The syllogistic logic, as created by Aristotle, has been the standard for formalizing reasoning for centuries. It is, however, still far from being fit for use as a system for computers.
Leibniz dreamt of a complete system of symbols that could represent all our existing knowledge and with which you could calculate answers on questions, a kind of ChatGPT or BARD avant la letre.
The person, who paved the way for computers and the way they behave was George Boole (1815 -1864). He was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician,
most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ireland. He worked in the fields of differential equations and algebraic logic,
and is best known as the author of The Laws of Thought (1854) which contains Boolean algebra. Boolean logic is credited with laying the foundations for the Information Age.
Since Aristotle the leading idea was the development of a system with which you, so to speak, could calculate conclusions of reasonings without the ambiguity, that is inherent to natural languages like English or Dutch.
How he did it, I don't know. I am not a mathematician, but somehow Boole succeeded in combining the principles of logic with a small part of algebra, a well-established calculation system with its own rules.
According to Boole, a proposition is a statement that is either true or false. There is no third option, like "maybe". So he concluded that TRUE = 1 and FALSE = 0.
And there they are the famous computer bits, the ONE and the ZERO and now the system. Boole replaced algebraic symbols like "+" and ":" with symbols that made it possible to "calculate" with logic.
Suppose you take a box that has one hole in it. You put a p and a q in the box, shake it and the p or the q will fall through the hole in the box. Thus you have the statement: it is p OR q.
Or you take a funnel (trechter) and you put the p and q in it. At the end both will come out, which offers you the statement: it is p AND q
Suppose p is the statement "It is raining" and q is the statement "The sky is blue", then we have the statement "It is raining OR the sky is blue" and the statement "It is raining AND the sky is blue".
Now we can calculate when these complex statements are true. The first step is to assume p is TRUE = 1 or FALSE = 0 and the same for q. This leads to several possible combinations.
These are called the truth tables in proposition logic. I'll never forget how this was taught to me in 1970 at the University of Groningen in my first year.
The professor was Madeleine Sergant, born in 1942, so she was only 28 and I was 21, but contrary to me then she was brilliant and a great teacher. She came from the University of Leuven in Belgium.
I was impressed by her, I mean, by her lectures on logic and I still love logic. Sadly enough the internet tells me now that she died of "K" in 2022. Fortunately, she yet enjoyed a long and rewarding life.
In her obituary, I found these wonderful words: "Her appointment at the University of Groningen, from 1969 to 1977, deserves special mention, where she became the second female professor of philosophy in the Netherlands.
Research-wise, she was mainly concerned with Logic (classical and formalized logic), Modal and Deontic logic, Legal logic ( fallacies and normative systems)."
Now we have reached the ONE and the ZERO, which have become the heart and soul of all computer programming languages, of which many have a BOOLEAN function (TRUE/FALSE function) in their syntax.
So, a computer only deals with TRUE or FALSE. It still is so far away or even never may reach understanding, let alone, having emotions. Sadness is not a matter of 1 or 0. It's a condition of life.
Thank you for your attention again....
Main Sources:
MacMillan The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition
TABLE OF CONTENT -----------------------------------------------------------------
1 - 100 Philosophers 9 May 2009 Start of
2 - 25+ Women Philosophers 10 May 2009 this blog
3 - 25 Adventures in Thinking 10 May 2009
4 - Modern Theories of Ethics 29 Oct 2009
5 - The Ideal State 24 Febr 2010 / 234
6 - The Mystery of the Brain 3 Sept 2010 / 266
7 - The Utopia of the Free Market 16 Febr 2012 / 383
8. - The Aftermath of Neo-liberalism 5 Sept 2012 / 413
9. - The Art Not to Be an Egoist 6 Nov 2012 / 426
10 - Non-Western Philosophy 29 May 2013 / 477
11 - Why Science is Right 2 Sept 2014 / 534
12 - A Philosopher looks at Atheism 1 Jan 2015 / 557
13 - EVIL, a philosophical investigation 17 Apr 2015 / 580
14 - Existentialism and Free Will 2 Sept 2015 / 586
15 - Spinoza 2 Sept 2016 / 615
16 - The Meaning of Life 13 Febr 2017 / 637
17 - In Search of my Self 6 Sept 2017 / 670
18 - The 20th Century Revisited 3 Apr 2018 / 706
19 - The Pessimist 11 Jan 2020 / 819
20 - The Optimist 9 Febr 2020 / 824
21 - Awakening from a Neoliberal Dream 8 Oct 2020 / 872
22 - A World Full of Patterns 1 Apr 2021 / 912
23 - The Concept of Freedom 8 Jan 2022 / 965
24 - Materialism 7 Sept 2022 / 1011
25 - Historical Materialism 5 Oct 2023 / 1088
26 - The Bonobo and the Atheist 9 Jan 2024 / 1102
27 - Artificial Intelligence 9 Feb 2024 / 1108
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