Worrying Pure Logics and the Prisoner’s Dilemma

 

Pure logics lacks the core principle enabling it to self-evaluate its validity such as mathematical axiom. Therefore, there are multiple possible answers not unified under an axiomatic rule. In philosophy, philosophers define their theoretical criterion as the core foundation basing their logical consistency prior to configuring their theoretical architecture of logics. Natural science refers to the empirical evidence shown in the substantial world experiment basing their logical arguments.

By contrast, economics and the other social scientific subjects nowadays tend to ignore this fundamental argument on their theoretical validity. Since the 20th century, people have tended to treat economics and the other social scientific subjects such as sociology, political science, and psychology as the pure physical science by detaching them from a metaphysical foundation. Prior to that time period, those social scientific subjects were strongly tied up with philosophy taking account of metaphysics defining the fundamental principle of their arguments.

Unlike natural science, social science including economics seldom presents an empirical experience instantly proven with the substantial experiment. This is why they used to be more tied up with a philosophical perspective providing the guidance of their direction of experiment. For example, economic and social policies as well as psychological therapy must be related to ethics with its metaphysical background and its guiding base principle. Moreover, epistemology weighs on convincing people with these social scientific theories needing to convince people to trust in what these theories insist on. This is because their theoretical validity is hardly proven by the empirical experiment like natural science.

Despite this factor, people nowadays tend to be obsessed with the narrow-minded short-term objectives such as money making gaming and labelling individuals according to their conformance to the mainstream society. This tendency is notorious in financial economics and psychology related to sociology. Economists nowadays tend to focus on the market speculation and pedantically modifying the already existing theories. Social psychologists impose the cohesively unified theory authorised by the academic elite peer group to people with little empirical experimental evidence and little discussion among various perspectives. This is in fact a worrying phenomenon for individual people and their world environment.

The prisoner’s dilemma theory is the clear example indicating this worrying matter when individuals are motivated by following the pure logics without the philosophical principle while pursuing the narrow-minded short-term goal. The prisoner’s dilemma explains that the spontaneously equilibrium point is not always good; Its outcome can be actually bad! The original theory explains that each one of these two prisoners betrays each other to eventually induce themselves to the worst overall outcome in consequence although their cooperation would bring the best outcome. This is not due to their stupidity at all. Their rational attitude towards their pure logical thought process induces their action leading to the worst outcome. This analysis of the prisoner’s dilemma can be used as the analogy of the market speculation in economics.

In this case scenario, private economic agents seldom voluntarily cooperate together to divert their economy from the worst outcome. Instead, they often induce the worst outcome called the bad equilibrium without any forcible countermeasure against it. During the deflationary recession, their action perpetuates the deflation by saving more while investing less to the market although they had better cooperate to invest more to divert the deflation to overcome the recession. At the time of the economic overheat causing the surging price inflation, their action accelerates the inflation by investing more than the prudential level instead of suppressing it by being prudent.

This is why the authoritarian paternalistic government intervention is often desired to forcibly divert these worst outcomes. However, this officious government intervention often antagonises individual citizens thinking of their government as rather impertinent than compassionate. Furthermore, the government also often fail to achieve such an intervention due to their long complicated bureaucratic processes slowing the process down as well as corruption and incompetence discouraging it.

This market dysfunction is caused by the rational but over-speculative attitude of these economic agents. It is considered to be derived from their narrow-minded mentality without any philosophical principle. It reminds of the proverb “Reality is but a mirror reflecting your inner world.” which both Epicurus and Schopenhauer inferred in their philosophy at each contemporary time period. The world turns to be a chaotic game of speculation without any noble ethical principle.

Sum up, the reliance on pure logics without any guiding principle is unproductive as well as worrying. This can be the reason why the current world situation is in a chaotic state. Whilst the intelligence and the technology of applying more complex logics than the past, it still struggles to reach a productive and virtuous state. Hence, it must be the time to revise to evaluate the core principle basing logics foundation and enabling it to self-evaluate to verify its validity itself.

Logics and its reliability

Logics is not mathematics; it is a form of art. The validity of Mathematical equations is derived from mathematical axiom to induce the unified valid legitimate answer. By contrast, pure logics lacks this kind of criterion like mathematical axiom verifying the validity of the logical inference. Therefore, many logical subjects are unable to derive a solid unified answer so that they often provoke the conflict among different perspectives.

Logics is a form of expression to display the outcome which an individual wishes to achieve. For instance, the abduction shows A will induce C if A is/implies B as well as B is/implies C. At the same time, this answer can be modified by taking account of some external compound effect inside this algorism. There is no criterion enabling this algorism to self-evaluate to judge whether it is valid or invalid according to something like mathematical axiom.

Plato seems to be introduced as a figure head of the idealist philosopher in the history. However, his idealism hardly goes beyond the daily-life custom and experience. His logical inference is purely based on A and not A. Plato actually ended up with being an ultra-realist insisting on the importance of the power structure stabilising the human society instead of inventing some abstract concept beyond the human nature. But yet, Plato as well as his predecessor Socrates opened the gate of pursuing a universal objective to achieve the ideal state which a human individual may want to aspire.

By contrast, both Bentham and Kant invented their own theory of self-evaluating the validity of their logical inference with reference to the fundamental axiom of philosophical logics. This invention has enabled thinkers to imagine their ideal state beyond their real-life experiences. There shall be something verifying the validity of both A and not-A as well as inferring the unseen valid alternative of neither A nor not-A.

The crucial difference between Benthamite and Kantian logics is either human nature is changeable or not. Bentham affirmed the criterion is to admit and follow the quasi-instinct of humans as natural whereas Kant insisted on something transcending the human nature forming human custom, desire, habit, superstition, tradition, etc. Even though philosophers keep disputing over which criterion is more convincing than the other, these modern idealists provided individuals with the imagination ability of thinking outside the box to think bigger.

Those who are called Pragmatists have adopted the combined perspectives of Benthamite and Kantian perspectives. They accept various unique criteria existing for each distinct verification process for each unique subject. They have distinguished criteria and objectives which individual refer to and pursue between the metaphysical subjects such as philosophy and religion and the physical scientific subjects such as natural science and daily-life matters such as household economy and business activities.

The metaphysical subject depends on norms and values of each unique world view whilst each physical science is ought to focus on their own short-term goal as their pursuing criterion detached from a metaphysical/philosophical (the big picture model). Natural science pursuing to discover the concepts explaining the nature of the substantial world mechanism by means of their experiment in nature. The real business management, distinguished from the academic subject called business management, verifies its legitimacy of existence by means of their business performance, portfolio, and profitability.



Ayn Rand ardently disagreed with these modern idealists cohesively imposing a solid answer for defining the legitimacy of human actions and thoughts because imposing a universal principle defined by a certain privileged individual group to the other majority individuals is hypocritical. She admitted that philosophy does not need to be something axiomatic like mathematics to forcibly deriving an absolute answer. She described human’s life is an everlasting pursuit of finding their own way of spending life as well as feeling and thinking their own imagination while being adjusted to each unique life environment varying across different times, places, and occasions.

Ayn Rand praised both art and pure logics which all the human individuals should be devoted in. She explained art is the outcome of each unique logical construction by each individual expressing their own beauty, functionality, intelligence, and value.　There should be no unified verification criterion/principle for approving their legitimacy. Instead, “try and error” guides individuals to their own ideal goal with the minimum required contracts and restrictions promoting and protecting the freedom of each individual to prevent unnecessary conflict, violation of freedom.

———

Nowadays, many academics as well as business and financial reporters often fail to address this aforementioned issue. There is no discussion over where the principle which their logical inference is based on. These authoritarians tend to hypocritically behave as though they were the transcendental guardians of all the humans whereas their logical inference is never universally valid in the real life of all the individuals. Their logical inference is simply the mere interpretation of their subjective desires and wishes.

In conclusion, it is important to question how logics is structured and the ulterior motive of the presenter using logics. For example, when a presenter uses her/his logics to forecast some outlook, her/his ulterior motive can be simply a subjective desire rather than an objective rationality. Instead of ranting on wishy-washy outcomes, it is rather productive to do some activities fulfilling the ethically worth something regardless of the future anticipation. If someone is excessively logical to explain or excuse something, there is a risk of this person intentionally intriguing to take an advantage of manipulating the others only for this person’s interest.