Tag: life

Logic and rules

It is not that simple to divide the things in life into categories. Often, complexities in life are quite powerfully placed into them by the force of categorising.

Categorization causes bias by which discrimination arises. Due to its function, people memorize things easier. The function is, often, to recognise things in outer world from self. Categorization is the capability equipped in persons. Finding difference is to identify an individual. Difference matters in this world. People try to appreciate the difference among people. Contrarily, we have a vector of power that is attempting to homogenize the world. Categorisation has a bit of distance from the subjects that it refers to, categorising and grouping a set of subjects can group not only the subjects from which one began that categorising but also what will be found in the future as well as in the past which meet a set of standards.

Logical thinking is what is often centred in businesses or academics, it is what people can rely on. For instance, planning a schedule tries to narrow its possibility so that it can meet the demand among groups of people. Otherwise, it becomes more chaotic, without organising the possibility. Demanding logical act excessively make some people feel uncomfortableness. It diminishes the free sphere which tolerates diverse people.

The progress around logic has to do with the past development of logic and mathematics. The discovery of pure mathematics in 1850s emphasised that “We, start, in pure mathematics from certain rules of inference, by which we can infer that if one proposition is true, then so is some other proposition”(1).

Society seeks progress, makes attempts to move towards better world, however it requires immense efforts. The efforts required put people in a situation where they work harder to make it realised. It feels that the amount of time and cost to maintain the individual life occupies a lot. They are concerned with the labouring, in particular it has some stress in their life especially when having trouble. Making the sphere of freedom broader lets people flexibly do their labour.

The masses work for company. A large part of them work for at least 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week with often additional overtime hours. Business model requires employees to efficiently work with the aim of how they can produce efficient output in their limited time. Working more efficiently leads to the situation in which employees need to care about almost every detail to output efficiently. More impressively saying that in every minute they are required to produce maximized output without spending their time in vain. Business world orders employees to labour socialistically (or communistically) by deciding the deadline. That is to say that it is less allows people to have some room.

Capitalism shows its strong influence over the world, but the world covered by mono culture suffocates the world. In the business world, people need to be eager to move things forward. They work hard while managing their tasks by scheduling task by task. Although it in fact often needs to extend the scheduled end date if they have some problems in the situation of their tasks, but basically it is their virtue to meet the schedule of each task even if it requires them to work overtime, even at midnight or weekend. People share the notion of time in the business world so that things can be settled by the schedule that they set up, they relate their tasks to the notion of time(2).

People talk a lot about money. Companies typically care about the growth of revenue per certain period such as month, quarter, and year. Labouring hard every workday and move forward their tasks in rapid cycle may let you earn higher income, but what else is going to be with you after years?

It is absurd to see that developing one’s career makes one difficult to move to other paths, different from the current one, even in academics or professional career. Typically saying, one’s career needs consistency. Without having it, it often fails to get through application process. Some people of antidisciplinary is not within this framework as they are the ones who are interested in more than everything. They are always not limited to one discipline or another. Specialising in a limited discipline doesn’t fascinate this type of person. By growing, why not take a variety of jobs?

Utilitarianism suits in a society being more digitalised and calculated. Considering the principle of utility, it “approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness”(3).

Rules are in place in society, and people practice them in their life. It sometimes feel that the society at the beginning of 21st century, or it can date back to several hundreds years, asks people to follow the rules more rigidly. Not condemning specific actor of society, but society in general has tendency to make each person follow the narrow path. Some people demand that others behave properly even in tiny details. Those rules are made based on the past. Rules are made in some cases based on the frequency of its usage.

Rules already put in place cannot cover all the situations that take place in society. It requires the practical flexibility to appear to be following them. This is not particularly focusing on the cases in which practitioners claim that they follow the rules on the one hand and others in society insist it doesn’t seem to the public that they follow, but in the real world without having the flexibility to be regarded as following the rules, the rules don’t work. Not just obeying the rules literally, there’s some space between what’s written and how it is practised. Flexibility depending on situations is required to run society smoothly. It is because the descriptions of the rules cannot cover all the situations that potentially could happen, there’s always need for practitioners to make them work.

Multi-disciplined in the same space without causing major conflict protects the sphere in which a variety of people co-habits. It is not governed by one discipline erasing others which make the world inflexible to different situations of different people.

Law is subject to change both its description and its meaning or interpretation, often little by little. The description of law often compresses the cases of daily life of their citizenry to a concise description. Even if the form of law is written in one description, it can be applied to a number of cases in society. The norms are often based on culture that their society owns.

Ethics, or morality, works to some extent to limit freedom of persons as they would refrain from taking certain actions which are harmful to others based on their conscience. Regulated by conscience, being free goes toward public good. Religion plays significant role on the formation of morality, and how they think about the world. It also has been supporting people, without which they would more directly face the reality and are not able to face it continually. Ethics is a set of rules deeply rooted in persons.

(1) Bertrand Russel, Mysticism and Logic (London and New York: Routledge, 2025), pp.69-70.

(2) This sentence is influenced by p.77 of Henri Bergson, Histoire de l’idée de temps: Cours au Collège de France 1902-1903 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2016).

(3) John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarianism and Other Essays (London: Penguin Books, 2004), p.65.

Logic and categorisation

By the middle of the 20th century, “logic has become more mathematical and mathematics has become more logical”(1).

Logical analysis can converge things into a certain point where things are settled instead of being ambiguous, or chaotic. Wording is to converge things into certain point. Ambiguously uttering is somewhat limiting but not in narrower way.

This convergence into a point in logic is suitable to business in capitalism where a rapid cycle of decision-making and moving tasks forward is demanded rather than continuing to thinking about a certain decision whether it is truly the best answer or not. Even though business world also requires the meta thinking to make a correct decision, it is necessary to move tasks forward rapidly. The use of logic in business world associated with capitalism is different from works that are expected to last forever, logic converges things, there are things not included at the moment logic determines.

This characteristic of convergence is used to make the future converge in a hopeful way. The word “risk” is often paid attention to especially in late 20th century. It is described that “The notion of ‘risk’ is central to modern culture today precisely because so much of our thinking has to be ‘as-if’ kind”(2). Beforehand, they recognise the risks, they make the ways by which risks are minimised. However knowing the risks may makes people difficult to take action. After recognising them, we would choose whether we take action by accepting the risks or avoid taking action so that we will not face them.

In business world, they require the labourers to be logical. Logical thinking has been one of the capacities which is recognised as necessary for each. That is especially in the first quarter of 21st century onwards required.

Analysing the things that one face and identify what is known and not. To the questions that one cannot “here and now give definitive answers”(3), “a method has been discovered by which, as in science, we can make successive approximations to the truth, in which each new stage results from an improvement, not a rejection, of what has gone before”(4).

Logic is related to accountability. It is often seen that people involved ask its explanation which is convincing enough to be provided behind the proposition that one gave. Argument equipped with logic can convince people in front of oneself. Strong logic can make people not be able to respond.

In business world, answering to a question properly is often demanded. Sometimes see people not clearly answer question is that they have other things in mind and are captured by them.

Sharing the same logic with others leads them to work in the same logic in a certain domain. People of different background may indicate that “two individuals may agree on their computations in particular cases even though they are actually computing different functions”(5).

Temper is a large factor that decides whether it is going to be successful or not. If one is not motivated to move forward tasks in a project, it has to do with the outcome of to what extent successful it is going to be.

Given this nature of logic, does it have extensibility in its nature? The extensibility is whether it is opened to the further sphere. The logic often determines the scope before moving forward.

It is a type of categorisation that people judge others by their title as such that whether one is director or just a staff. Even if those who are in the rank of banality has greater capacity in some cases, one may not be regarded so by others.

Labeling doesn’t comprehend the entire aspects of a person, but it attempts to make easier to categorise. It sometimes goes to the end that it is condemned as prejudice. Labeling is to categorise by one or a few aspect of person, sometimes the impressive aspect of a person. People are frequently labelled some as liberal, conservative, or others. It seems that the labelling focuses on an opinion or the tendency that a person more frequently expresses. Presumably a person who is labelled as liberal also has conservative opinion in other topics given the complexity of human being. Even unconsciously people categorise as it is harder for them to recognise one by one, easier to group by similarity. This labeling has negative aspect too as it may group one which isn’t easy to be categorised in one group or another.

Bias is an exaggerated aspect of an object based on one’s past experience. Categorising and prejudice are related. Some fault images accentuating some aspect excessively create the prejudice.

Persons of logic should know what is not logical.

(1) Bertrand Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2023), p.184.

(2) Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press,1994), p.vii.

(3) Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), p.744.

(4) Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), p.744.

(5) Saul A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1982), p.32.