synapse. The photon encounters
an atom, and an electron is released, whereupon the electron travels along the dendritic spine. These are
all particles that contribute to what emerges as our perception of solidness. Yet, because of the process
and structure just described, this solidity is an illusion; it is a construct. In essence humans take these
data points and assemble them in some way to create that image. “That way”, however is the problem of
induction. In fact, all of existence is like this, where anything can be subdivided into components down
to Planck scale. The manner in which this done is not known to us, and it may be interjected here that
this is the same for the process of induction, as well. How DOES one assemble data points to create a
whole? Prior to the understanding of the nature of Planck scale philosophers did not have the advantage
of viewing induction in this way. Solve the problem of how we do assemble points so as to apprehend
the solid and the age-old problem of induction (Hume, 1739/1888; Mill, 1843; Russell, 1903/1938) will
be solved. It is in that family of problems of consciousness and mind, the problem of dialectic apprehen-
sion described above also being one as well.
Coupled with how we know is the millennial-old debate not only of what reality is (as in Plato and
Aristotle), but its representation shaped by human bias. In representation, one is beset with mapping. In
this we represent what we think is reality by language, be it in the form of words, symbols, utterances,
and so forth, each of these being analogous to the newsprint dots. That is we map these to what we think
is he more data points, the reality and convey this rendition of what we think is solid to others. The more
data points, the more “solid” the image of reality. Herein is the essence of equal and equivalence, two
concepts often blithely treated in logic courses, and more often not given any philosophical content.
There are several hurdles in getting other to apprehend what we apprehend, not the least of which is
ourselves being our own barrier. There are the symbols and language used to describe. What does the
observer deem important in what is being described? Human frailty limits any pretense of objectivity.
Yet, to apprehend any philosophy of logic, one calls on ontology and epistemology. How, then, can we
investigate anything or say anything about anything? We now come to the very foundation of systems
construction, itself, the, manner of identifying primitives, rules, and assumptions: bootstrapping. Some-
what wryly put, one “runs it up the flagpole and sees who salutes”. Attaching that flag, though, should
not be done until there is an awareness of what shapes the nature of human limitations.

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Reference Frames: The Bootstrap Basis of Structures

Imagine being in the middle of deepest space and someone asks you where you are. An astronaut might
reply in terms of where the spaceship is with reference to some other point or object in space. Of course,
that astronaut is assuming that these points are instances of existents. In other words, at least two things
exist in the same way we saw above, i.e.: according to some epistemology. Now, two distinct elements
are invariably involved in describing location: the thing being located, such as a spaceship and the point
to which one refers in giving the location (an other). This reference frame method of description can be
found in many disciplines and, for the most part, constitutes the basis for measurement in general. How
the reference point, origin, or initial point is selected usually is immaterial for formalistic purposes, save
for some factors that may make the selection of a point more convenient than another. Again, one origin
is no more “correct” than another for purposes of naming a location or setting a standard of measurement,
as long as reference to it is consistent. For example, measuring lengths by feet probably is less preferable
to metric measurement, at least because of the convenience in calculation afforded by the latter. In any
event, whatever is described by a measurement system is always in terms of the reference point or unit
measure. This description essentially is a comparison by a degree with some element being referenced
to some point of origin in terms of a unit measure.
By definition, whenever one or more elements, or existents, are being compared to another, a rela-
tionship exists. There not only must be a way of knowing the degree to which elements or individual
existents are compared, but there must be a technique for evaluating whether the degree of comparison
holds. A metric scale may exist, but we must be able to judge (keeping in mind human bias) whether
one element compares to another in terms of that scale.
A structure, then contains two or more elements (one being a reference frame), which are said to
be evaluated as having a relation to each other according to a scale or rule, a process and structure of
which will be explained in depth below. Meter sticks so aptly exemplify the notion of a system where the
uncertain world is being explained in terms of a unit measure. The reference frame can be established
in several ways, each way bearing its own epistemological justification. This means people justify their
assertions by claiming a way of knowing the truth or why something exists. It is problematical, at best,
that humans can get outside themselves to see themselves, i.e., observe themselves without bias. That
is, they use themselves as their own reference frame. A person sees everything through their own eyes
and from their own perspective. We may claim something’s presence, but the nature of that presence can
be different for different observers. These differences necessarily temper our understanding of existents
and how existents relate to each other. Given this relativistic nature of existents, one cannot look to our
formulation and manipulation of structures as being absolute and unchangeable. There are many ways
of coming to know our place in the universe.
Reference frames also may refer to standardization and conventions. One starts with the assump-
tion that they cannot identify unequivocally “the” absolute truth. Truths often are regarded as relative
in terms of their being certain or absolute. There are those others for which there does not seem to be
any supporting reasons why they should exist, but they do, nevertheless. In this class are conventions,
standards, agreements, and so forth. Measurement standards fall into this category of reference frames.
In various countries there are standardization institutions, where there are kept as reference frames
various entities used to calibrate instruments for measurements (Metrology, 2017). “The” kilogram,
for example, is made of a platinum-iridium alloy and is housed at the International Bureau of Weights
and Measures (BIPM) in Sèvres, France. Ultimately, if one wants to find out what something “really”

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weighs, they would travel to France and compare what they have to this standard. As an aside, however,
there are at least two issues that shape the integrity of the comparison: the method by which the two are
compared (as in physical observation, instrumentation, etc.) and the bias of the observer. It may be said
that there is a philosophy of calibration, finding the “absolute” (Plato’s real) against which everything
else can be compared.
As those studying or working with logic, s/he should know that reference frames incorporate language
symbols, including the ones used for logic and mathematics. At this juncture, we need to be aware of the
symbols being used to express relationships. Often instructors will glide over using the “⊃” (“horseshoe”)
and right arrow (“→”). In this chapter, as a matter of typographical convenience, both will be used in-
terchangeably, the generic meaning being “follows from”. (Elsewhere in this chapter is a discussion of
operator priorities in a parenthesis-free expression in logic and mathematics being based on conventions.)
Conventions are for convenience (everyone “reading from the same sheet of music”) and help ensure
consistency in computational outcomes. Several standardization organizations help ensure that consis-
tency. In the US, it is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) which gives final approval to
standards created by organizations such as the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
and the Telecommunications Industry Association. Internationally, it is the International Organization
for Standardization (ISO) which adopts standards from various countries and modifies them so they can
be used consistently worldwide. Yes, in the exact sciences, such as logic and mathematics, there is a set
of standards that sets for signage – which symbols will be used to express operations.
One then can conclude that reference frames are bootstrap methods in a way similar to beginning
deductive arguments - definitions, conventions, axioms, and so forth.

The Issue of Boundary

When we measure something there are gradation marks on the instrument. We place a meter stick along-
side an object and observe the point indicated by a line with a number and say this is the length. Yet, the

Figure 1. ISO symbol standardization in mathematical logic

ISO 8000-2, 2009(E), p. 3.

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line has width and the observer ideally attempts to use its center point as the divider. To overcome the
problem when more precise measurements are required, we have refined instruments to where lines in
print are lines of light and even smaller. However, we have a level of precision beyond a certain scale, as
we cannot define a boundary, especially true in the quantum world. Take the measurement three centime-
ters, forty two millimeters ... or is it three centimeters, forty three millimeters? When using gauges, the
observer often makes a subjective decision as to whether to use the upper “limit” of a range to determine
a quantity or the lower “limit” of the range above that. The decision is the observer’s. This philosophical
problem was recognized by the discoverers of the calculus, where one attempted to take the area under a
curve. How many polygons does one draw in order to obtain the area bounded by a curve? We find that
it is up to the one doing the calculation, meeting a tolerance specified by the problem. Yet, the conun-
drum of the value of π explicates the problem of imprecision, the same imprecision, hence uncertainty,
described by Church, Heisenberg, Godel, and even Hume. (“Pi” and other incommensurable s, it might
be argued, is a description of a process, rather than a number.) We overlay this issue of imprecision on
that of the nature of what we extrapolate from the larger universe to construct what we’d like to think of
as a deductive system. We carry with that construction the very level of uncertainty by which we take
from that universe and our knowledge in applying it. That surely depicts the problem of bias.
We ask, too, whether this also describes the Social Construction of Reality of Peter L. Berger and
Thomas Luckmann (1966). Even though social agreement on what constitutes reality may satisfy the
“consensus” view of objectivity (Objectivity, 2017) it does not satisfy as an answer to Plato. A stark
historical example is how people viewed women as witches in the Medieval period, the realm of witches
being just as much as reality for those people as quantum uncertainty is to us. We still are left with a
collective bootstrapping in addressing the unknown. It is to Plato we turn for a discussion of reality, how
we perceive it, and how it is represented to us through the language, whose “letters” express bivalency.
In what follows as the discussion of this language describing the most fundamental Cartesian level –
Planck (or even sub-Planck) scale and its dialectic definition – what it is not (as in vacuum space), one
may refer to Plato in asking whether this process is the form about which Plato was referring to as reality
in its essence, the logic being its language.
Here, it is appropriate to propose that dialectics, the process, is the boundary between dimensions. At
the Planck scale, the most fundamental world, one should be reminded of “particles” flicking in and out
of existence, as though they are traversing dimensions. Too, Cartesian reductionism of these “particles”,
at least theoretically takes us further down in scale approaching that mathematical zero as a physical
dimension. The characteristic of this scale, boundary determination through dialectics, percolate up
through to the macro world and shape problems like identifying the nature of induction.

THE QUANTIFICATION OF ONTOLOGY: THE ORIGIN OF LOGICAL SPACE

So, what exists? Certainly from the historical perspective we gave above under “The Origins of Order”
we saw from many parts of the world the realization of the binary character of our world. The most
fundamental law – something’s existence in terms of what is not – is the process, that oscillating back
and forth, effectively in a timeless fashion. Something exists because of what it is not. This duo is the
simplest of relationships, the relationship that underpins identity. It is the simplest order, or arrangement.
It is what gives a whole its being. It is what allows a whole to be rendered, or analyzed, the Cartesian

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mandate for understanding. The dialectic binds the poles together and underpins how we give this real-
ization numeracy and magnitude.
What follows now is a consistent interpretation of how order unfolds. It also is the nature of compu-
tational space, followed by the foundations of mathematics: arithmetic and its follow-on, mathematics.
As a note the ideas presented here are partially drawn or repeated verbatim from some of my previous
works cited in the paragraphs (Horne, 1997, 2015).
One familiar with the literature in logic will notice a description of how a “truth table” unfolds. The
standard rendition of these tables uses an “F” or a “T”. The word “truth” can be confusing to students,
even though it normally is explained that this word in logic refers to logical truth and has little or no
relationship to “absolute” or “real” truth. That is, logical truth is analogous to arithmetic truth, such as a
computational result, x + y = z, the “z” being the truth. However, what follows is a description of how the
word can assume a new content, based on a philosophy of development. That is, the philosophy becomes
the semantics of the syntax of the logical truth. This becomes rather controversial, as the argument is
in favor of a very real and deep structure represented by the logic described below. Here and there the
reader will see the word “truth” in quotes, as in “truth table” to call attention to the special meaning
given to it by the logicians, i.e., logical truth. We now will see how the two “poles” of the dialectic are
displayed in logical space.

What Is an Existent?

In the following is a reference to “existents”, and one should review the discussion above about ontology,
i.e. what does exist. This does not mean that something specifically exists, but there are entities that may
be referred to as existents, things that simply are, whether they reside in a Platonic, Aristotelian, or other
world. “Existent”, then, is a term that sits on the boundary of the abstract (mental) and actual (physical)
world, again referring to the dialectic that brings each into being be cause of the other. “Existent”, then,
is a process term, rather than something static (Table 1).
The placeholder contains one existent, 0. It also can contain the existent 1. Of course there may be
other identities (as in multivalent logics), but the most basic is something (0) and an other (1). It might
be noted in passing that the “p” represents half of the dialectic, something to which we will return shortly
(Table 2).
A single Cartesian division, or cut (Rapoport, 2009), creates the simplest of relationships, one part in
terms of the other to make up the whole. P is the placeholder. The 0 and 1 say which piece is designated
for that placeholder.
However, there is the other existent because of the first, and it, too can have the identity of either 0
or 1. This second existent can be represented by “q” (although like the first, any symbol could be used).

Table 1. This existent must be in a place, p, and is

represented by 0. P is a placeholder represented Table 2. The “other” of zero
by 0. p
1
p
0

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There is a process outside something in and of itself that gives it is identity – that dialectic that calls
from within that something to produce what it is not (Table 3).
This is the placeholder representing that second half of the dialectic. Now we have the simplest relation
demarcated by the placeholder for existents p and q. Each placeholder tells the state of the existent, 0 or 1.
That existent is itself, or equal (=). Dialectically it stands aside from itself, or its “other”, in math-
ematics “reflexive” (xRx). So, x=x → xRx. Equality implies that it relates itself to itself (reflects back
on itself). Of course, identity is symmetric (x relates to x in the same way x relates back) and transitive
(x passes everything to x and x passes everything it get to x). Reflexivity also is one of the properties of
equality; that is, it looks back on itself outside itself. Otherwise stated, 0 is itself, as well as 1 is itself,
i.e., identity; it is reflexive in that it identifies itself dialectically, “sees” its other in itself, analogous to
mirror image. We are now able to say with the two placeholders representing the dialectic (Table 4).
Any symbols could be used, of course, as long as one can refer to the placeholder. (Note: Both, 0
and 1 have nothing necessarily to do with truth or falsity of propositions in this rendition of logic, or in
quantities, although there are some parallels and crossovers.)

Relationship

Differentiation is the foundation of relationship. This identifies itself through its other, that. That also
identifies itself through its other, this. This is to that, and that is to this. As a reminder, there is the
simplest of orders – binary that is the minimum required for a relationship in the most basic of physical
dimensions – the first, a line.
Now, with respect to an existent, there stands the:

• Existent as itself, related to itself, or equality;

• Existent with respect to the other existent;
• The other existent related to first existent;
• The other existent related to itself.

P as the first half of the dialectic generates not only the first existent but the other existent, as well
(Table 5).
This may be regarded as a one-dimensional logical space. We now venture into two-dimensional space.
It says of the field of relations that the existent and its other may be related in maximally four distinct
ways. Further horizontal arrangement of the existents 0 and 1 would be a repetition of what has already
been stated. These are the permutations of relations.
However, the two existents relate in four ways according to specific or definite order set by succession,
the formal rendition of which is by the Table of Relational Completeness. As the p the placeholder repre-
sents the generator, q as the dialectic opposite placeholder shall be p’s other, also a generator (Table 6).

Table 3. Zero’s other in same placeholder Table 4. The existent 0 and its other

q q p q
0 1 0 0

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The Core of Logics

Table 5. Something and its other seeing itself as Table 6. Table of relational completeness
its other
p q Relationship
p 0 0 Existent as is related to or contained within itself.
0 0 0 1 1 0 1 Existent as is related to or containing its other
1 0 1 0 1 1 0 Existent’s other as is related to or containing the
existent; yet, this is the “other” of 0-1.
1 1 Existent’s other as is related to or containing itself.

Here is incorporated the traditional “implies” to include the idea of “contains”.

As we have just seen and will see below, logical space canonization does not result from an arbi-
trary process; it is not an invention, but follows naturally as ordering expressed in the space-time (S-T)
manifold (Table 7).
To this point, we know of the atomic existent, either 0 or 1. Together pq causes p to generate 0011
as a compound existent, and q to generate 0101 as a compound existent, as in the table above. There is
a reason for referring to space-time. Perforce, we are caught in a dimension that is “moving forward”;
we are not at rest. We apprehend at a moment, the following moment dependent upon the previous. The
way we regard the present depends upon the previous. To project to the future requires an assessment of
the present and past, an if-then situation. This appears obvious, but something that is not often brought
into logic class discussions.

The Meaning of Deduction

What immediately follows sparked my interest in the early 1980 to explore the “why” of the philosophy
mechanically being taught in the course for which this author was a teaching assistant. Beginning logic
students are told that the intellectual world is constructed deductively and inductively. A deductive re-
lationship is a closed system, where there is a boundary and elements within it. A deductive argument
is one in which true premises guarantee a true conclusion. That is, if the premises are true, so is the
conclusion. The conclusion is contained by the premises, the foundational word being “if”, this word
imparting the meaning to “logical truth”. By contrast an inductive argument is one where the conclusion
follows from the premises with a certainty of less than one; it follows only with a probability.
A word should be said about objections based on multi-valued logics, fuzzy sets, uncertainty, and
the assertions that out universe cannot be described completely in binary terms. There are two ways of
addressing this. Again, the above does not argue that the world is made up of objects. That is ontology

Table 7. Space-time rendition of relationships

Element P Element Q S-T Axis

0 0 0s are parallel or contains itself
0 1 0 precedes, or 0 contains 1
1 0 0 succeeds 1, or is contained by 1
1 1 1s are parallel or contains itself

21
 
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is a process not an object, i.e., dialectics. As a note modern logics, such as fuzzy sets (Fuzzy sets, 2017)
will attempt to grade a membership of something in a set (among other techniques), thus placing them
more in the realm of inductive logic techniques. In addition, one may argue that multi-valency can be
reduced to that most basic form of expression: bivalency, just as the computer language of 0-1 does. It
is all a matter of how one establishes the “dictionary of expressibility and categorization, processes that
are inherently biased.
Embedded but ubiquitous in propositional and subsequent logic is “material implication”, usually
symbolized by “⊃”, or the “horseshoe”. In studying formal logic systems, it is learned that this “if...
then” relationship supports the whole concept of formal logic. We discussed “bootstrapping” above, and
this operator describes it. IF the premises are true, then [whatever] the conclusion is certain … again,
IF the argument is deductive. To argue deductively is to argue in a circular fashion. There is no new
information. A deductive argument is analytical; one cuts up a whole into pieces in order to understand
that whole, geometry being a stark example.
An inductive system, by contrast, is open with ill-defined boundaries, with argumentation being such
that there is only a probability that the conclusion can be derived from the premises.
A confusion, though, arises in attempting to convey the idea of “material implication” with bizarre
examples, such as the logical truth of the statement “If hogs persons have 18 square ears, then most
elephants have two” (0 ⊃ 1). That is, the false implies a true. Intuitively, this does not make sense,
and explaining each row of a “truth” table consistently in this manner gets even more confusing. It is
controversial at best whether ordinary language can be rendered by this symbolism (Paradox of mate-
rial implication, 2017). These problems were not lost on MacColl (1906) in his work Symbolic Logic
and its Applications, from which C.S. Lewis basically plagiarized his ideas in his work on modal logic
(MacColl, 2017). It was my being uncomfortable in attempting to provide this type of explanation to
students that prompted my explorations. The explanation that entailment (Entailment, 2017), that a
conclusion logically follows from the premises, didn’t help much, either. All the examples seemed to
revert to ordinary language ideas of validity. There needed to be a syntactical (structural) explanation.
If the sentences were not interpreted, what would be the meaning of the relationship? The conditional
“if” is critical, suggesting that our whole world, or perceptions, and very being is contingent. Let’s look
at the “truth table” of the operator as it is typically presented (Table 8).
It dawned on me that being described here was the essence of deduction. Deduction concerns “truth”
related to “false” in a special way. “Truth” as is well known to logicians is not necessarily the same as
empirical (observed, experienced - sense-based) truth. Logical truth (2017) is analogous to mathematics;
it is necessarily the case, just as adding of two numbers in a specific base yields another in that base.
Computer scientists render “truth” tables in terms of zeros and ones. Save for one exception if the num-
ber (0 or 1) equals itself or the former was smaller than the larger, the result is true. What was peculiar

Table 8. The traditional way of presenting a table with the Fs and Ts

p q p⊃q
T T T
T F F
F T T
F F T

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about this other row where the one (1) preceded the zero (0) and the result was false. It seemed obvious
that there should be a consistent interpretation, one that had the same foundations or parameters used
to view the other three rows. All this resulted in my first paper before the Louisiana State Philosophical
Association in the Fall of 1983, “On Resolving the Paradox of Material Implication”, the “paradox” of
how truth could be distributed over such disparate relationships.
By inspection and arithmetically the relationship of zero to zero, one to zero, and one to one is true
because of equality and ascendancy. That is, it is true that a number equals itself (0 = 0 and 1 = 1). It
also is the case that one follows 0 in order of magnitude; it is true that one is larger than zero. It is not
the case that 0 is larger than 1. Being larger or smaller means something is contained (or not) within
something else. Too, something can contain itself (or be equal to itself). This is to say that the “truth
table” when rendered as a “counting table” of zeros and ones will display containment. Computer texts
often will describe the table in such fashion (Table 9).
This is fine for describing an obvious numerical relationship, but what is its relation to logic, espe-
cially in explaining “deduction”?
If we look at deduction as a whole containing its parts, this starts to make more sense. It is obvious
that something is what it is; it contains itself. In terms of magnitude, zero obviously precedes the one,
but what would the one represent in deduction? Clearly it would be the whole, but philosophically, it is
the unexamined whole. We do not know anything about this whole until we break it down, or analyze
it. Such was Descartes’ idea about being able to understand the whole only by looking at its pieces
(Descartes, 1641). Hence, we treat the 0 not as false but simply as the unknown. How does this relate to
containment? Unknown is unknown; it contains itself; unknown is what it is: unknown. This we know
as “certain”, or deductively. So, zero – signifying the unknown - follows from zero. Coming from that
unknown is information, or one (1). Information can emerge from the unknown. That there is such
emergence means that such is the case, or true. This is what we deem “certain”. It is not the case that
the unknown comes from the known. This is similar to saying that one can reverse entropy. Once it is
known, that is it. Note that we are referring to a special type of information entropy (Horne, “Ontology
of randomness”, 2017). For the last row, one containing itself obviously is true.
All through this explanation and throughout all explanations of deduction, “certainty” is defined in
terms of the “material implication”. If something is the case then something else follows. There is a
certainty whose integrity depends upon the one constructing the relationship, the first half being critical.
Here, one confronts directly human biases. We impart all of our prejudices to the antecedent. What follows
is “contaminated” by the prejudice. To my knowledge there is nowhere else this consistent interpretation
of this operator in terms of ontological containment. It will be shown below that this is only one operator
that appears in an arithmetically determined sequence of operators (f0 – f15) completely describing the
basic two-dimensional binary world, the world that express completely what any computer can. But the

Table 9. Sensible way of presenting “material implication” (f13)

p q p⊃q
0 0 1
0 1 1
1 0 0
1 1 1

23
 
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student should not be caught up with the arithmetic but think about the nature of this world, something
that the following will do.
The core of deduction is the closed system, that which can contain (including the system containing
itself) or cannot contain. Here, the placeholder p holds 1 – that which emerges from 0 as information
(that which is certain). The “smaller” - information - cannot contain the “larger” - the vast realm of
the unknown from which knowledge comes. There is only one way the 1 can “contain “ the zero – by
induction, or via representation. Think again of Plato and the forms “spawning” their examples. Again,
think of the newsprint dots (the examples) as being as 1s generated from what is supposed to be solid
(1, the “true”), the origin, the whole, the “real”. The sample might be regarded as an instantiation of the
general, a single table representing the form of “tableness”. One takes these “smaller” entities, the dots
and synthesizes -inductively – the “solid”, i.e., one containing, or “implying” the zero. For a specific
example in sociology, think of how each person in a population may think about an issue. Elections
specifically describe opinions by the means of the vote. Yet, pollsters will estimate how the populations
feels by their surveys. The actual feelings to be determined by the vote would be the “0”, the unknown,
and the sampling the “1”.
Returning to the issue of human prejudice for a moment, the student should realize that a deductive
enclosure is constructed by humans – the definitions, axioms, assumptions, and all that, the emphasis
being on the word and concept “construct”. The enclosure is our own making. In essence, there really
may not be such a thing as “deduction”. If there is, it merely is a reference frame, as discussed above.
In the polling example just described, the quality of assessment – the research or survey instrument – a
totally dependent upon the ones creating it, an issue of human bias.
So, let us recapitulate this famous table, giving it for the first time a consistent interpretation with
philosophical import (Table 10).
To summarize, we see that things contain themselves, i.e., identity. The unknown contains itself and
information contains information. That is, in both these cases, there is information, or 1. What is un-
known surely is larger than the known, i.e., the unknown contains the known. That, too, is information.
What is not information, 0, is the known (1) containing the unknown (0). At this same time, this may
be regarded as the opposite of closed, the generation of “certain” information, certainty (uncertainty),
induction (the “contradiction” of deduction), all the “other” of 0 ⊃ 1. One also may say here that 1 ⊃ 0
represents induction, where with some information the person extrapolates from that sample (1) what s/
he thinks is unknown, 0. One might not know how exactly how a population voted, but an idea may be

Table 10. Consistent interpretation of function 13

p q p⊃q
0 0 1 0 contains itself
0 1 1 0 contains a 1
1 0 0 1 cannot contain a 0
1 1 1 1 contains itself
where 0 = false and 1 = true for the benefit of those living in conventional schools of thought.
(Note: As somewhat of a digression, the two compound existents may take other forms, such as 1100 and 1010, 1010, 1100, etc., but there
must be a complete expression of possibilities, or permutations, of relationships. The complete display of these existents is the Table of
Functional Completeness (ToFC), discussed below.)

24

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gained by asking those in a sample how they did. The newsprint example discussed elsewhere allows
one to get an idea of the complete (“solid”) through the relatively few dots.
To regard the above in describing a quantum cosmology, 0 generates 0, 0 being the unknown or
the singularity, or chaos. Chaos, 0 generates order (cf: Kauffman, 1988), our universe. 1 as order does
not generate chaos (it is representative of entropy). 1, as order, generates order. One may regard 0 as a
singularity, the inchoate, as in the Vedas, Hesiod, and Lucretius, and 1 as the universe emerging from
that chaos, as was explained above.
Entropy is the dispersal of energy, but this occurs because of a condition giving rise to it, the lack
of entropy, or energy. The known – be it known to be false or true - “emerges” from what is not known.
This is not quite the same as entropy as disorder, or randomness. It is not Shannon’s information entropy.
It is not quite a Bolzmann entropy (Horne, 2017). It is a new type of information entropy in that is an
order emerging from chaos.
Measurement is a “restriction” on what previously is undefined, as in demarcating an area of land or
identifying a specific quantity of anything – cut out from larger entity. In chaos theory, alluded to above,
order (information, entropy) comes from the inchoate, also the undefined. Each concept in the top row
is related to the adjacent one in terms of being unformed, or unordered. The bottom row is the opposite
– defined, ordered, known, and so forth. This is to say that the deduction operator, that “horseshoe”,
relates these notions in a consistent manner. They are parallel to each other – contain themselves, or
they do or do not contain the other. So, the unknown, as well as the known each contain themselves, but
the unknown surely is a world much larger (and contains) than what we know. The same is the case for
entropy. From the “potential” (no entropy, energy, etc.) comes a “collapse”, an entity describing what is
“used up”, a dispersal of potential, etc. Once something is known, it cannot be unknown. Any changes
to what is thought to be known may occur, but this simply is the emergence of more order, or knowl-
edge. Given dissipative processes (1984,), one cannot go in reverse, as in “unlighting” a fire, reversing
a nuclear reaction, or “unbreaking” an egg. The “false” character of 1 ⊃ 0 reflects not only induction
but this “arrow of time” process.
Again, we are not equating information with truth (such as the ultimate nature of what is a la Plato
or Aristotle); most logicians will correctly teach 0 as logically false and 1 as logically true through the
word “if”. We are merely looking at different semantics and basic ideas through the deductive process,
saying how inclusion can occur. Each example show a consistent interpretation of something (as in
chaotic, measured, etc.) containing, or being itself, or including (or not) its opposite.
As an aside, these tables are supposed to be semantic-free, i.e., true regardless of the symbols placed
in them. For example, the above table just as easily and legitimately be rendered as Table 12 shows.
It is left as an exercise for the student to ask if a binary world were expressed with the asterisk and
percentage symbols (or any other), would the idea of ascending magnitude occur to her/him? This is an
issue of semantics, where one is concerned with the content, rather than the form. We referred t binary
systems (Binary number, 2017) above, as in the I-Ching, where the display, itself imparted the notion

Table 11. Expanded semantics illustrating a containment relationship

0 means: no entropy unknown undefined chaotic

1 means: entropy known (to be false or true) measured ordered

25
 
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Table 12. Arbitrary symbols replacing zeros and ones

p q p⊃q
* * %
* % %
% * *
% % %

of order. As a part of this exercise, the student should explore the deeper relationship between syntax
and semantics. Here, a dialectical relationship exists, the former being explained in terms of the latter
and vice versa. A question could be, “when can a semantics become a syntax?” One clue: “meta”, the
description/analysis of a description/analysis.

The Development of a Function: Setting the Ontology in Motion

The 0101 (q) dialectically is identified through its compound existent terms of 0011 (p) and vice versa.
This identification of compound existents (the single existents being 0 and 1) in terms of each other
establishes the foundation for generating other compound existents. That generation is accomplished by
the means of the function (Horne, 2015).
The four rows of permutations of existent relationships produce a 16-column space, the Table of
Functional Completeness (ToFC). This is generated by the same method as with the above tables -
serially and in ascending order (binary counting), in this case, moving across, each column vertically
and downwardly read from 0000 to 1111. Admittedly, this directionality may be culturally bound. In
the West, people read in a left-to-right direction, but in other cultures it is from right-to-left. Hence, it
may be more “natural” to these folks to have the ToFC start from the origin and expand to the left and
upward (“northwest”) or left and downward (“southwest”) . In any case, the ToFC displays an increas-
ing magnitude, starting from a center, or origin, regardless of which corner this grows. The ToFC is
patterned – ordered - and not haphazard. It is not a mere table of permutation; it is not just an elaborate
truth table (Table 13).
Columns are headed by numerals 0 through 15 to designate the particular function. The bottom row
designates the negative functional correlate. While the ToFC includes the p and q “generators”, these
could be omitted, leaving the functions as operators, as well as objects. In this reference space, f3 is always
in the p column and f5 in q column. (One possible semantic may be the space as bounded by degrees of

Table 13. Table of functional completeness (ToFC)

The highlighted columns are the usual four operators presented t logic students.

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knowing – binary probabilities - from totally unknown - 0000 to totally known - 1111.) Each operator
may be given a name as a reference, but the ordering principle does not change (Table 14).
This is only one interpretation of the operators. There may other names, such as “reverse implica-
tion” for “⊂”. Such is incidental to each function being independent of the others, the functions ordered
in ascending magnitude, and a function simultaneously being an operator, an operand, and a result of
an operation. One may use the words “function”, “operator”, “connector”, “operand”, and so forth for
each f0 through f15 but in the proper context.
For typographical convenience, the function number as a subscript may also be see below as not in
subscript format. For example, “f11” may appear as “f11”. Functions in this two variable system have
four parts, each part operating over a row of the possible space described above. In referring to atomic
existents, row 3 for function 4, is read, “function 4 relates 1 (in placeholder p) to 0 (in placeholder q)
to yield 0 (third row under the f4 column).” Compound existents as functions are related by reading all
four digits of the function vertically and operating over two other functions to yield a third. Each row
of the zeros and ones of the function is a “deductive instance,” where there is a description of a specific
relationship between two points in space-time. The third row, for example, has the deductive instances
(of several functions) of 1 and 0 to yield 1. This does not mean that the essence of deduction has been
violated, i.e., the known can contain the unknown. As one can see under the f13 column, one still does not
contain the zero. For the other columns in which ones do contain the zero, other functions, or operators,
are involved. These have different meanings tan the f13 one defining deduction. It is left to the student to
refer to the interpretation table above and think about any underpinning philosophy as was done for f13.
The ToFC is not truly new in itself (Church, 1956, p. 37; Copi, 1979, p. 173; Truth table, 2017), but
it should be emphasized how the table emerges from the binary counting from 0000 through 1111, not
simply as a table reflecting all the permutations of 0s and 1s in a four-place group. My introducing the
ToFC in an introductory course also gives the student a sense of completeness, indeed, as other say,

Table 14. Names assigned to functions, repetitious functions highlighted in blue, the usual four in green

27
 
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“functional completeness.” This also is necessary for describing three-dimensional logical space (done
below). The ToFC also clarifies how the functional notation (as rendered by Church, Copi, and others)
makes the navigation through binary spaces (as in the so-called truth tables) more efficient, as will be
seen later. One may think analogously to teaching a grammar and composition student only the partial
conjugation of a verb, such as the active voice simple tense of “to have”. There is the passive voice,
perfect tense, as well. This complete description reflects how “to have” behaves over all time spans. For
example, a person has been had (taken advantage of, or literally has been made). Of course, proofs are
greatly shortened using all 16 functions. The other extreme is using only one function and its negation,
the disjunction (f7) and conjunct (f1) operators being the most frequently used to discuss minimal systems.
A further word needs to be said about the complete expression by use of all 16 functions. Even though
it is not necessary to use them all, one should be aware that such is done to appreciate the completeness
of the logical space generated by the ToFC.
The present description follows from a serial or successive basis for generating existents, as reflected
by the section above, “Ontology - The Origin of Logical Space”. Is this development immediately vital
to the mechanics of calculating the common four logical relationships in order of ascending scope - (and
- & [also∧], or −∨, “material implication” − ⊃, and equivalence − ≡)? Surely, not, but the ordering
principle preserves consistent systematic development and conforms to how the logic maps to the real
world. (Horne, 1997, 2015). It will be seen later than such counting from 0000 through 1111 has as its
basis postulates describing how that counting occurs (Peano, 1889). There are minimally two compound
existents and they may be related only in a certain number of ways (16) in two-dimensional space.
A function is a way of saying what will emerge from a relationship. Functions designate ways of
relating functions to each other, as well as the results of relationships. One should be reminded that such
connectives can be an object in the form of a operand or result of an operation or the operation, process,
or computation, itself. An operator/function is a generator, as well as a product. This dialectical character
of binary space may confuse one searching for either object or process, not unlike one staring at one of
Escher’s paintings attempting to discern whether the staircase is ascending or descending (Escher, 2017).
Binary-valued logic (binary logic, for short) relates two compound existents and the result is another
compound existent. For compound existents (functions) the function operating over that relationship
produces a third entity, also a function, another compound existent. The particular function number shows
that the existents are related in a specific way for that function. The result is unique for that function.
Connectives, operators, and functions, as well as inference rules, proofs, and any well formed formula
are synonyms, or descriptions of processes that allow one to travel within binary logical space. More
will be explained below. For now, however, we can say that a function being a process just as much as
an object and the fact that we can travel this space sets the stage for each function being recursive, it
ultimately generating itself.
While there has been a focus on dyadic relationships, more complex ones may be expressed by units
of dyadic ones. The ToFC displays the space generated by two variables, but larger tables of binary space
and involving more variables simply are “multiples” of two variable tables. The number of rows in a
table of binary space equals 2n, n being the number of variables. (Note from above that if the number
of variables is one, then there are only two rows, reflecting one existent and its other.). Three variables
require eight rows. Here, one should note the “doubling” of rows in a two variable table. For a four
variable table the rows are doubled again to account for the additional variable. The lesson in all of this
is that any table simply is a multiple of the original ToFC building block. Such allows this ToFC to be
extended infinitely. We should observe here that F0 through f7 is the negative mirror image of f8 through

28

The Core of Logics

f15. That is, the negation operator, or connector, is implicit in the ToFC. From this might be constructed
a “negative table of functional completeness”, displaying a “number line” extending infinitely in both
the left and right directions. Besides the ToFC containing the Boolean operators, thus illustrating the
convergence of logic and mathematics (as the highlighted columns in the ToFC above llustrate), it also
as that number line is the basis of all arithmetic and subsequent mathematics. That is, one moves back
and forth on that line to achieve all computations. A challenge to this statement can be met easily by
the computer program familiar with machine code saying that highly complex mathematical operations
can be done on a computer, the various rules, configurations, registers, etc. (as through an assembly
program) being analogous to a logic system. There is a way of reducing the dizzying and eye-straining
exercise of ordering these 0s and 1s properly, and such is crucial in “truth” table computations. We now
arrive at how the ToFC can be used in this way.

“Truth” Tables and the New Canonization (From Horne, 2015)

Already, through the ToFC we see a spacial shortening from a four-place representation of an operator,
as in AND - 0001 and its functional notation f1. This does not seem like much, but when there is a large
binary array (Binary array figures, 2017), as a multi-variable “truth table” (Logical truth, 2017) would
be, the functional notation rapidly shortens calculations, as will be seen in Table 15.
In the ToFC p, read downward is 0011, corresponding to f3, and q is 0101, or f5. The equivalence,
(≡) corresponds to f9. Functions relate functions to functions, as we see with f3, and f5 . In this case, we
may say: f9(f3, f5) ⊃ f9.
Let’s see how the function canonization shortens truth table rendition. The basic table displaying the
permutations of 0s and 1 for two variables as the Table 16 illustrates.
However, with our functional notation, one can see as shown in Table 17.
The shortened version of the table, then, is shown in Table 18.
Any function operating over f3, and f5, or the four permutations of 0 and 1, will yield itself. That is,
the function defines itself, as in f9(f3, f5) ⊃ f9, and f10(f3, f5) ⊃ f10. The “→” will be used interchangeably
with “⊃” for typographical convenience.
Doing a calculation like f10(f12, f4) → f11 follows the same procedure as with the standard four – OR,
AND, CONAINS (“implication”), and EQUIVALENCE. First, f10 means the numbers shown in Table 19.
The resultant value is 1 when 0 is the second value in the relationship. Otherwise, the resultant is 0.
It also is the negation of f5. Again, note that the interpretation of this function 10, “>0” - zero follows
– can and does vary with other authors. For example, one may see “projection function” (Projection
function, 2017). We also may use the function symbol “~q”.

Table 15. Truth table expression from the TFC, Table 16. Permutations of 0s and 1 for two vari-
f9, equivalence ables

p q p≡q p q

0 0 1 0 0

0 1 0 0 1

1 0 0 1 0

1 1 1 1 1

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Table 17. Permutation table comparing normal Table 18. Shortened permutation table using only
with functional notation, p = 0011 (f3) and q= functional notation
0101 (f5)
p q
p q p q f3 f5
0 0
0 1 = f3 f5
1 0
1 1

Table 19. Truth table for f10

p q p >0 q
0 0 1
0 1 0
1 0 1
1 1 0

Let’s do computation of two other functions using “>0”, or f10. Substitute the f12 and f4 values for
the ones in p and q, i.e, p = 1100 and q = 0100. That is, f10 will operate over f12 and f4. We now have
the standard truth table shown in Table 20.
Compared to the space occupied by the table immediately above for the “>0” operator, one can see,
the notation “f10(f12, f4) → f11” considerably reduces the number of extra characters (zeros, ones, con-
nectors, and the truth table grid).
Presenting all 15 functions does not add much to the extant rendering of the propositional calculus in
logic textbooks, as standard truth tables with only four operators suffice quite well for some pedagogical
reasons, a point we have noted elsewhere. However, the value of a complete rendering of the functions
starts to emerge in examining an undefined binary space; there will be many sequences of 0s and 1s that
will not be in the domain of those expressed by the standard four operators, as with calculations like f10
over f12 and f4, which is f11. We will discuss this later in regarding pattern recognition in large binary arrays.
Our canonization follows normal conventions in displaying functional computations in mathematics;
it just isn’t standard in propositional logic, yet. For f11 whenever q as 0 follows either the 0 or 1 value
for p, the value is 1; if 1 follows, the value is 0. This 1011, f11, now is a function that can be used to

Table 20. Truth table for f10(f12, f4) → f11

p q p >0 q
1 0 1
1 1 0
0 0 1
0 0 1

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compute others; the result of a computation now can be an operator. Again, it should be emphasized that
dialectical character of any function, fn means that it is just as much an operator as it is a result, although
this observation often is omitted from usual presentations in textbooks. The significance is that know-
ing that all the 16 operators, the only ones in dyadic logical space, also are operands is evidence for the
observation that binary logical space is closed. The method for computing with any function is exactly
the same method as done with the standard connectives, or operators, although it is not standard to see
those other operators, or functions, such as the f10.
As a reminder, with three or more variables, it is the rule that the operator signifies that governs the
value. For three variables, say p, q, and r, we have what is shown in Table 21.
Notice the vast white areas on the right-hand side once occupied by 0s and 1s, now abbreviated by
the functions. It is convenient to mark off groups of four rows, as indicated by the dark horizontal black
separator line, corresponding to the variable placement on the left and the four place holders of any
function on the right.
For a standard truth table calculation with four variables, let’s say p, q, r, and s, we have what is
shown in Table 22.

Table 21. Three variable table of two-dimensional logical space

f0 = 0000
f3 = 0011
f5 = 0101
f15 = 1111

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Table 22. Four-variable table

This table can be shortened considerably by replacing each four-place vertical unit of zeros and ones
by the equivalent function. So, 0101 becomes f5, 1111, f15, and so forth. See Table 23.
To appreciate the space saving nature of the canonization, it is worthy to render this table as shown
in Table 24.
All complex expressions ultimately are reduced to a final dyadic, or two-place computation. For
example, a standard formula, such as (p v q) ⊃ (q & p) is written as f13(f7(f3, f5), f1(f5, f3)), the main
operator being ⊃, implication, or f13. Since the f3 and f5 define or automatically produce f7, they are not
necessary, so we have, instead, f13(f7, f1(f5, f3)), the result being f9, or equivalence. Whenever you see f3,
f5 inside the () - operands, simply ignore the operands and use only the operator.
In general, the syntax for dyadic computations is fn(fx, fy) → fp,, where fn represents a binary operator,
such as f7, or 0111. The fx and fy represent the operands, and the fp is the result of the computation. N-
adic computations take the form fq(fn(fx, fy) → fp,)) → fr ... f*, with the q, n being subscripts designating
operators, and being operands. The p and r are results of the computation. It cannot be emphasized enough
that any function, as fr and f* in this case, can be an operator, as well as an operand, depending upon its
placement in the syntax. Such is one of the factors making binary logical space closed, each function

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Table 23. Shortened table using functional notation

Grayed areas are optional in the display.

Everything in yellow is a result of a computation. Everything to the left of the innermost vertical bold red line refers to the functions used
to compute the values (operands). To the right of this line and above the lowermost horizontal bold red line are the operands.

being in dialectical relationship with the others (one in terms of the others), where, as observed before,
it can serve in an opposite capacity – operator or operand. Process as an operator becomes the object of
an operator (a result of a computation), and object as a function becomes a process. For example, f13 is
the material implication operator, but it also can be the result of a computation.
Evaluation is like that done in any parenthesis notation, working from the innermost parentheses to
the outermost. It is optional whether to re-iterate the f3 and f5 underneath the formula being evaluated,
as these values already exist in the permutation table. They have been left in to demonstrate that many
computations can be done simply by inspecting the function.

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Table 24. Four variable table in only terms of functional notation

Functions as Homeostats (Adapted From Horne, 2015)

Each of the 16 functions is a subsystem and homeostatic (maintaining itself), as reflected by recursively
feeding functions outputs back in itself. (Horne, 2015). By itself recursive feedback may not be intel-
lectually interesting; admittedly, by itself it is trivial. However, it becomes philosophically interesting in
terms of systems, as we will see below. Deductive worlds are reputedly closed (tongue-in-cheek and with
a small giggle) and minimally have to maintain themselves, i.e., be homeostatic (Ashby, 1954). Interest
is heightened further when computer programs as being living entities are introduced (Digital organism
2017). One metaphorically raises the ante in referring to Nick Bostrom (2003), who argues that we are
nothing but some entity’s digital simulation. Yes, we are talking about zeros and ones.
Here is how that recursion works. Schematically, we start with as the initial step:

fn (f3, f5) → fp,

where

n = any function
p is the result

Since each output is binary, it will be found as a column in logical space, hence contained within the
system and deduced. It is not new information.
The next step is to see how far we can replace the p placeholder before the output is repeated:

fn (fp, f5) → fq,

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fq being a new output. If fq = fp, the process stops, this same output substituted in the p placeholder
producing the same and previous computation. Otherwise, the process continues until the output is the
same as a previous one. The process is done for the q placeholder.

fn (f3, fp) → fq .

The following example of f2 illustrates the process. Note the general format: f*(fx in the p position,
fy in the q position) → f – new

1. f2(f3,f5) = 0010 = f2

The f3 occupies the p position and the f5 is in the q position. The output, f2, is the function, itself.

2a. f2(f2, f5) = 0010 = f2.

The output f2 from above now is in the p position for this first “branching”. The “p” half terminates,
since the output of f2 is a repetition of a previous output, f2, and its reprocessing as an input obviously
will result in another repetition of f2. So, we see what happens when f2 occupies the q placeholder.

2b. f2(f3, f2) = 0001= f1 .

For the second branching, the q position is occupied by the f2 output in step 1. That is the order to
be evaluated is f3, f2, and NOT f2, f3. Again, the “f2” can appear as “f2” for typographical convenience.

3a. f2(f1, f5) = 0000 = f0

From the above step, the f1 output occupies the p position. This half now outputs f0. We need to see
what happens when f0 occupies both the p and q placeholders.
The next step is f2(f0,f5) with f0 being in the p position. F2(f0, f5) → 0 . Here, this “branch” terminates,
as recycling the output f0 through p would produce f0 again. What happens wih f0 in the q position?
The second part with f0 being the output is to have f0 occupy the q position,

f2(f5,f0). F2(f3. F5) → f2.

Of course, this takes us back to step 1.

The f1 function from step 2b has been resolved for the p placeholder. We now see what happens with
the q placeholder.

3b. f2(f3,f1) = 0010 = f2

This half terminates with f1, by virtue of 2b.

The function is unstable ultimately for only four iterations.
A state diagram exhibiting its homeostatic behavior may represent each operator. The one for f2
looks like the diagram in Figure 2.

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Figure 2. F2 state diagram exhibiting homeostatic behavior

Table 25. Functional recursion for f7

f7 Iteration 1
+
f7(f7,f5) →f7∣
↕ Branchings
- f7(f3,f5)→ f7
F
f7(f3,f7) →f7|

These are the state diagrams for the f7 and f9 homeostatic functions. The vertical bar “|” indicates
termination of a recursion, or iteration, i.e., when the outputted function is a repetition of a previously
outputted function.
Otherwise depicted, this function appears as shown in Figure 3.
Here, a dark vertical line – an alternate way to avoid the clutter of a crossing backtrack line- stops
the cycle.
Function 13 – deduction - looks like Figure 4.
By feeding the outputs back to the four-digit operator as inputs, the outputs eventually will be repeti-
tive, and the processing by the function will stabilize. Again, from the above, this recursion is another
aspect of the function being just as much an object as a process.
Similarly, a deductive logic proof seeks stability. A proof consists of premises and a conclusion.
The collection of premises “works its way” through logical space to yield that conclusion. The proof

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Table 26. Functional recursion for f9

f9 Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3

↑
f9(f3,f5) →f9∣ f9(f5,f5) →f15|
f9(f3, f5) → f9
↓ f9(f9,f5)→ f3 f9(f15,f5) → f5
Branchings
f9(f3,f5) ⇒f9|
f9(f3,f3) →f15
f9(f3,f5) →f9|
f9(f3,f15) →f3
f9(f3,f3) →f15|

f9(f5,f5) →f15|
f9(f3,f9) →f5
f9(f3,f5) →f9|

Figure 3. State diagram for f9

will accept information (other functions) as premises and process them, ultimately reaching a goal state
of stabilization, where the output is a repetition of the input. Feeding this input back into the proof as
premises simply repeats the proof. In both cases, the function and the proof, there is no longer produced
any new information, there being be stabilization, the function(s) having reach the goal or deductive
state. A system (be it a single operator interacting with other operators or a proof) that interacts with its
environment and maintains itself in a state of equilibrium is called a homeostatic automaton.

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Figure 4. State diagram for f13

How many of iterations and much information or logical space the operator consumes (“sub-functions”
generated by each iteration) will vary with the operator. So, f13 may process f3 and f5 recursively for 3
iterations and terminate, but f8 might take 7 iterations. The same initial information is processed, but
the state diagram shows the other areas of logical space involved, that through which the function has to
interact - thus giving the function an “anatomical description” of its attempt to gain homeostasis. The
two vector components are the number of divergences at each iteration (node creations) and number of
iterations required to reach equilibrium, the point where the function is stabilized and starts repeating its
outputs. Each operator has a different complexity and can be ordered according to its vector descriptions.
In terms of computational efficiency, a function has to process a quantity of information (or it only has
to process that much less information) to maintain itself as a homeostatic automaton.
We should observe that If any of the 16 operators is continuously “fed” two functions at a time with-
out regard to previous output (“random”), there emerges a logical space with a pattern, as illustrated by
Wuensche and Kauffman with randomly coupled functions and Basins of Attraction (Kauffman, Chapter
5 198; Wuenche, 1993). One may observe that a pattern may not appear for a number of iterations but
finally emerge after many (Wolfram, 2017). However, as a research exercise, one may ask about the
binary representation of a value like “pi” (π), an apparently non-terminating value. It appears, then, that
the ability to generate unpredictability, a type of randomness, questions whether there is deduction, or
boundedness. An interesting philosophical discussion concerns “emergence” itself. That is, what we ob-
serve does not seem to be explainable by the inputs or how they are related together (Emergence, 2017).

Larger Discrete Binary Spaces (From Horne, 2015)

If micro logical spaces re-emerge as themselves after repeated feedback, do larger discrete binary spaces
also have the same characteristic? A caveat exists here – this refers to discrete spaces bounded by a
regular column, or Y-axis, i.e., multiples of four existents. Above, p generated the compound existent 01.
That is, each four-digit unit is a function. Partial functions acting in this recursive manner yield partial
functions that exhibit a range of possible feedback loops. The resulting spaces still are closed, albeit

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fringed by bounded possibilities. However, this discussion lies outside the scope of this paper and is an
object of research.
A discrete binary space is an n-dimensional bounded area in which each element of four place com-
ponents assumes exclusively either of two values, conditions, or states. Thus, each of the 16 functions
discussed above occupies a discrete binary space. In larger discrete spaces, randomly generated bit
streams display “basins of attraction,” according to Wuensche and Kauffman, as cited above. Because
such basins are repetitive and are comprised of binary functions, it would reasonable to ask if the recur-
sive characteristics of those functions discussed above would also be related to these spaces. The reason
fed-back four bit functions repeat themselves may be the same as for the more than four bit functions and
in larger spaces. However, at the same time, we should re-introduce binary representation of apparent
randomness (non-terminating values, such as “pi”). Are there spaces that never repeat? Deduction, it
would seem, appears to break down. As an aside, the epistemological semantics given to the values, as
well as the nature of the deductive process adds a philosophy to the search.
A discrete binary space as a homeostatic automaton processes its environment, thereby producing
outputs. The outputs, ipso facto, change the character of the environment. In turn, the discrete space
processes the changed environment, and, in the course of doing so, tries to maintain itself. After a number
of iterations, if the initial space is homeostatic, it will stabilize, evidenced by returning to its initial con-
dition. That is, recursion stops upon re-iteration of the space. A binary entity as a living being ((Digital
organism 2017) achieving homeostasis would do the same. Note that these spaces as structures may
contain anything mappable to them, such as computer programs, Brownian movement, sunspot activity,
or automatons – anything that bivalency expresses.
Essentially, the methodology is the same for examining any n-dimensional space recursively as is
with the individual functions. Following is an informal presentation of this approach to spaces of two
or more dimensions. It is not meant to be a complete discussion but illustrative.
To examine the recursive character of a space we have schematically:

1. f*(AS, PS) = NS, where f* is one of sixteen functions, AS is the initial space being examined, PS
is one of the possible spaces, and NS is the resulting (new) space.
2. Recursively:
a. f*(NS, PS) = NS, or first branch.
b f*(PS, NS) = NS, or second branch for each of the 16 functions, resulting in 16 (2ij) generations.
3. The question at this point is whether the whole space is recursive in this manner and based upon
the same principles as the individual function space. If so how can the information processing ef-
ficiency of each operator be used to disassemble the recursive process within the larger spaces and
the boundaries between patterned and chaotic space?

Above has been presented an approach to show how discrete binary spaces may reproduce themselves
and how we may “dissect” those spaces based on recursion. Others have shown that randomized space
contains basins of attraction with “handedness,” or chirality (Kauffman, and Wuensche). Chirality ap-
pears manifest in the recursion of four-bit functions, as well.
We know that neural nets operate in groups to process information, and that a temporal factor is
operant in information processing. One might observe the patterns and compare to those generated by
cellular automatons, or electroencephalograms suggested by Wuensche (1993, p.11). EEGs may be cor-
related with temporal coding in neural populations (Fetz, 1997). If temporality is important in neuronal

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information and logical operations can be correlated to EEGs, then, logical operations are temporally
bound. One may argue that the values of 0 and 1 may represent of state collapse of wave functions
(Stern, 1988; Rapoport, 2009). That is, “truth tables” are descriptions of wave function collapse, there
is a neuronal correlate, and there are specific reasons for this (Horne, 1997).
As can be seen above, there is a philosophical and theoretical side to the structure of binary logic. It
is a bit more than a crude applications device for ordinary language translation. Be it the case that these
semantics ultimately reflect the physics, they do suggest that there are ways about thinking of the zeros
and ones other than being about logical truth.
We have seen how two-dimensional logical space is developed. This is the only space which most
logic students ever see. Yet, the logical process continues in three dimensions. As a note, there are
dimensions beyond (Stern, 1988; Rapoport, 2009), and very possibly continuing and corresponding to
strings in the quantum world (cite).

The Three-Dimensional Bivalent Hypercube (From Horne, 2015)

The following is a taken from previous works with some modifications and additions. There are two
major reasons why this section is being presented. First, it demonstrates that logical space exsts in a
third dimension (and probably successive ones – Stern, 198). Second, it pictralizes the closed nature
of deduction in the third dimension, just as deduction was closed in the Table of Functional Complete-
ness. Third, will display the idea that one can traverse all of this closed logical space from one function
through other functions to any other function.
To recapitulate a bit from the above, each function operates over two others to produce a third. There
are 16 functions This means that there are 4,096 possible dyadic computations in bivalent systems. For
example f14 can operate over two others – f0-15 and f0-15. For each function alone there are 16-squared
dyadic computations, or 256. For the other 15 functions, there also are 256 dyadic computations. So, we
have 163 = 4,096. Otherwise stated, there are 4,096 “truth” tables with the same two variables. Back to
the Table of Functional Completeness (ToFC), the foundation consists of 16 functions that can compute
a dyadic relationship, each component of the dyad, as well as its operator, also being a function, resulting
in a binary counting from 0000 to 1111.
All 4,096 thousand relationships can be displayed as 16 separate plates, one for each function and
each plate displaying how that function can operate over all 16, including itself. This display is termed a
“three-dimensional hypercube”. Like the ToFC, there is nothing particularly remarkable about the hyper-
cube, but upon closer inspection several qualities emerge. The first is that “truth tables” can be rapidly
calculated by using the hypercube analogously to a multiplication table for a raid look-up of a resultant
of one function operating over two others. This three-dimensional hypercube graphically presents every
possible dyadic computation, and this can be used as a look-up table. The second aspect of interest is
that within each table there are patterns of squares that suggest the beginnings of patterns described by
functions operating over ranges of others, similar to what others like Wolfram (2017), Wuensche (1993),
and others have observed with cellular automata.
Since this is for f9 one reads f9(fx, fy) to get a fourth function. That is f9(first operand, second oper-
and) → resulting function. Not unlike a mileage map, one finds the first function, fx by reading vertically
down the first column (colored gray) for the first operand and then reads horizontally across the top row
(also colored gray) for the second operand. The intersection of the column and row gives the result. So,
f9(f10, f5) → f0. f9(f12, f10) → f9.

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For f9, the hypercube plate appears as shown in Tables 27 and 28.
The computational method is the same as for f9. F13(f4, f8) → f11. F13(f1, f12) → f14. More will
be said below on computations using the hypercube as compared to the standard “truth table” methods.
Each function in the hypercube can be color keyed to a frequency on the light spectrum (Table 29).
This has been done as a reflection of a discussion in August Stern’s work Matrix Logic and The
Quantum Brain that purports the ability of binary spaces to reveal quantum mechanical relationships.
Here, this observation should be a core for further research. Noteworthy, though, are the color patterns
observed in each of the plates, a third interesting aspect of the hypercube. In the f3 and f5 plates, the
ones for the placeholders p and q, it is intriguing to note how the plates reflect “starting points”, as it
were, each point in its own direction (horizontal and vertical) displaying the color spectrum possibilities
for the rest of the functions.

Table 27. F9 hypercube plate

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Table 28. Plate for f13 in the 3-D hypercube

Three-dimensional logical space seems to be bounded by both end of the electromagnetic spectrum,
as these plates show (Figure 6).
The hypercube is not a substitute for Stern’s research but is new canonization of the binary space
compatible with his work. At the minimum, the hypercube and the canonization underlying it serve as
a “multiplication table” or table of computations and values that shorten the time to do operations that
normally would take longer using conventional truth table methods. Yet, there are other uses. Already,
various hypercubes consisting of binary spaces are used to analyze partially ordered sets, such as the
Hasse diagrams (Hasse diagrams, 2017) Here, a Hasse diagram could be constructed for each of the 16
plates in the hypercube. Then, each Hasse diagram might be integrated with the 15 others in various ways.
The hypercube is the most rapid way of doing a truth table computation for two variables. For three
variables, the third simply operates with the computation resulting from the first two, thus preserving
the dyadic relationship. In other words, in a binary system computations are inherently dyadic.

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Table 29. Functions color keyed to visible light frequencies

f 0 - 410 THZ
f 1 - 434 THz
f 2 - 458 THz
f 3 - 482 THz
f 4 - 506 THz
f 5 - 530 THz
f 6 - 554 THz
f 7 - 578 THz
F 8 - 602 THz
f 9 - 626 THz
f 10 - 640 THz
f 11 - 664 THz
f 12 - 688 THz
f 13 - 712 THz
f 14 - 736 THz

Figure 5. Plates for placeholders p (f3) and q (f5) of the 3-D hypercube

Theorems as a Path Through Logical Space

One simply does not trace a path through binary space from one value to another. There are rules, pro-
cedures, methods – processes – to arrive at the objects (functions, or values). The hypercube displays in
16 plates how one may advance dyadically, where one function operates over two others to produce a
third. As another method, either by a long “truth” table method, or more rapidly, a short truth table one,
one can create an inference rule. If there is no row in which the conjunct of all the premises is 1 and
the conclusion is 0, then the expression of premises and conclusion is a theorem (i.e., valid). It may be
noted that a corresponding conditional of all valid theorems, the conjunct of all the premises implying

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Figure 6. Plates for “ends” (f0 – contradiction and f15 - tautology) of the 3-D hypercube

the conclusion, is a tautology. One may start by hypothesizing that a set of premises indeed does imply
the conclusion and attempting to find an instance where each premise has a one and the conclusion has
a zero (Short truth table method, 2017). One starts by working backwards, placing a zero under the
conclusion and by trial and error assigning values consistently to the variables and according to what
the operator dictates. There are infinite inference rules. Actually, if a conclusion can be derived from the
premises through a proof, the premises with the conclusion can be used as an inference rule. Here are
included equivalence relationships (the usual equivalence rules found in the texts) as valid inferences.
Why, then, are students presented only with 18 rules – nine inference and nine equivalence? Students
don’t ever seem to be told this, and one wonders if most logic instructors really know. Two short answers
are memory and the concept of rule reduction. For the first, allowing for infinite rules would be beyond
one’s ability to memorize. More important, however is that that there are infinite rules, theorems, and
so forth, as will be seen shortly.
Let’s return to the Table of Functional Completeness (ToFC), though, and the 16 functions. To prove
a basic structural concept - functional completeness - one needs only a negation and one function, such
as f13 (⊃) and its negation (Logic systems, 2017). Normally, one relies either on the ability to exclude
(disjunction) or modus ponens [p, p ⊃ q, therefore q – the “legitimate” outcomes reflected in f13]. By
using all 16 functions one can traverse very rapidly a large area of binary space. It was mentioned above
that a minimalist system is sufficient to do so, as well, although the number of steps would be much
more. As we saw above, there are other connectives, such as the disjunction and conjunct (Functional
completeness, 2017), as well as Sheffer strokes (NAND and NOR) (Functionally complete operator sets,
2017). Students learning propositional logic rarely, if ever, see this table. Why?
The repetition of the conditional in its various forms, “forward”, “backward”, and the negations, as
the highlighted areas in the naming chart under the ToFC shows; eliminates their necessity. There is no
change in operational result with the contradiction (F0) and tautology (F15) (not making any difference
in the “truth”-value of the operation). Then, there are compound existents 0011 and 0101 as f3 and f5,
and their negations, which simply are the re-statements of the permutation table generating the ToFC
and have no operational significance. Each operator has its negation (F8 is the negation of F7). This
all reduces the operator set to four, the ones selected somewhat being subjectively used more than the
others.. (Stern, 1988, p. 49. et seq.; Connective redundancy, 2017). That these functions are not need,
there is no reason to introduce students to them as a more complete version of the system. Such also
is necessary to appreciate the underpinning philosophies we are outlining. Indeed, a discussion of the
hypercube requires it.

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How may inference rule creation be described? We have as one of the usual rules given a name
“destructive dilemma”:

p⊃q

r⊃s

~q ∨ ~s

∴ ~q ∨ ~s

Each inference and equivalence rule is given a name, as in modus ponens, transitivity, and addition.
However, there are infinite ones outside the “normal” four presented to students, as in:

p NAND q f14

p NOR q f8

∴ p ≡ q f6

One might call this the “nandor” rule, it “long truth table” rendition (along with functional headings
to relate to the ToFC) (Tables 30-31).
Is there any example where this might happen?
There is no way to assign ones to f14 and f8 and 0 to f6.
Now we have functions that couple to make theorems, and theorems to make proofs, all vehicles to
travel binary space. An interesting exercise might be to identify a set of four-place spaces (functions) in

Table 30. Bivalency (“truth”) table for “nandor” rule

p q f14 & f8 ⊃ f6
p NAND q p NOR q p≡q
0 0 1 1 1 1 1
0 1 1 0 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 0 1 0
1 1 0 0 0 1 1

Table 31. The short “truth table” is for “nandor” rule

p q F14 f8 f6
p NAND q p NOR q p≡q
0/1 0/1 0

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a large binary array (Binary array figures (2017) and see how one area may be reached by another. While
this is ostensibly a parlor game, it can be asked if there is a pattern or regularity occurring in the exercise?

Summary and Preliminary Conclusions

We now have an expanded, if not complete description of bivalent space, starting with its genesis in a
single dimension through three dimensions with the hypercube and leading the reader to logicians re-
searching bivalency in more dimensions. We haven’t even touched on multi-valency and its philosophical
implications (Stern, 1988). Logical space is generated in an ascending magnitude, but it should not go
unnoticed that latter 19th century logicians and mathematicians were developing principles governing
its generation. Peano, Frege, Cantor, and Russell in their own ways were asking about the conceptual
foundations, and it is this common endeavor that links both logic and mathematics through arithmetic at
a very basic level. Both the logical space and numbers are generated on Peano’s concern for succession
and magnitude. Merely upon inspection, one can see reading from left to right in a downward direction
that the Table of Functional Completeness not only displays binary counting (arithmetic, based on Peano
and others) but displays the logical operators discussed by Boole (1854).
Rather than being a parlor exercise, from a practical aspect there has been an exposition of how the
clunky “truth table” method can be reduced significantly in size and be done much more efficaciously with
the functional notation. Methods for designing technology relying upon binary space (such as computers)
has been automated, but the functional technique of evaluating relations may offer some thinking about
pattern recognition or provide another perspective on very large scale integration (VLSI). While profes-
sionals in the field of logic do (or should) know, the identification and use of relationships as theorems
is a development from inherent binary relationships implicit in logical space, a way of “navigating” it.
However, to stop here would be a perseverating on mechanics without paying attention to the philoso-
phy underpinning them. Above is a description of an order being built upon the foundation of dialectical
apprehension and giving it a semantics, such as with information theory and quantum cosmology to
illustrate that there is a wider philosophy underpinning bivalency. At least logic taught in this way can
be used as a pointer to the profound philosophies underpinning (and governing) the structures. Wheeler,
Misner, Thorne, Piaget, and the digital physicists might agree, as well.
We have touched on a number of foundational ideas regarding ontology, knowledge (as in how the
known – information - is related to the unknown), the idea of the smallest of the small as reflecting Aris-
totle’s substratum (hupokeimenon) (Substratum, 2017), and, above all dialectics and process philosophy,
all ideas that a beginning logic course should address. Common to all aspects of the above discussion are
patterns and how they are generated by “inspection”. One does not have to think about how to navigate
binary space; it simply done by applying rules. Wolfram (2017), Wuensche (1993), and others observe
the same, that even a robot can do these things.
Yet, if the binary world is capable of expressing all that is, where is consciousness? Built into our
interpretative “apparatus” is a sense of comparison, including that of magnitude. How that magnitude
is displayed as the ToFC, hypercube, and beyond and the relationships among various areas of it may
indicate some aspects of our consciousness. One needs to reconsider how all that we have, all that we
experience, all that there is emerged from the origin that cosmologists now recognize as “the singularity”.
Such may be true of “material” entities, but, quantum physicists realize that Planck and even sub-Planck
scale analysis indicates that “particles” may simply be perturbations, or “vibrations” in space-time,
movement, as movement. That is, can everything be in terms of this substratum, that same substratum

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to which Aristotle was referring? Yet, “energy” is not all that there is. As we know of this “energy”
through our instruments, we also have evidence of another process, or entity: ideas. If binary space can
express the “energy”, can it not also express or describe the nature of ideas, consciousness, mind, or
whatever it is that “propels” one’s activity, such as writing the present book? That is, binary space is a
process, as well, the functions as operators, operands, and results, depending upon context (perspective).
For sure, these presentations may not stand the test of academic time or critique, but at least they
should set the philosophical gears in motion, prompting a student to ask more of the “why” than memo-
rizing the usual “what”. So, where do we go from here? Here are some areas in which the seeds of the
ideas developed above can grow into viable theories about the nature of our binary world.

OTHER CONVERSATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

Now that a suitable philosophical base has been provided to explain the development of binary space
as the manifestation of basic order, we can turn our attention to considering how exploration using this
knowledge may proceed. These problem areas are ones rarely, if ever considered in beginning logic
courses. Why are operators in a parenthesis-free expression ordered the way they are besides by con-
vention? What about axioms? Students are often told that they reflect self-evident truths and cannot be
derived in the system they support. This for at least one case will be shown to be patently false. Axioms
serve functions that students rarely find out about.
Logic and arithmetic have a “cross-over” point, as the ToFC shows; they converge. It can be argued
that both emanate from from a very primitive way we quantize the world, as well as a philosophy under-
pinning it. Symbolic logic in math department is taught as mathematical logic, and students learn that
arithmetic (a precise quantization of the world), hence mathematics (the more approximated quantized
view of relations), is based on a set of postulates that purports to form the foundations of numbers and
their operations. One may think whether arithmetic reflects the innate structure in the world and math-
ematics is our approximation of it. We will below visit this set and question why fundamental concepts,
such as magnitude are missing. Logic is the foundation of systems analysis, and we will see how the
ideas developed above go into modern systems construction, the modeling of that system, and simulating
various situations the system and its model describe. Then, what is a proof? It is not simply something
learned in geometry or logic, but there is a broader perspective students usually don’t realize, although
they have been doing proofs most of their lives. In this section we revisit some aspects of pattern recog-
nition for which the hypercube and cellular automata suggest interesting research directions.

Ordering of Operators

In a parenthesis-free display of mathematical and logical operators, there is a specific order of priority,
ranging from the least scope to the greatest. That is, one operation is done before another. After looking
about and observing the world a first question from a philosopher should be “why”? Logical and math-
ematical symbolism has emerged somewhat haphazardly and by agreement. Mathematical and logical
operations have an order of priority, viz:

• Mathematical: Increasing rank, or scope; addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and

exponentiation.

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The Core of Logics

◦◦ Multiplication and Division (from left to right).

◦◦ Addition and Subtraction (from left to right).

Besides relying merely on convention as an explanation, it may be suggested that in terms of math-
ematics, groups, coupling together two elements is less complex than aggregating groups of groups, as
in multiplication, and more complex still, exponentiation.

• Logical: In order of ascending scope - (and - & [also∧], or −∨, “material implication” − ⊃, and
equivalence − ≡).

There is no ordering for the other 12 operators, or functions. However, these four may be translated
into the others, a research exercise.
That is, if a number of operations are strung out without any indication as to what should be done
first, then the operator with the least “scope” is done first, followed by the next, and so forth. (source).
As long as this rule is followed, the outcomes of various computations will all be consistent.
So much for this part of the rationale: consistency. As to why the operators are arranged accordingly,
the common explanation is that the arrangement is by convention, or agreement (Cajori, 1993). As long
as everyone prioritizes the operations in the same way, the outcomes will be the same for everyone. Yet,
there seems to be reason to order them according to an observed phenomenon. We already have discussed
the role of standards, ISO 8000-2, and the like. This may be fine for maintaining communication and
consistency, but we should explore how these standards might be founded on something actually existing
in the world, rather than by mere agreement.
Child psychologists as far back as Piaget discovered that children apprehend the meaning of some
operators sooner than others (Piaget, 1958). Taylor (1987) discovered this in college students, as well.
That is, each operator may have a degree of intellectual complexity. There is be reason to think that spatio-
temporal ordering is directly related to intelligence (Critical Thinking Company,2017). Obviously, there
are many components to “intellectual complexity”, and such would have to be identified to be considered
for any ordering based on complexity. There might be different orders for different types of complexity.
For example, sequencing using certain types of figures might more difficult that for sound frequencies.

Research indicates that learning in Boolean neural nets depends upon the arrangement of operators. A
network is designed to search for its own structure to solve a problem by accepting data and attempting
to discover the rule governing the relationships among items in the data. The rule must be recognized
with the least number of errors. Operators, as logic gates, are serial with no feedback or back propaga-
tion. Researchers seek to discover the ordering of operators based upon ascending energy levels required
for a successful discovery to occur. Energy is defined as “the discrepancy between the correct result of
the operation and the one obtained from the circuit averaged over the number of examples Ne shown
to the level required by that gate. Only when the result is zero can the correct gating be identified by
the system. It is apparent that if the network is configured differently with the ordering of operations
changed, the energy levels will differ as well. While the methods and schema for Boolean neural network
computation are quite complex, the results indicate that there is an optimum configuration of operators
the net uses to learn a task.

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Patarnello’s work on performance energy of neural nets corresponding to configurations of input bits as
a way of ordering operators is supported by Martland’s work classifying network behavior correspond-
ing to truth table elements. The complexity of operators in Boolean neural nets has not been studied
extensively, but it seems that the density of truth outputs varies with the type of connective involved, thus
suggesting a basis for classification (Martland 1989, p. 222-234). (Horne, 1997)

That psychology is not the only reason for suspecting substantive differences among operators. For
years the mental health professionals have been using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders to assess a person’s mental state. However, the DSM never has been validated with physi-
ological evidence, such as neural imaging. However, the US National Institutes of Mental Health has
ongoing research (Research Domain Criteria)(RODC, 2017) that seeks to correlate one’s mental state
with neurophysiological condition through neural imaging (as in in brain maps) and genetics. Functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) may be one technique in assessing the intellectual complexity of
logical operators. For example, how “intense” would the brain be when thinking through an activity
with a heavy dependence upon the concept represented by an operator? Would AND require a greater
mental effort than a reverse implication?
It was mentioned above work in transformational grammar promises meaningful explanations of how
logic may be useful in symbolizing deep language structures and may provide insights here.. If there can
be established various orderings one may ask about processing efficiency in systems based on a network
of these logic gates. At least, we should take a bit more interest as to the “why” of the mechanics, rather
than being self-satisfied that it is all by convention. A simple question is, “ what if the convention, besides
being arbitrary, simply is flat wrong?”
An application of a new prioritization based on some empirical research, such as one’s ability to ap-
prehend the meaning an operator before another, might be used to generate displays in a manner similar
to those of Wolfram and Wuensche. Patterns seem to emerge after random concatenation of functions.
What if functions were concatenated based on some empirically-based ordering. Such may be one method
of relating binary logic o consciousness.

Axioms

Rarely, if ever, are logic students directed to think about the nature of an axiom, let alone any philosophy
underpinning them.
Wikipedia captures two essential concepts: etymology and the ontological status, “An axiom or pos-
tulate is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning
and arguments. The word comes from the Greek axíōma (ἀξίωμα) ‘that which is thought worthy or fit’
or ‘that which commends itself as evident.’” (Axiom, 2017).
Etymologically, “axiom” is:

… statement of self-evident truth,” late 15c., from Middle French axiome, from Latin axioma, from Greek
axioma “authority,” literally “that which is thought worthy or fit,” from axioun “to think worthy,” from
axios “worthy, worth, of like value, weighing as much,” from PIE adjective *ag-ty-o- “weighty,” from
root *ag- “to drive, draw, move” (see act (n.)). (Axion – etymology, 2017)

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Copi says, “A set of axioms is said to be independent if each of them is independent of the others,
that is, if none of them can be derived as theorems from the others.” (Copi- 5th edition – p. 231.)
Others see axioms as:

...a proposition regarded as self-evidently true without proof. (Axiom – Wolfram, 2017).

A statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true...

(Axiom – definition, 2017).

Mathematics (or, rather, some mathematical theory) might be wrong in the sense that the “self-evident”
axioms might be false, and the axioms that are true might not be “evident” at all. (Putnam, 2017, p. 10)
There is nothing complete, self-evident, or certain about an axiom. Dan Piponi, PhD in Mathemat-
ics, says, “The word ‘axiom’ has meant a few different things to different people. ...an axiom is just a
starting point, like the starting position in a game of chess. There’s no implication that axioms are true.
“ (as in a Hilbert system) – Then, “There aren’t any axioms. But you can see how various statements fit
together.“ (David Joyce, Professor of Mathematics at Clark University) (Joyce, 2017).
While there may be no definitive answer or universal agreement about the ontological status of axi-
oms, at least students should be aware that their nature involves more a curt reference to “self-evident”
truths, or even starting points. (Copi (1973, p. 178) has an excellent discussion of how a formal logical
system is developed, saying that there may be infinite axioms. He talks of independence and illustrates
a computational method of demonstrating this. Yet, computation seems to fly in the face of Hempel
(2017, p 544), who says that mathematical truths rely on definitions, a computation possibly being an
elaborate one. In this sense, they are true a priori. This is not unlike the discussion about why logical
operators are ordered the way they are. One may call anything s/he likes, as long as its use is consistent.
First of all, how can one enter into a discussion about what is an axiom? Perhaps one could do no better
than with Bertrand Russell, the philosopher formalizing the predicate logic system widely taught today.
Russell said:

The reason for accepting an axiom, as for accepting any other proposition, is always largely inductive,
namely that many propositions which are nearly indubitable can be deduced from it, and that no equally
plausible way is known by which these propositions could be true if the axiom were false, and nothing
which is probably false can be deduced from it. If the axiom is apparently self-evident, that only means,
practically, that it is nearly indubitable; for things have been thought to be self-evident and have yet turned
out to be false. And if the axiom itself is nearly indubitable, that merely adds to the inductive evidence
derived from the fact that its consequences are nearly indubitable: it does not provide new evidence of
a radically different kind. (Russell, Principles of Mathematics,1910, p. 59; http://plato.stanford.edu/
entries/principia-mathematica/#COPM)

Already, a hole has appeared by reference to “many propositions” and “self-evident” meaning “nearly
indubitable”. Russell’s three are, as it appears in his original Principia Mathematica:

Implication defined as disjunction: p ⊃ q .=. ~ p ∨ q Df. (PM 1962:11)

Logical product: p . q .=. ~(~p ∨ ~q) Df. (PM 1962:12)

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The Core of Logics

Logical equivalence defined: p ≡ q .=. (p ⊃ q) . (q ⊃ p) (PM 1962:12)

There are many others, such as those by Church, Gotland-Rasiwa, Frege, and Lukasiewicz (Copi,
Symbolic Logic, p. 237).
Rosser (p. 54) says, “Certain statements, chosen rather arbitrarily, are called axioms.” He sets forth
three:

P → PP

PQ → P

(P → Q) → (~(QR) → ~(RP)) (P. 56) P → Q. → .~QR → ~(RP)

Copi’s (Symbolic Logic, 1973, p. 218) axioms are the same as Rosser’s (the “RS System – Are axioms
necessary, or are they established simply to see what is possible within a system? In essence, they are
bootstraps, or assumptions, where one constructing a system sees what can be developed from them.
Others argue (as Marlowe in this book) that they are foundational, that a stronger set of axioms might
be selected to see what is derivable. Yet, a student should consider their philosophical foundations, how
the assumptions were formulated, how, and why.
So, how many axioms are there? Theorems? Answer: as many as one may want.
Students should be aware that there are natural deduction systems not relying on axioms, as in Gent-
zen and Prawitz, who dispenses with axioms with his “natural deduction”, or conditional derivation and
repeatedly apply inference rules (Natural deduction, 201; Kalish, p. 44).
We leave this section, not so much by saying that new research is needed about the nature of an axiom
but describing an exercise students might do to learn more about how they may be contained in binary
logical space. A student might consider as an exercise, asking whether any axiom with two variables (as
well as ensuing theorems) may be found by using the hypercube. Theorems can be derived from axioms,
but the axioms can be derived from theorems, something that is not supposed to happen.
Could one traverse the hypercube from the first dyadic relationship to arrive at the second, and so
forth? For axioms with three variables, bear in mind that not only is there a ToFC for three variables
(with 256 columns) but an expanded hypercube, as well. That is, the logical space grows with the number
of variables, i.e., n-dimensional arrays. The space described above is only a “basic”, foundational, or
“building block” space. Computer programmers.
Inasmuch as the hypercube is a permutation table, it is possible to traverse from f*(f#, f@) through
the three-dimensional space back to f*(f#, f@) again, ie.g.,

f*(f#, f@) → fnew

f*(fnew, f@) → fnew’

f*(fnew’, f@) - fnew’’

and so forth, in the same manner as was demonstrated in the recursion exercise described above.

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Magnitude, Number, Peano, and All That

We have seen developed above a “counting table” in it most basic, or binary form, the binary emerging
from the dialectic discussed above. The entity and what it is not serve as the foundation of how this
two-place magnitude is expanded. Mathematicians call it the “binary” system”.
No “self-respecting” philosophy of logic text, especially a mathematical logic text, should omit Gi-
useppe Peano and his five postulates reputedly establishing the conceptual foundation of number, hence
arithmetic. So, while talking about the nature of axioms, we come to what mathematicians have call
the axioms of arithmetic, ones initially set forth by Peano (1898) in in his Arithmetices Principia Novo
Methodo Exposita. We have seen how logical space increases by permutation factors. It is a question
of magnitude. That the tables of binary space are based on a Peano ordering – increasing magnitude -
illustrates that logical space is not simply a canonization. Indeed, many logicians construct these in a
non-intuitive way, their semantics of truth and falsity placed in descending order, rather than the natural
order of counting. We also have seen where logic and arithmetic intersect in the Table of Functional
Completeness (ToFC). However, while the foundation has been established for logic above, can we say
the same for arithmetic? It can be said that the philosophy underpinning considerations about Peano’s
foundations of arithmetic (and subsequent mathematics) and the responses have the same or at least
similar philosophical foundations as do logic. It is not so much important whether this section produces
any solutions or not but that students think about the idea of number and how it is developed.
Peano’s original postulates state:

1. Uno è un numero naturale

2. Per ogni numero naturale n esiste un unico numero naturale n* detto successore di n
3. Uno non è successore di alcun numero naturale
4. Se x* = y*, allora x = y
5. Se K è una proprietà tale che:
a. Uno ha la proprietà K
b. per ogni k appartenente a N, se k ha la proprietà K, anche k* la la stresse proprietà allora la
proprietà K vale per tutti numeri naturali. (Principio di induzione).

Translation

One is a natural number. (One is assuming what they are trying to demonstrate by referring to “natural
number”.
For every natural number n there exists a natural number n* that is a successor of n.
One is not the successor of any natural number.
If x* = y*, then x = y.
If K is a property such that:

• One has the property K,

• For all k appearing in N, if k has the property K, and k* also has the same property

K, then the property is true for all natural numbers. (Principle of Induction).
A modern day rendition is:

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The Core of Logics

1. “0” is a number.
2. The successor of “0” (or any number) is a number.
3. No two numbers have the same successor,
4. ‘0’ is not the successor of any number.
5. The property giving ‘0” its character and the successor of “0” is given also to every successor.

We need to direct our attention to Peano’s symbolic listing of postulates underscoring arithmetic.
From the original we have in symbolic form, as it appears in his original Arithmetices principia novo
methodo exposita (Figure 7).
Notice that under “Explicationes” (Explanations) that one (1) is a unit, or unity; 2) The number fol-
lowing a number is increased by one; and 3) “hoc ut novum signum considerandum est, etsi logicae signi
figuram habeat” - “Equals” is signified by “=”, that Peano notes one should note the new “sign shape”
(equals). The backwards “C” is read as “implies (⊃).
It is to be noted that number one sets forth the idea of an initial entity, one, as being a “natural”
number. Items 2-4 describe relations of reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity. Number five says that if
another entity is equal to the first (a=b) then if a is a number, so is b. That is, the natural numbers are
“closed” under equality. The next four items, 6 through nine, continue the famous five postulates de-
scribing properties of natural numbers, that final one – 9 being the principle of mathematical induction,
where whatever property is ascribed to an element is passed on to successor elements.

Figure 7. Explanation of axioms as Peano published them originally in 1898 – page 20

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The Core of Logics

A Closer Look at Peano

There may be an inherent problem with all this. The word (“number”) being defined is being used to
define that word. It is like saying “a farmer is one who farms.” We cannot use what we think is the con-
cept of “number” to define that concept, itself. It is worth quoting Russell at length so as to appreciate
the full scope of the problem.

He is not assuming that we know all the members of this class, but only that we know what we mean when
we say that this or that is a number (Russell...Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, p. 5)

In the first place, Peano’s three primitive ideas – namely, “0”, “number”, and “successor” - are capable
of an infinite number of different interpretations, all of which will satisfy the five primitive propositions.
We will give some examples.

(I) Let “0” be taken to mean 100 onward in the series of natural numbers. Then all of our primitive
propositions are satisfied, even the fourth, for, though 100 is the successor of 99, 99 is not a “number”
in the sense which we are now giving to the word “number”. It is obvious that any number may be sub-
stituted for 100 in this example. (Russell...Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy...p. 7)

As we have just seen, every progression verifies Peano’s five axioms. It can be proved, conversely, that
every series which verifies Peano’s five axioms is a progression. Hence, these five axioms may be used
to define the class of progressions: “progressions” are those series which verify these five axioms.”

In Peano’s system there is nothing to enable us to distinguish between these different interpretations of
his primitive ideas. It is assumed that we know what is meant by ” 0,” and that we shall not suppose that
this symbol means 100 or Cleopatra’s Needle or any of the other things that it might mean.

This point, that ” 0” and ” number ” and “successor cannot be defined by means of Peano’s five axi-
oms, but must be independently understood, is important. We want our numbers not merely to verify
mathematical formulae, but to apply in the right way to common objects. We want ” 0 ” and ” number
” and ” successor ” to have meanings which for will give us the right allowance of fingers and eyes
and noses. … We cannot secure that this shall be the case by Peano’s method; (Russell,.Introduction to
Mathematical Philosophy, 1919, p. 9)

Elsewhere, Russell says:

It has been common in the past, among those who regarded numbers as definable, to make an exception
as regards the number 1, and to define the remainder by its means. Thus 2 was 1 + 1, 3 was 2 + 1, and
so on. This method was only applicable to finite numbers, and made a tiresome difference between 1
and other numbers; moreover the meaning of + was commonly not explained. (Russell, Principles of
Mathematics, 1903/1938, p.109)

One can add the example of an infinite line cows following one another to the barn from pasture. So,
what of cows? We have a cow, whom she calls herself “0”. There is a successor cow, followed by another,

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The Core of Logics

etc. That is, all the cows will continue to come home, but not one or a collection of them will give us
any idea of what “number” really means. The first cow may be fat, thin, tall, short, etc., and have any
properties whatsoever, and even though all these properties are carried to each succeeding cow, we have
no idea of how magnitude is developed. It may be that something like Rabin-Scott power set construction
is a way of resolving the problem (Power set construction, 2017). Such is fertile ground for research.
Russell sets forth what lacking and what is needed:

But from two points of view it fails to give an adequate basis for arithmetic. In the first place, it does
not enable us to know whether there are any sets of terms verifying Peano’s axioms ; it does not even
give the faintest suggestion of any way of discovering whether there are such sets. In the second place,
as already observed, we want our numbers to be such as can be used for counting common objects, and
this requires that our numbers should have a definite meaning, not merely that they should have certain
formal properties. This definite meaning is defined by the logical theory of arithmetic. (Russell,.Intro-
duction to Mathematical Philosophy, 1919,.p. 10)

In essence, the postulates (Peano axioms, 2017) may ascribe properties to numbers, but, still what is
lacking are concepts of magnitude, what can be enumerated (existence postulate), a concept of unit, and
a theorem that maps the concept of magnitude to units. As we saw above, we may have a an ordering,
i.e., succession with no two elements having the same successor, thus assuring a continuity or progres-
sion of ordering. However, by what device do we have quantification? Quantification depends upon the
unit, something by which to compare.
Showing one deficiency like this demonstrates the inadequacy of the postulates to describe what a
number is. The successor idea is not sufficient. It might if there were a concept of “storage”, or accumula-
tion. For consideration is whether succession by itself implies magnitude, or increase in terms of regular
increments or a comparison of one step of the succession with its predecessor in terms of a magnitude,
with that magnitude being used as a standard by which to compare other elements in the succession. Yet,
while there may be an increase of quantity, we still do not know the nature of the increments, only that
there is an increment. In an abstract sense, there may be an implied counting, as in a heartbeat, but it is
not clear how that may be used for measurement. So what should we expect of a number; what should
we expect it to do? What is a number?
At this point, students should be directed to philosophers like Russell, Badiou, Frege, Dana Scott and
others in modern times in their discussions about number systems and logic. There are some research
considerations that may be appended to this chain of inquiry, one that may have well established answers
already but guide the student through various aspects of how logic, magnitude, and mathematics can be
viewed. Following are a number of areas of research that a student might take into account in settling
on a concept of number.

The Ontology of Number and Magnitude

Zero is the absence of number but that from which all numbers (quantities) come (Peano). 0 may not be
a number but a boundary, and endpoint, a division between succession and its opposite. In f13 there is
0 → 1 etc., and 1 → 0 means that 0 is not a successor, another convergence of logic and arithmetic. So
processes some quantities are objects; some quantities are processes (irrationals, pi).

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How is quantity produced? In our “normal” world increase comes through replication or division.
These may be regarded in terms of dialectics, replication as the philosophical idea of “other” and divi-
sion, the “contradiction” of the whole. Perforce, when one apprehend because of what is not, a division
has occurred. Then, that division, because of dialectics, indicates addition, the foundation of magnitude.
The process by which one analyzes exists in terms of (opposite of) the processes which is synthesized,
or added. In logic addition may be compared to induction, division to deduction, the former as synthesis,
the latter analysis..
A note by a colleague, Rodolfo Fiorini, who read this chapter stated in his review of this “Core”:

According to CICT, division is not an elementary operation. Division is a discrete optimization process
to obtain the maxmin (quotient) to a given constraint (dividend) by a specific modular increment (divi-
sor). Furthermore multiplication and division are not elementary operations. CICT sees them as discrete
differentiation and integration operations in a discrete Mellin space, so they can be thought as discrete
Mellin operators. Digit and numbers can be used as either data or operators. Even as process descriptors!

More on his CICT can be read in his chapter in this book. Meanwhile, this is an area for further research.
Does number exist? What is its ontological status? Badiou says:

...we shall begin with a general definition of Number, a remarkably simple definition involving only the
concept ‘ordinal’. Then, by way of increasingly specific determinations, we shall address the essential
attributes of the resulting concept of Number: total order, the process of cutting, and finally - in the last
place only – operations. … Considerations of order and operations arise from the intrinsic, or onto-
logical, definition of Number. Number is therefore not itself an operational concept, it is a particular
figure of the pure multiple, which can be thought in a structural and immanent fashion. The operational
dimensions are only subsequent traits. Number is not constructed; on the contrary, its very being makes
possible all of the constructions in which we engage it.

...

We shall begin with a general definition of Number, a remarkably simple definition involving only the
concept ‘ordinal’. Then, by way of increasingly specific determinations, we shall address the essential
attributes of the resulting concept of Number: total order, the process of cutting, and finally - in the last
place only – operations. … In other words, a number N is constituted by:

• An ordinal W;
• A subset F included in this ordinal, such that F⊂W. (Badiou, 2008, pp. 101 – 102)

Following is an overlay of a possible ontology of immanent structure by reference to how binary

logical space is developed, described above. Inherent in dialectics as a process is the genesis of order,
hence succession. Once the dialectic process starts, we have 0 from which that which it is we apprehend
emerges (and its “mirror”, “contradictory”, and dialectic image as negatives), giving the central character
of binary. The phenomenology of permutations produces our sense of unique and ordered sequence.

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Now, it is a question of seeing how this binary then turns into the increasing linear and unidirectional
and equal magnitude, hence counting.
Do we need the idea of unit? We do if we use number to compare something to a standard. “Unit” -
uniformity is an abstraction but is defined by repetition. There are many units – feet, meters, kilometers,
etc. As an aside, keep in mind that mere succession does not imply repetition of what is succeeded but
only as a process. To achieve uniformity, there must be an equal spatio-temporality – equal space and
equal time. The problem comes back to how to measure these. It is for the student to explore whether
that ontology is solidly described by the philosophy of sets, being aware not only the development of
the abstract but the detailed nature of how that abstract is mapped onto the phenomenological world.
We have touched on some of the philosophical problems surrounding how magnitude should be ex-
pressed with postulates and axioms. It is with these ideas students can then enter into learning about the
foundations of set theory, the central question being whether set theory in general is sufficient to solve the
problem of number (Set – concepts and notation, 2017). If it is, then, the philosophy giving rise to these
theories should precede or at least be incorporated into Peano, an exercise left as a “homework” exercise.

Further Exploration

While the responses to Peano may have been satisfied insofar as the mechanics are concerned, there still
are intriguing questions that can have a student pause and think about larger worlds than those circum-
scribed by those inhabited by the logicians and mathematicians. One such concept that for many has been
resolved is that of zero, the foundation of contemporary number theory. Zero is considered a number,
and this assumption satisfies the requisites of math and logic, but what of the philosophy of zero? By
looking at the notion of zero, a way number is used, we may start identifying some of the properties of
number, incorporating them as modifications to Peano (Number – concepts, 2017).
Instead of saying that zero is a number, one could argue that it is the absence of number, an origin
from which all else emerges. It signifies the boundary of a process, a starting point. Indeed, it is the divi-
sion point of the number line. “In lattice theory, 0 may denote the bottom element of a bounded lattice
(Zero, 2017)”. In physics 0 is mapped to a boundary of a physical phenomenon, such as temperature,
the condition of physical things, zero point energy, etc. Zero represents off in computer gates.
If it is not a quantity, it surely is a placeholder saying something about it. Such is the basis of distinc-
tion between number and numeral. Zero represents a place where a number should be but may not be
a number, itself. One considers 01 and 10, for example. It surely is a part of a numeral representing a
number, but is it a number, itself? This get us back to asking “what IS a number?” Does a dependence
upon 0 for meaning (as in 10) give 0 the ontological status of number? What then IS that status, if it
is not quantity? It may be a quasi-number. In set theory zero is not an element of the empty set. Zero
becomes a number in set theory in designating the initial set, In set theory, 0 is the beginning set, albeit
empty (Zero, 2017). Mathematics is pockmarked by these formally thought certainties. Irrationals are
thought as numbers, and in some senses, they are, but they are expressions of processes, as well. Pi is
about a relationship but is used as a number, as well. One may call these “process numbers” as a separate
class of numbers. Integers, though, are not processes but static entities.
There must be a more profound or basic ontology incorporating both quantity and its absence, i.e., the
notion of quantity, per se, i.e., an ontology about the nature of existence. Zero IS a part of counting, or
at least a part of it. For all intents and purposes it is a numeral, if not a number, the numeral designating
a place where there might be a quantity. Here, as in 705, the 0 does give rise or is a source of quantity,

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even though it does not have any. The philosophical question is about the nature of the placeholder (an
abbreviation of the number line), a positional function having existential qualities. Badiou (p. 102) says
that not only is zero at the outset not a number, but so is one. “The signs ‘1’ and ‘0’ do not directly refer
to any Number, since we have not yet even established that we are dealing with Numbers.” . This is
consistent with what was said about p and q being the placeholders for the values 0 and 1. This seems
similar to Russell (Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, p. 19) saying, “We define ” the number
of a given class” without using the notion of number in general . One give a group a description of the
what can go inside of it or be a member and then proceeds to find those things.
How, then, does zero set the stage for the development of numbers? We describe zero so as to be
capable of generating things we regard as numbers. That is, zero is a process, just as is pi or other irra-
tional. The quantum-cosmological philosophy underpinning bivalency is that zero, the origin, the chaos,
the inchoate, gives rise to the order that is signified by numbers. Zero comes into the world because of
what is not: something. That something, or “other” is named “0” for convenience. This is a process. That
becoming is known is “succession”. The second zero means that the process of generating magnitude
has commenced. Carrying forth the ideas represented by function 13, both the zero and one stand in
an of themselves, each containing itself. From zero and the apprehension of its other 00 emerges what
this identity (00) is not, the one (01). The 10 describes the dialectic of 01 – contradiction – 01 in terms
of what it is is not. One-one (11) describes the final emergence, the opposite of zero apprehending
itself. This is part in parcel of the ontology of numbers. There is by no means universal accord on the
status of zero, as a search under “zero is not a number” and similar entries will produce in an Internet
search (Zero not a number, 2017). This is not an answer to the question but an prompt for philosophical
inquiry. However, what the student should “take away” from all this is that one should not be content
with definitions or postulates alone, just as s/he should not be content with “convention” being the sole
rationale for logical or mathematical operator ordering, or precedence The significant and persist ques-
tion always should be “why”?.

What Is a Proof?

Logicians and mathematicians say that a proof results when through a deductive inferential process (the
“nuts and bolts” of which are unknown and probably are fraught problems similar to those of induction)
- axioms, premises, rules of inference, primitives, and definitions yield a conclusion with certainty. That
is, the latter is contained within the former without doubt. If the premises are true, the conclusion most
certainly is; content is irrelevant to form and is important only in assessing soundness. The operative
word in deduction (as we saw in f13) is “if”.
If chonkeers are joogies and all joogies are wingwongs, then all chonkees are wingwongs. All chon-
kees are joogies. So, chonkees are wingwongs. This is deductive, form – hopefully, with no content.
Many if not most of us were introduced formally to closed, or deductive systems by high school
geometry. While few may have realized it, people get introduced by playing games, where there are
definitions, rules, and strategies (previous processes that have been successful, or “theorems”). Base-
ball, cards, tic-tac-toe, and even hopscotch are games in which each action can be recorded and be used
to describe how one traversed from the beginning to the end. Each played game has an “audit trail”,
where every player’s move can be recorded and referred to in accounting for who won (conclusion) and
how they did so. Otherwise stated, any outcome can be understood by the steps preceding it. The game
can be re-played as it was before. Try this with a board game. Write down every move a player makes.

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The Core of Logics

Referring to this and the rules that came with the game (assuming everyone followed them), the game
can be replayed as before with the same outcome. That there is a winner means this “mission” can be
referred to as a “theorem”. The same be said of puzzles. Lawyers depend upon deductive argumentation
to sustain their cases. If the jurors accept the premises, then the conclusion follows with certainty Fal-
lacies are based on this principle. Like theorems they are infinite. One inserts a faulty premise, trying
the argument deductive, hoping the listener will accept it. In a more sophisticated sense, a scientific law
emerges after th repeated and successful outcome of an experiment (Feynman). In a “looser” sense, one
presumably (and hopefully diligently) searches the literature for “theorems” to sustain conclusions (even
the “intermediate” ones, as in each line of a proof). The “if” sometimes is missed even by professionals,
but others rely on that deception to win arguments. Yet, the essence of deduction can escape even the
professionals. At one state philosophical conference this author gave a paper, a presenter argued:

1. In front of the experimenters there is a p but there is no q.

2. To have a successful outcome, one needs both p and s.
3. We do not have s.
4. However, there also can be a q.

∴ Yet, we still cannot have successful outcome.

A senior logic professor raised his hand and challenged the speaker, saying that the experimenters
still could succeed. She asked the professor whether he accepted the premises and that this was a deduc-
tive argument; he said “yes”. The, she asked “what is the problem?” He retorted that he didn’t accept
premise (x). Of course, he contradicted himself and was brought to realize by one of the undergraduates
in the audience the meaning of deduction. One may see this misunderstanding as a source of arguments
over who won a game, how a case was argued, or even as a way of challenging a scientific experiment.
Overall, proof integrity depends upon system construction (primitives, definitions, rules, and the cor-
rect application of processes). Once the foundations of proof theory are understood, a more advanced
for – systems analysis may follow.
There may be an aside to this example of misunderstanding deduction, as well. Deduction depends
upon modus ponens, p, p “implies (É) q, therefore p. In several of this author’s classes there were stu-
dents who simply did not apprehend the spatio-temporal nature of deduction (f13). Two related research
areas come to mind: Piaget (1958, 1971) and Taylor (1987) and the ordering of operators and the idea
that there may be spatio-temporal processing deficiencies in the brain (Spatio-temporal processing
deficiencies in the brain, 2017), the latter which can be assessed by neuroimaging, functional magnetic
resonance imaging, and so forth..

Systems and Modeling

Strictly speaking a system is a collection of interrelated and interacting elements in a context, or envi-
ronment, usually acting in concert for a purpose. There are two types of basic systems: closed and open.
A closed system is one that maintains itself (homeostatic) and has no interaction with its environment
so as to change itself. It is not adaptive. That is, there may be inputs and outputs, but the system, itself,
does not change. Whether a closed system affects the environment depends upon how the environment
reacts to the presence of a closed system. The environment, however, may affect the condition of a closed
system either by acceptance or destruction. Because the system is closed, the environment cannot modify

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it. Normally, the closed system is static, the only processes or movement being within the system’s
confines, or boundaries or interacting with the environment but not being changed. An open system is
a collection of interrelated elements in a context, or environment, also with elements, such that one or
more elements (inputs) in the environment are sent into the collection and managed, or processed, and
also interacting for a purpose. Out from the collection inside the system into the environment are sent
elements as outputs. The elements also may be processes. An open system may be homeostatic but more
often is regarded as adaptive (Systems, 2017).
In terms of logic the closed system is deductive; the open system is inductive. There may be combina-
tions of open and closed systems in the same environment, leading to a larger field of complex systems,
systems of systems, and so forth.
From this basis students may build on what has been taught them in a substantial logic course, as
in giving functions various semantics and studying how the semantics represented by those operators
interact (n-adic operations compounded from dyadic ones). For example, a student of mine wrote a paper
about how enzymes operate in a system, giving he XOR and AND operators specific interpretations.
A mature logic can be in the form of a system, the system being an abstract structure. From that
system as a “template” come models, descriptions of “real” world structures, instantiations, as it were of
the schema that is the system. With a model, there is a simulation with hypothesized events. The follow-
ing is presented as a research area, where the formalization of logic leads to a systems description, that
system description being used to create a model of a real life situation, and where that model is tested
with hypothetical data (Modeling and simulation, 2017).
The ISO/IEEE standard 1098, Functional Modeling Language, and IDEF, offer some intriguing areas
of research, as well as the Modeling and Simulation Coordination Office website, www.msco.mil. In one
method of modeling and simulation (M&S), one object-oriented methods such as is described in IEEE
Standard for Functional Modeling Language – Syntax and Semantics for IDEF0 [IEEE Std 1320.1-1998)
and IEEE Standard for Conceptual Modeling Language Syntax and Semantics for IDEF1X97 (IDEFobject),
IEEE Std. 1320.2-1998. These standards, in essence, are descriptions of second order logic and how it
is to be applied to the description, analysis and modeling of systems. That is, both the property and the
individual having it can be programmed. It demonstrates conclusively that systems analysis is a subset
of logic, thus confirming our tracing from logical theory to structure to its subset, systems analysis to
modeling. Some representative effects are illustrated by Simulated Society (Simsoc), Human Version 2,
the U.S. Department of Defense Modeling and Simulation Coordination Office (MSCO), and Second
Life (sources). The graphics involved are sophisticated, but it is known that interpretation of a simula-
tion not only depends upon quantitative analysis but the heuristic evaluation also depends upon graphics
quality (Heuristic evaluation, 2017).

Patterns in Randomly Generated Bit Streams:

Use Recursion of Binary Space....

While the patterns generated by recursion and by randomly concatenating formula (Wuensche, 1993;
Wolfram, 2000) may be artistically aesthetic, what of any meaning? Inasmuch as anything can be ex-
pressed by binary space, is there any way of correlating pattern recognition in binary space to the objects
generating it? For example, the spiraling of a snail shell, or nautilus, represents a Fibonacci series. The
following admittedly is toying with some ideas about pattern recognition in binary space, but they serve
hopefully prompts for discussion and research.

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A binary function (f0 – f15) is recursive. Whole spaces may recursive, like fractals. Of course, they
may not be. Wolfram illustrates both types. Here, as an exercise, one may regard an un-researched space
analogously either as a terminating decimal (the space being homeostatic after a number of recursions
and displaying fractal-like qualities) or as a non-terminating one.
From Wuenche (1993), Wolfram (2017), and others, the question arises, “where do we find random
bit streams, anyway?” It is this bit stream that is the raison d’etre for being worried about parenthesis-
free grouping and prioritization. Some immediate situations come to mind, besides the more esoteric one
of SETI: a) Brownian movement b) network optimization; c) interpreting any order from noise; d) any
application in chaos theory where the output is 0s and 1s. What if a person wrote or spoke “randomly”
a long string of 0s and 1s? The operators (from each group of four) would, of course, be readily discern-
ible, given the Table of Functional Completeness (ToFC).
Statisticians and psychologists know that it is difficult for humans to avoid patterned thinking, such
as in attempting to utter a random string of numbers. Eventually the person will “favor” one or more
digits over others, and there may be a regularity of operators, not unlike a person perhaps favoring a
vocabulary, perhaps because of the ease of using certain words. That is, we may have an indication what
priority a person places on various operators by what frequency the operators are uttered “randomly”.
Here, we focus on whether there really is randomness (Horne, “Ontology”, 2017). A curious dia-
lectic emerges. To this point, logic has been presented as the theory of order, the assumption being that
there is order, pattern, and regularity innate in our world. Yet, there is the dialectic that shows such
order existing because of what it is not: that which is not regular, i.e., random. Science depends upon
the “management” of order in two aspects. First, there is the assumption that the future resembles the
past – a regularity, but quantum cosmologists say that such regularity is the lack of energy, or its equal
dispersion. However, scientists are seeking that is ordered. There is a dialectic here: entropy is random-
ness, a uniform dispersion of energy, a material condition. Yet it is uniformity, a process that allows the
experimental scientific method, a process (Whewell, 1841). E=MC2 says energy is known because of
“matter” (material) and vice versa. Here is the duality of uniformity – process in terms of material and
vice versa. This dialectic is the ontology of randomness.” (Horne, “Ontology”, 2017).
Overall, a researcher might asked whether an operator parsing scheme can be based upon a human
experiment, a real life reason why the ordering should be in a certain way. Could it be correlated with
EEGs. Hameroff (2003) writes of various patterns of dimer structures in microtubules inside neurons.
There are many possible avenues of research, many being rabbit holes, but all the while there is the driving
question about the empirical world being correlated to the bivalent one. This is what chaos researchers
and those in the world of digital physics are seeking to determine - the meanings behind these patterns
from seemingly chaotic phenomenon.

Recursion Within Hypercube

In the hypercube, itself, recursion occurs. However, the number of cycles required to output the original
function differs. If one were to set the cube in motion, as it were, s/he would see a dynamo of activity,
where each sub-cube would be cycling …
It is clear that both the Table of Functional Completeness, as well as the three-dimensional hypercube
are connectionist networks (Bechtel, 2017), where the outputs act as ranges for the domains of inputs.
Essential to these networks is one’s ability to discern patterns from what is generated, ordering of per-
mutations being one element of pattern recognition. Recursion of that ordering allows for prediction.

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Too, it is clear that this table is generated by a permutation scheme but according to criteria defining
what is ascending order. The TOFC emerges from the permutations as a lookup table in which are found
the sixteen values corresponding to Boolean functions. That is, Boolean logic can be generated by mere
permutations based on a primitive mathematics. Embedded in the TOFC are implicit rules by virtue of
inspecting the arrangement of symbols representing ideas of the process-object as function. It is meant
here that the function is just as much a result of a computation of one function over two others (dyadic)
as it is a an operation, itself.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Backing up to square one and into the classroom, what do we tell students what they should “do” with
logic and what the future looks like with further developments in the field? After reviewing the many
definitions and the ways various writers have approached the field, once can say that, rather than being
a subject area with numerous sub-fields of study – an object, “logic” is so many faceted that one should
see it as a process of finding order in our world. An intriguing sample or collection of units should lead
students to think more about the world in which they live and why they may be in it. One exposition of
that discussion has been presented above as the development of logical space predicated upon the most
fundamental law of dialectics and primitive ideas of magnitude and its evolution. The “back” and “forth”
- two poles – provide that way logic communicates to us the dialectic of innate order. These poles are
displayed the logical space. That bivalency, as exhibited by what one can expressed by a digital computer,
perforce can describe our universe as completely as our means of conveyance will allow (as in virtual
reality). Carrying the traditional bivalency forward, one meets the likes of Spencer-Brown, Stern, and
Rapoport, who see multidimensional logic as the platform for quantum computing.
In speaking of the quantum world, the two-dimensional logical space with the Table of Functional
Completeness (ToFC), followed by the three-dimensional hypercube, can be described is a beginner’s
trellis that can contain the semantics for expressing ideas that probe age-old philosophical questions
about space, time, the substratum, and even being, itself. Beyond, the supercomputers and artificial
intelligence, perhaps consciousness, itself may follow.
But, what of consciousness? Then, what of ideas generated by that consciousness? Too, what of
thought? Despite 30 years of an ongoing conference in consciousness (Consciousness, 2017), all the
effort dedicated in the “Decade of the Brain”, and the Human Brain Project (among other artificial
intelligence efforts), we do not seem to be any step closer in resolving what David Chalmers calls the
“hard problem” of consciousness (Hard problem of consciousness, 2017). It is hard to think that Ham-
eroff’s (2003) microtubules are the answer. Although Tononi (2008) and his consciousness manifesto
seem to be steps closer, they do not seem to have provided us with the necessary elements to establish
consciousness outside the human body.
What of multiple-valued logics? My answer is analogizing to how the American Standard Code for
Information Interchange (ASCII) expresses everything the computer does. Merely by coupling the zeros
and ones in binary does this scheme emerge. These combinations are heuristics, not unlike using all 16
functions in the ToFC in a proof; that is, the proof would be extremely short using all 16. By contrast,
using only one operator and its negate would lengthen proof considerably. Language can be like this,
where the richness of the language is exhibited by the “shortcuts” it can take in expressing an idea.

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One should realize that a number of problems seemingly isolated are essentially different expressions
of the same one: Godel, Church’s Theorem, the problem of boundary, calculus, Russell’s Paradox, the
set of all sets issue, the double slit experiment, and Heisenberg are all aspects of our looking at ourselves
through ourselves, i.e., second order cybernetics… All of this suggests that the observer determines her/
his own reality at some level. The observer becomes the observed.
Let’s go to the real basics. If all of our environment is reducible to Planck scale and the only remain-
ing elements are what I’d call the modern rendition of Aristotle’s substratum – that which is present and
the other in Hawking’s black hole world, then everything that is around us emerges from this binary
world. A sidebar consideration is that we talk of pure motion – degrees of it – as the ultimately building
block – perturbations in space time – again, Aristotle’s substratum.
Atop of the micro world, there is a fundamental natural order in the universe represented or symbol-
ized by a language known to us as binary or propositional logic, again, the same language underscoring
the dynamics of modern digital computers. This language of logic describes quantum cosmology.
There is no reason to stop here. Order permeates, and logic is not only a study of it but the language
that order speaks. For my part, this author seeks that which coheres or binds. As the etymology indicates,
religion being about that which binds or coheres (Religion – etymology, 2017), I guess that makes logic
my religion. As a process I live it.

NOTE

Wikipedia provides a general overview of the topic, listing further readings upon which the content is
based. Often, it is only what the general public often encounters. Too, Wikipedia not only is readily
available on the Internet but it is open source. One should refer to the content and references as any
competent scholar would.

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ADDITIONAL READING

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bridge: MIT Press.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Bootstrap: Starting with an assumption or assumptions and building a system, model, explanation,
concept, or other foundation.
Cognition: Mentation, or that with which the intellect manages.
Consciousness: Often used synonymously with “mind”.
Deduction: In logic, if the premises are true, the conclusion is guaranteed. Closed systems.
Epistemology: A study of how one accounts for assertions. Formally, one refers to “justified belief”.
Induction: In logic, the degree of probability that a conclusion will follow from the premises. Open
systems.

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Inference: A way of arriving at a conclusion. This may be by deduction or induction, or a combination

of both. The manner in which this is done is unknown, especially for induction, i.e., the actual method by
which we arrive at one idea from the previous. Also, again with induction especially, the path may not be
linear. It is suggested that the solution to the problem of induction posed by Hume, Mill, and Russell may
be analogous to the source of ideas and consciousness, a basis of which may be in quantum mechanics.
Mind: What people refer to as “consciousness”, state of mentation. This may include but not be
restricted to thinking, mood, or anything intangible experienced by a person but regarded as emanating
from the brain. Despite many years of reflection and research on mind, there has been no universally
agreed-upon definition of “mind”, “consciousness”, “intelligence” or what people take as synonyms, or
words meaning the same. For example, one only need visit the website http://consciousness.arizona.edu
and read the thousands of presentations by persons in many disciplines to appreciate this.
Neuroimaging: Graphic representation of neuroanatomy, including but not limited to the brain,
nerves, ganglia, axons, and dendrites. Images may be by computerized axial tomography (CAT), electro-
encephalograms (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography
(PET), and others. It is to be noted that the lower-case “f” in “fMRI is intentional; this is the proper
manner of writing this abbreviation.
Ontology: A study of what exists.
Second Order Cybernetics: A study of human-machine interfaces, the focus on how humans regard
themselves through themselves, a central issue being the question of human bias.
System: A collection of elements related to each other so as to perform a function, that collection
accepting inputs and then producing outputs. Systems may be closed or open.

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