The Birth of Therefore

This essay thesis came about as a result of a single comment made by a member on an internet list. We were discussing logic, and this person, I will call Joe, said: "Aristotle invented logic. " My instant (and somewhat knee-jerk) response was: "No, he simply revealed the way the mind works. " A rather lengthy discussion ensued, neither Joe nor I budging from our positions. Actually, I misspoke; I should have said what I am saying in this piece, that Aristotle revealed the way the language-mind works. Aristotle did not invent logic (which was what he assumed was embodied in the syllogism in all its various forms) but rather he revealed some of the critical aspects of our collective thought/language process -- what I call the language-mind. One may chose to use "discovered" in place of "revealed, " however such a verb suggests that the syllogism possesses a kind of Platonic reality, or universal truth/meaning, while "reveal" is not quite as suggestive. One way to look at Aristotle’s syllogisms is that he is saying it is impossible for anyone who is mature in language and thought (i. e. whose thinking is part of the language-mind) to doubt the truth of a (valid) syllogism. As for the syllogism being the cornerstone of logic, that may be debatable, but the process of deductive reasoning is certainly a close cousin of the syllogistic structure. Its relationship to mathematics (as a cornerstone) is problematic; Bertrand Russell says: "The syllogism is only one kind of deductive argument. In mathematics, which is wholly deductive, syllogisms hardly ever occur. " Be that as it may, the syllogism, along with other deductive structures share the connecting construct of "therefore, " and it is this concept/construct which I examine here.

We connect with the world -- what’s out there -- via our senses and the cognitive mechanisms which process sensed data. Part of such processing includes the creation and inculcation of categories and qualities related to the observed world. Neither the reality of what is sensed nor the reality of these categories and qualities is of importance to this discussion, being the purview of physical ontology -- not cognitive science. What is of importance are the fundamental bases for thought, reasoning and the construction of language. I use the term language-mind to suggest one aspect of cognition; namely, how thought and language are linked inextricably within and to a given language culture. While I do not believe that language is a necessary ingredient for thought, I believe that it is one key means of translating what is thought into a communicable form, and within that form itself are reflections of the structure of the mind that created the thought. In addition, I believe that once a child has fully acquired a language, this is an indication that the thought process is mature to the point of manifesting the fundamental and general attributes of human cognition.

We think and construct some kind of representation of the world in order to deal with it. We have evolved a mechanism of thought that has been commensurate with our survival needs down through the ages. We possess a cognitive construct of color (though color, per se, doesn’t exist in the world) because such a construct has been selected as beneficial to our species. In the same way and for the same reasons, we possess cognitive constructs for dealing with everything in the world that we can sense; if we could not sense (as a species) something there would be no need for such constructs to deal with it. But even if we, as individuals, cannot sense something, for example if we are born without sight, we still possess certain fundamental mechanisms for forming/accepting concepts which grew out of a sighted species. The blind can still comprehend things like in front of, or behind or beneath, or larger and smaller even though such terms were originally related to seeing things in front of, behind or beneath other things. I maintain that there is a finite set of these spatial and spatio-temporal constructs which are the basis for logical/deductive thought.

I have yet to discover a thorough discussion of language origins which focus on how we must have originally connected with and represented our environment. Linguists seem to be mainly interested in how syntax came about, and cognitive scientists mainly interested in how the brain/mind operates vis a vis biology It would seem that a starting point for any investigation of language origins should be based on that connection process, since all animals possess it to varying degrees of capability and sophistication. It is my key premise that language began as a means to socially deal with the world -- with its objects, events, phenomena and humans -- in the process of surviving.

Definition of The Language-Mind

Throughout this essay I refer to the language-mind, and speak of it in two senses: 1) the sense of human language as a means of communication of information, and 2) the sense of a collectively utilized and agreed to system of thought representation via language. It is different from both Popper’s World 3 and Wittgenstein’s language games, but closer to Wittgenstein, in that there are many language-minds, existing within language cultures around the world. There is what might be called a -language-mind, in that all the different societies and cultures can communicate, albeit imperfectly, via translations from one language to another. I like to use the image of a child who, at some stage in their growth, usually around five or six, are given access to the language-mind; they become a part of it, as if it is a combination of a set of tools, a dwelling place, a library filled with words, meanings and conventions. When they become a part of it, they have the ability to aid in its growth and change, since they have the right and often the ability to influence what it becomes as a result of their participation. I don’t like to think of the language-mind as having rules or objective truths, although it appears to have these; for me it is more like a living organism that has evolved to a certain state, is still evolving and changing in conjunction with the changes in a given language culture.

Within the language-mind there are constructs which reflect certain agreed upon conventions of representations of the observed world -- especially objects in that world that are related in time and space to the observer. I am not stating that such representations are exact, or "truthful" objective correspondences with "reality, " but rather they are artifacts which have evolved and have been found to be useful in dealing with the world. (I am not concerned here with ontological questions -- I am perhaps best classified, if I must be, as a naive realist) These constructs, which I refer to as fundamentals, are constant across all languages, perhaps in slightly differing forms. It is my central thesis in this essay that these fundamentals are the basis for what has become known as logic. Put another way, certain elements of the language-mind are the foundations of logical and deductive thought.

The Fundamental Constructs

We sense aspects of the world in space and time. While one can delve into endless examinations of what "time" really means, there is no doubt that we possess an awareness of temporality. Not only do we have repeating bodily processes (heartbeat, breathing) which give some structure to a temporal awareness, it has been suggested that there actually is some kind of internal "clock" that "clicks" at around forty cycles/second. So, just as we have cognitive constructs for behind, in front of, etc. we also have similar ones for before and after and as we shall see the two are if not simply related, are actually the same construct with different application fields. Just as all elements (objects, phenomenon, events) are located in space and time, they are located differentially among themselves. They possess these differentiable spatio-temporal locations as well as possessing various qualities which "locate" them categorically within our minds. A rock has a certain size, weight, color, texture and is located relative to other elements in the sensed world. If we must deal with this rock we must do so using these constructs -- i. e. sensed qualities and spatio-temporal locations relative to our bodies.

When considering how homo sapiens, as well as their precursors, dealt with the world, it is reasonable to assume that, as animals, we were/are basically no different from any other animal organism in that our dealings were based on managing, acquiring and maintaining sustenance, shelter, defense and procreation -- SSDP. (The degree to which all of these apply in today’s world is problematic -- a strict reductionist might indeed conclude that they all apply when our activities, judgments, plans and desires are examined in regressive detail. ) Each of these requires that certain cognitive capabilities be commensurate with the challenges that were out there relative to SSDP. It is granted that a certain level of cognitive "power" and eventually a language, conferred a higher probability of species survival -- although, I must add that survival, per se, is not viewed as any kind of teleological objective. And, the shark has managed to survive far longer than our species with little variation in its morphology or behavior, without out any kind of cognition and language as we understand those terms. So, the physical "why? " of our cognitive and language skills is not the question here; they evolved; they served us well; here we are. What is important, regarding the key point of this essay, is how those skills grew from one stage to the next and how they served to form the basis for logical thought.

In dealing with SSDP there had to have been a stage when we were able to categorize the elements of the world (objects, processes, events) in finer detail. This capability was part and parcel of increasing complexity and range of our intelligence; some might even claim that such finer category discrimination is the key mark of "higher" intelligence. I am loathe to employ terms such as "higher" since it conveys superiority; we do not consider the skills of a golfer as superior to those of a sprinter, so why should we make similar value judgments regarding our mental skills versus other animals? We live and operate in different milieus with differing needs. There are many things other animals can do that we can’t. Value comparisons and judgments serve no useful purpose.

The development of finer category discrimination and identification was bound to have been carried out relative to our bodies; all that we observed was done so in a spatio-temporal gestalt relative to us; if something was large or small, it was so relative to us; if something was distant or near it was so relative to our location; if another animal ran, it ran either faster or slower than we could. In addition, we acquired the ability, with ourselves as the agent, to make similar discriminations between objects other than ourselves; i. e. we possessed an awareness that one mountain was larger than another; that the gazelle was faster than the elephant. So, we can say that size, speed and location are basic descriptive categories for elements in the world, and that they were originally based on relevance to our bodies. It seems obvious that the communication of such descriptions of the observed objects in the world would serve us well as social creatures, and were bound to become an integral part of our communication and cognitive repertoire -- i. e. a part of our language-mind.

All animals use their senses to locate, identify objects around them for purposes related to SSDP. With humans, as highly social, intelligent animals, the location of objects requires descriptive tools; it was not until Descartes that the familiar three-dimensional x, y, z coordinate system was used as a standard means of locating things relative to a specified origin point. Originally we were the origin point for all locational descriptions; we no doubt pointed with our hands and arms to indicate the vicinity of something relative to where we were. In addition, we no doubt eventually utilized signs or speech to indicate object locations relative to other objects as well as to ourselves; things could be spatio-temporally located by using the following kinds of expressions: (i. e. the fundamental concepts)

behind (relative to observer/speaker) in front of (relative to observer/speaker) above (over) below (under) beneath (under) around (outside of and containing) within (inside, being contained) outside of (not within) beyond (more distanhan further than closer than before after

Notice that the first two of these are relative terms; most objects in nature to not possess any intrinsic "front" or "back, " therefore these expressions would have been relative to the observer/speaker. "Behind the large rock" meant: On the side opposite to where the observer/speaker was. It does not take a great deal of imagination to see that these fundamental concepts of locational descriptions would be quite helpful in the social activities related to SSDP. The communication of information about objects and events was clearly of great benefit to our species, and the instantiation of such concepts in the language-mind seems a plausible step in our cognitive evolution.

Part Two of three parts)

This brings up perhaps the most important aspect of the theory I am proposing: We still had to learn the sign or word that denoted these locational indicators as part of our lexicon; in what way did they become part of cognition? My answer is that they became a component of what I am calling language-mind. This language-mind did not evolve as an innate function of the individual mind, but rather it evolved as a cultural artifact, embodied in the society and language of humans, much as specific cognitive abilities (i. e. neural wiring, etc. ) are embodied in the individual human. If the individual human dies, his/her mind and language dies with them; if a language culture is wiped out by some catastrophe or virus the language-mind dies as well, except for what vestiges may remain as codified in books and other media. We must look at humanity as a kind of collective organism, connected in space and time by the language-mind, possessing a history, a present and a future.

I maintain that we do not have to seek far to find the beginnings of logical or deductive thought if we accept that the fundamental concepts above existed prior to or concomitant with the development of our general cognitive abilities. But before going into my reasoning, I will mention how concepts of time bear a strong similarity to those of space/location.

We observe change: change in states of affairs; change in locations, in weather, in the height of the river; change in the position of the sun, moon and stars, etc. , and we locate all observed phenomena in time and space, either relative to our selves (our person, our bodies) or relative to something else that is observed relative to our selves. We have all heard descriptions of distance interchanged with time; when asked how far a certain area is, the answer might very well be in terms of time -- not measurable distance. e. g. "That village is three days walk. " thus forming a kind of space-time concept. It is therefore natural to assume events can all be considered in a relativistic milieu; every event can be seen as existing either before or after some other event; it gets dark after the sun sets; the river rises after it rains, etc. I see no difference, in terms of the arguments I will be making, between "before" and "after" and "in front of"/ "behind. " They are the same concept but applied in different fields of observation/perception. The main difference, which I do not consider to be of significance here, is that "behind" and "in front of" are ordinarily relative to the observer’s location, which is relative to the object being used in the referral of location; whereas time sequentialness requires no human originating point, as do location concepts -- that is unless the sequential references are made relative to something the human is doing, and thus becomes an event which is used as would be any external event as a temporal reference point.

Examining the listed fundamental constructs of, and precursors to, logic, it is clear that there are two basic schema (or what Lakoff and Johnson would call metaphors): 1) schema dealing with spatial/time locations, and 2) schema dealing with containment. Notice that other concepts, such as causation and similarity etc. are not necessarily involved, nor do I believe they need be. However, there is another, and perhaps most crucial concept which is seldom dealt with -- that of "therefore. " Therefore is not an observable aspect of the world; it is a pure cognitive mechanism, and is at the heart of all deductive thought. We must ask the question: How was it that within the gestalt of a scene of the world, presenting a specific state of affairs, actions, changes, object locations, and so on, it became evident that some aspects of that state of affairs evinced either a kind of consequential reality or perceived contingency? It required that differential magnitudes (of space, size, distance, etc. ) be seen as consequences of appearances; i. e. larger than required the recognition of relative sizes, and had no meaning without such relativity. Whether or not language had developed to the point that large could be extend to large-r is not the point; the same conclusion can be drawn using, when confronted with two objects of different sizes, simply: the big object, or the small object. The context of the situation/appearances will dictate, usually unambiguously, which object is being referred to. If there are several objects, all of different sizes, a process of reduction could be used to easily label each object in the order of its relative size; i. e. if the largest object is removed, there remains then another the big object, and so on. (I am not suggesting that any such reduction actually took place, but it is not unreasonable to assume that had the objects been changed in any way, there would remain the big object. ) In place of (and perhaps as a precursor to therefore) the word now could have been used to denote that a change in the perceived state of affairs resulted in a different set of labels to denote relative sizes, or weights, or locations. State A, upon being altered to State B reconfigures the relative aspects of objects: State A changes to State B, and now certain facts have been changed as to the labels of things. Now is equivalent to therefore, and indicates that from the arrangement observed in State A, the arrangement observed in State B is consequentially created. i. e. "Now, the big object is . . . . . . . " Whether or not a word or phrase, such as now or in that case or therefore, actually existed is not as important as the perception of the given state of affairs. Such a perception, encountered a sufficient number of times, and found valuable in the communication among people, would (and obviously did) become part of the language. But it also became part of the language-mind -- a way of seeing and stating things about the world, making decisions and judgments about the world.

This is a difficult argument to make. We know nothing of the language, or the proto-language that may have existed in the distant past, well prior to the questions and answers by the ancient Greek philosophers, vis a vis logic, deduction and mathematics, etc. But we do know that today the concepts of spatio-temporal states of affairs, of relative magnitudes, of containment, and the fundamental concepts listed above are an integral part of the language-mind of our species, and they had to have had an originating point and a raison d’être for that origination. I am in no position (nor is anyone else) to say with great certainty that the fundamentals I have listed evolved as I have suggested. My reasoning is based on thought experiments, trying to put myself back in an era during which those fundamentals were fully and finally brought into the language-mind.

The Origins of the Fundamentals

Space and Containment

We, along with many other animals, have the ability to locate objects, sounds and events in space via our stereoscopic vision and bi-aural hearing, as well as with our ability to determine relative sizes and loudness. In addition, we can spatially locate one object relative to another one, so that even if object A is smaller than object B, upon observing that object A is further away from us (our bodies) than object B we know that the locations are not accounting for the observed difference in sizes; i. e. we perceive these objects in three dimensions -- not two. This suggests that we are aware of space (the space between objects) as a kind of object itself; the gestalt of any scene is composed of objects and the space surrounding and between objects. While this space has no name, it has a presence in the field of observation and is tacitly accounted for in our cognitive representation of that field. (I have observed the quail on our property clearly exhibiting an awareness of this space; they do not run away until I get within roughly thirty to forty feet of them -- whether I am walking or in our car, thus indicating that it is distance or space that is the key -- not size) When animals, such as cats, leap from one point to the next, they clearly pre-judge the space they are about to traverse between two points -- where their bodies are and where they intend to land. (I have never observed them incorrectly pre-judging this distance! ) This suggests that space/distance is a perceptual ingredient of many animals -- probably all mammals.

Of course one may argue that without objects as part of the scene, space has no meaning or even presence, however, when one is standing in the middle of Death Valley, not a tree, rock or cacti in sight, they are aware that the space around them is "empty, " but still present. If an object is introduced into such an "empty" space, it can be considered contained by that space; therefore space can be considered as a containing medium; all objects and events we can observe are contained within it. A native village can be spatially demarked by an arbitrary boundary; the territory of some animal can be demarked by locations of its deposited urine or bodily oils, etc. Thus, space and containment are concomitant concepts which many kinds of animals possess to varying degrees of sophistication.

Containment also is clearly a concept having many uses in daily life, aside from the spatially related aspects discussed above. A bucket contains water; a hut contains people and their belongings; a river contains fish; the sky contains stars; etc. One might even say that everything is either contained or not, and that the observed space contains all that can be observed. We ourselves are contained in the space around us.

At this point it is useful to list the assumptions implicit in the above discussion, as a kind of summary of my position to this point:

1. We are animals
2. We sense objects and events in time and space
3. We locate objects and events relative to our bodies
4. We locate objects and events relative to each other
5. We differentiate objects according to size, location and other qualities unique to the object and do so relative to ourselves -- our bodies
6. We perceive space around us, between us and objects, between objects
7. We perceive containment as a characteristic of the world; things are either contained or not
8. All sensed objects are contained in the observed space around us
9. We ourselves are contained in the space around us

The Assumptions of a Proto-laguage

It has been suggested by some linguists that a proto-language did exist, and it is not unreasonable to assume that language, as we know and use it today, did not appear full blown, but evolved along with our other cognitive abilities. While it is impossible to know with any certainty what such a language looked like, it is necessary to begin with some assumptions which I trust are reasonable. First, words probably originally only denoted the names of things and perhaps the names of individuals. If you stop and think about it, we can go pretty far in communicating using only nouns, the verbs remaining implicit. However it may be the case that if I say: "Me town, " the verb "go" is only implicit since we are aware that it needs to be there -- its presence being a part of the language-mind. If we assume that some kind of sign language existed prior to speech, one can imagine a person pointing to themselves, then in some direction or at some thing thus indicating that they intend to go there. This suggests that the verb "to go" originated by the motioning sign of pointing. To indicate that a tree is to be cut down, one might have used a hacking motion parallel to the ground after pointing to the tree, again indicating the verb "to cut. " From this we might assume that when vocalization did arrive both verbs and nouns were established elements of language, as successors to various physical signing motions. So my basic assumption is that such a proto-laguage, at least contained verbs and nouns -- i. e. action denotations and object naming denotations. It appears difficult to move from those very basic and minimal words/signs to a more complex regime of quality denotations, including magnitudes and distances, not to mention the fundamentals I listed above. But if one considers the necessity early humans had for dealing with the world it is surely not a great leap of imagination to picture the use of various descriptive terms for locating objects in space relative to one’s body. Hand/arm gestures indicating such adverbs as behindabove, below, around, beneath, and even contained-within. In hunting parties, for example, such gestures or signals or words would have been indispensable in managing the hunt. So I also assume that in addition to perhaps a scant set of nouns and verbs, a small set of such adverbs also existed either as words or signs. In addition, it is not unreasonable to assume that magnitude descriptors existed to differentiate, for example the size of a prey or a group of animals, hence I assume that a limited number of such adjectives existed, sufficient to deal at a very basic level with objects of interest. I have suggested a sparse or parsimonious language, since it is not reasonable to assume a large complex one at the early stages of speech and cognition. Such a sparse lexicon and simple combinatorial rules would serve us today, albeit somewhat comically.

The assumptions regarding such a proto-language are then:

1) a small set of nouns existed for naming objects, events, perhaps individual people
2) a small set of verbs existed sufficient to denote actions dealing with the nouns
3) a small set of adverbs existed to deal with locating and differentiating objects, events, people, in space and time.

Nowhere in this proto-language lexicon did terms such as "therefore, " "if--then--, " "because, " exist. It was the movement from a sparse proto-language to a more complex and rich one, together with a cognitive mechanism which eventually caused such terms to evolve.

But how and why did they evolve? .

The Birth of "Therefore"

No one today challenges the syllogism: "A is more distanhan B; C is more distanhan A; therefore C is more distanhan B. " Or: "Bucket A contains bucket B; bucket B contains bucket C; therefore bucket A contains bucket C. " These seemingly trivial examples of syllogistic structure would never be denied by someone who lives in the language-mind of today -- regardless of the culture or the language. It might be asked whether these kinds of syllogisms are inductive or deductive; is the bucket syllogism considered true because of its logical structure or because it has always been the case when three buckets are so arranged that their relative sizes indicate the case stated by the syllogism? How about: "The mother is carrying her child; the mother is in the hut; therefore the child is also in the hut. " Is this inductive or deductive reasoning? I maintain that it is irrelevant as to which kind of logic one calls these operations, though there is clearly a difference between them. The critical aspect of this discussion relates to the therefore which is implied in either case. This "therefore" is a kind of shorthand symbol for: Given a state of affairs A and a state of affairs B, a conclusion regarding a state of affairs C can be inferred. Whether or not one is dealing with pure abstractions (as with formal logic) or objects/events in the observed world, the therefore plays the same role -- that of a consequential state of affairs.

How did such a concept come about? I maintain that the language-mind has become imbued with a certain kind of structure which was originally the result of the fundamentals I have listed. This structure implicitly contains the "therefore" even though it probably had no such name in the distant past. Consider only the spatial fundamentals of behind and in front of: A person designating an object, B, that is behind another object, A, does so relative to the speakers location. In this designation it is implicitly true that the object being used as a reference (A) is between the speaker and object B -- even though the term "between" may not be a part of the speaker’s language. The statement: The snake is behind the big rock, has several meanings, but one of them is: The rock is between me and the snake. This state of affairs is a function of the spatial location of objects relative to me. What would induce the necessity for the language-mind of that early era to evolve the use of "therefore, " or equivalent terms such as "consequentially, " or "in that case, " or "now? " Of course this begs the question as to how all such terms come into existence, but therefore is a very special term, since it embodies the essence of logical thought.

We undoubtedly reached a point in our evolution at which we moved from a mainly reactive to a highly active mode of dealing with the world. Using an existing stone for crushing or killing is one thing; shaping that stone to serve a specific purpose is another, and is much more intentional. Perhaps the single most significant step toward a "higher intelligence" was planning, and planing within a social group whose members had individual ideas about things. Steven Fischer remarks that there is evidence that Homo erectus was apparently sufficiently intelligent and socially cooperative to build rafts to cross a 17 mile strait separating Sundra from its eastern neighbor around 900,
00 years ago. Such planning indicated that Homo erectus was advanced enough to execute complex and purposeful tasks toward a specific end. A highly developed language was probably not required for such activities but there can be little doubt that at least a rudimentary one existed sufficient to give simple directions. With the emergence of Homo sapiens language was undoubtedly to the point of containing the basic set of nouns, verbs and adverbs discussed above, and a more advanced form of reasoning surely accompanied this development. By that time the language-mind was large and complex enough to include the rudiments of deductive thought and representations of that thought in words. I suggest that the language-mind of Homo sapiens by then did contain the "if -- then--" construct, or the ‘therefore. " The language-mind contained all the basic requirements needed to formulate if not syllogisms, at least the ability to think syllogistically. A part of the language-mind which could formulate the statement: The snake is behind the big stone, also implicitly recognized the fact that the stone was between the speaker and the snake; it had to be, due to the construct of the statement regarding the location of the snake relative to the speaker.

The Step Toward Logic

Using the deductive constructs of the language-mind is one thing; observing the apparently inherent logic of such constructs is another. Logic, per se, was unknown, having no use or purpose as a capability needed to deal with the world. What was obvious to early humans, in dealing with the world in spatio-temporal terms, at some point (with the Greek philosophers) became not so obvious, or at least became a source of intellectual study that went beyond the daily requirements of living. While it was accepted that deductive reasoning took place, that process began to be examined as to its meaning and validity. By then, words which represented things, were looked at from the perspective of their possible reality among the world of actual observable objects. While undoubtedly the language-mind had adapted such reality (the word "stone" had an unambiguous relation to all stones) the early philosophers were not satisfied with such acceptance, and Plato opined that "stone" was the representation of a universal and ideal Stone. His categorizations were transcendental in nature. This concept went far beyond the mundane use and understanding of words to deal with the world. Aristotle disagreed with this position, claiming that objects exist and are identified via their forms and are dependent on their form or essence for meaning and identification. He believed that the idea of an object originated from its essence; Plato believed that the object was an imperfect representation of an ideal form, which was independent of the object; that is, Plato believed in the reverse concept -- that the essence of an object originated from its Idea (i. e. the ideal form of its transcendental existence) These are essentially diametrically opposed concepts, but they both indicated that by the time of the ancient Greek philosophers language and the representation of the world was seen as a field of intellectual investigation, not simply a field of activity related to physical survival. Thus, the language-mind began taking a different form, one in which the very structure of language was brought into question and examined for its intrinsic and potential meanings. When words acquired a meaning all their own, as distinct from named or indicated, the language-mind reached a certain stage of "maturity" which it possesses today.

Back to the Fundamentals

Recall that the fundamentals I assumed are:

behind (relative to observer/speaker) in front of (relative to observer/speaker) above (over) below (under) beneath (under) around (outside of and containing) within (inside, being contained) outside of (not within) beyond (more distanhan further than closer than before after

These spatio-temporal indicators, I maintain, were the building blocks of what Aristotle eventually did in his revelation of deductive (syllogistic) thought. The dictionary defines deduction as: In a correct, or valid, deduction the premises support the conclusion in such a way that it would be impossible for the premises to be true and for the conclusion to be false. Aristotle could not help but use the structure of the language-mind that had evolved by his time. The fundamentals were, by their very existence and use, but one small step away from "therefore" and this Aristotle supplied by merely recognizing its implicit presence as representing an apparent consequential reality embodies in the language-mind.

Summary and Conclusion

I have actually presented two main theses: 1) There exists what I call the language-mind, which is an amalgam of language and thought conventions which are unique to a given language culture and 2) There existed at some early point in the evolution of Homo sapiens and even Homo erectus (possibly earlier) a set of fundamental words or signs which represented the spatio-temporal arrangement of the observed state of affairs of the sensed world, and that these fundamental words/signs became embodied in the language-mind of the culture as accepted (and irrefutable) concepts which eventually led to the concept of "therefore, " i. e. to the process of deductive thought. Thus, I maintain that while Aristotle’s achievements were indeed seminal in terms of clarification of what the thought process was composed of (logic), he was only making clear and succinct what was already embodied in the language-mind of his era.

Clearly, I have made many assumptions regarding early language and proto-language, and taken great liberties in doing so. But this area of trying to understand ourselves, our language, our thought processes, is bound to rely on such leaps of imagination and thought experiments. I have tried to show the transition from very basic animal-like connections with our world, dealing in the most basic of animal needs -- i. e. to have the means to deal with objects and events as they physically relate to individual human bodies and the senses. Surely those means are bound to be fundamental to the beginnings of language and the language-mind and the eventual emergence of what we today call logic.

A Postscript

An imaginary conversation with a primitive or prehistoric native, whose language-mind does not contain the explicit therefore (or any of its equivalents) might go something like this:

Me: If this rock (A) is larger than that rock (B), and rock (B) is larger than that rock over there (C) doesn't this mean that this rock (A) is larger than rock (C)?

Native: I don't know -- let me look and see. (Goes over and examines the three rocks) Yes, you are right.

Me: But why did you have to look? Isn't it enough that I tell you about them?

Native: Why should I believe only your words -- I have to look at the rocks to see if they are as you claim.

Me: You mean that if it is told to you that one lake is larger than another, and that that other is larger than another one you would have to see the lakes before accepting that the first lake is larger than the last one, just from hearing the words?

Native: Words don't make things the way they are. The lakes are of different sizes if I can see them and decide for myself If you told me that our chief had seven wives you may be right and you may be wrong. I have to counhem to see if you are or not.

Me: Well, what if you had seven wives and your neighbor had five wives and his neighbor had three, would you not have more wives than his neighbor?

Native: Yes, but not because of what you tell me; if his neighbor has only three wives, which I have seen, and I have seven, then of course I have more.

Me: Now we're getting somewhere. What if you know you have seven wives and your neighbor has five, and he told you his neighbor has fewer wives than he does -- would you not therefore know that you had more than his neighbor?

Native: I don't know what the word therefore" means. You must explain it to me.

Is this imagined and fanciful conversation believable as to what it suggests? It suggests that in the language-mind of the native, there is no therefore, no if A then B, etc. It is probably difficult for us to imagine such a language-mind existing today because our mode of deductive reasoning is so all pervasive in our lives and thoughts. We are captive in our language-mind just as the imagined prehistoric native is in his. Aristotle could only have come to his syllogisms if therefore or its equivalents existed prior to the language-mind of his time.

Richard E. Sansom