Social Uses of Logic in Medieval and Modern Contexts

Abstract

ion of universal concepts, which is the basis of a subsequent logical development: The pygmy only performs the first act [i.e. they process basic sensory information, without forming a concept]. This is why it has only a shadow of reason, since of the light (lumen) of reason wholly consists in the second [act] [...] As a consequence, the pygmy perceives nothing of the essence of things and it has never grasped any argumentative relationship. Its speech is like the speech of those who are mentally deficient (moriones) ... But there is a difference since the pygmy is naturally deprived of reason, whereas the other is accidentally deprived, because of melancholia or something else, [and he is deprived] not of reason, but of the use of reason [...] [The pygmy] uses neither rhetorical nor even poetical arguments by way of persuasion, which are the most imperfect arguments of all. The overvaluing of logical logical abilities and of logical education gained by formal training has thus its counterpart in the stigmatization of “logically disabled” people, endowed with a faltering humanity. A text written by a Master of Arts in Paris from the end of the 13 goes as far as calling people deprived of logical education “useless beats, called ‘men’ in a homonymous way”: The proper operation of man is that by which man receives his ultimate specific difference. The ultimate specific difference of man is reasoning, thus [the proper operation of man] is reasoning. [...] Since man is one among natural beings, he has his own proper operation. And this operation is reasoning (ratiocinari). As a consequence, when he can perform this operation, that is reasoning, he is called a man, and when he cannot, he is only called “man” in a homonymous way. [...] Since the act of reasoning is the operation proper to human being, man is ordinated to the act of reasoning as his own end. And the one to whom the act of reasoning does not belong is said to be worthless (inutilis) and a beast (bestia). And three things are then made clear: the man to whom the act of reasoning doesn’t belong is not said to be a man except in a homonymous way, that he is worthless, and that he is a beast. And because this operation, that is reasoning, can not belong to us except by way of logic, logic is to be pursued by all means (maxime). 34 See ALBERT THE GREAT, De animalibus (ed. Hermann Stadler, Münster: Aschendorff, 1916– 1920), 1323 and 1328. JULIE BRUMBERG-CHAUMONT 138 But you will immediately object: isn’t it the case that all men do naturally (naturaliter) reason? I reply: although all men naturally reason, nevertheless no one can reason perfectly without logic. The notion that the act of reasoning perfectly belongs to us thanks to logic is made clear according to Alfarabi’s authority. He says that in the same manner as grammar is ruling (directiva est) language and speech in order to prevent one from erring (erret) in interpreting, logic is ruling our reason lest it might err in reasoning. Consequently, man reasons correctly (recte) and perfectly thanks to logic. This is made clear by the etymology of the word “logic”. All what have been said above shows that man without logic is not a man except in an homonymous way. And Albert [the Great] exhorts us to logic [see text quoted above] saying [...] that the other sciences [that is: when conducted without logic] are to logic what is the profane (idiota) to the learned man (sapiens). The uneducated man doesn’t even know he is erring, and he is unable to correct other people. This is the reason why Albert says that he who knows sciences other than logic knows without knowing he is knowing in the same manner as the fire that is burning doesn’t know it is burning. INTELLIGENCE TESTING The issue of intellectual deficiency is now partially addressed through intelligence testing, which we distinguish here from logical tests, discussed a bit further. Intelligence tests, and later IQ tests, are not strictly speaking tests of logic, at least if ‘logic’ is understood, as it is here, as the correct formulation of a reasoning (without necessarily being meta-logically designated as such). They can be more accurately described, in the perspective of the present dis35 (PS?)-SIMON OF FAVERSHAM, commentary on Peter of Spain’s Tractatus, ed. in Lambertus Marie DE RIJK, “On the Genuine Text of Peter of Spain’s Summule Logicales II: Simon of Faversham (d.1306) as a Commentator of the Tracts I-V of the Summule,” Vivarium VI/2 (1968): 77-78. For more details, see BRUMBERG-CHAUMONT, À l’école de la logique, chapter 6, and EADEM, “The Rise of Logical Skills.” 36 In the first version of the IQ, the actual age was first divided by the mental age (instead of being subtracted as in Binet) and then the actual performances were compared the normal one for a given age, normalized at 100, with a standard deviation of 15, as in modern IQ tests. For a recent synthesis see N.J. MACKINTOSH, “History of Theories and Measurment of Intelligence,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence, ed. Robert J. Stenberg and Scott Barry Kaufman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 3-19. For an in-depth study of psychometric tests at the beginning of the 20th century, see Olivier MARTIN, La Mesure de l’esprit. Origines et développement de la psychométrie, 1900-1950 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997). For a critical discussion, with a sharp contrast between American 20th-century uses of intelligence testing and Binet’s conception, see Stephen Jay GOULD, The Mismeasure of Man, revised edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996). SOCIAL USES OF LOGIC IN MEDIEVAL AND MODERN CONTEXTS 139 cussion, as tests of ante-logical intelligence, ultimately aimed at a set of intellectual operations that form the conditions for logical reasoning, especially abstraction and judgement. This situation can be explained in various ways. Generally speaking, the naturalist heritage predominant in the periods preceding the birth of intelligence tests offers a notion of ‘intelligence’ quite different from our spontaneous representation of it. Since the 18 century, and even more so during the 19 century, these conceptions, in the fields of biology, psychology and anthropology, made ‘intelligence’ a principle of organization and evolution of nature, of which the rational life of the human psyche, and the logic attached to it, was only the highest expression. These theories saw a continuum between men and other animals, attributed to animals an intelligence comparable, albeit inferior, to that of men, and opened the way for the classification of some men, judged racially inferior, because they belonged to ‘regressive’ or ‘retarded’ races, at the same level as some animals. In American anthropology, at the same time, the evolutionary pattern common to all living things was even called “natural logic,” a notion still read in Jean Piaget’s theory of development. In a closer intellectual context, the dominant psychological conceptions at the time when Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon invented their tests, were largely based upon the theory of association of ideas and on “elementarism” in the field of experimental psychology, under the influence of Wilhlem Wundt. The mental tests previously carried out by Francis Galton and James McKeen Cattel were thus essentially concerned with sensations, and not with higher processes, which Alfred Binet also took as the constituents (in addition to sensation and perception, perceptual judgement, calculation, memory, imitation, attention, abstraction, etc.) of an intelligence itself conceived of as a plural reality. Eventually, the immediate social purpose of the tests must be taken into account, i.e. the evaluation of ‘abnormal children’ for Albert Binet, and then of recruits, in the large-scale tests developed in the United States (army, ele37 See Claude BLANCKAERT, “Natural Logic, Anthropological Antilogies, and Savage Thought in the 19th Century,” in Logical Skills. Social-Historical Perspectives, ed. Julie Brumberg-Chaumont and Claude Rosental. Logica Universalis (Basel: Springer, 2021), 51–62. 38 See Scott PRATT, “Decolonizing ‘Natural Logic’,” in Logical Skills. Social-Historical Perspectives, ed. Julie Brumberg-Chaumont and Claude Rosental. Logica Universalis (Basel: Springer, 2021), 23–50. 39 See Alfred BINET and Théodore SIMON, “Méthodes nouvelles pour le diagnostic du niveau intellectual des anormaux.” L’Année psychologique 11 (1904), 1905: 196, where sensation and perception are said to be as much part of intelligence as “reasoning.” 40 For the role of the function of abstraction, the “key” of intelligence, see Alfred BINET and Théodore SIMON, Les Enfants anormaux (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1907), 47–58. JULIE BRUMBERG-CHAUMONT 140 mentary school population), which implied to target very elementary intellectual performances. The ‘intelligence’ of intelligence tests was thus largely represented by linguistic, perceptual and cognitive skills which come prior to the formulation of explicit logical reasoning. Intelligence tests did not, and still do not in their current versions (e.g. in the 2003 Stanford-Binet test), include tests of explicit logical reasoning, or judgements about the correctness of a given reasoning. It can thus be said that, with intelligence tests, one is tested on a set of abilities whose culmination is limited, at most, to the formulation of abstract concepts and relationships, which could, at a later stage of complexification of tasks, be implemented in logical reasoning. Tests are aimed at skills whose deficiencies make it impossible to formulate logical reasoning. As a result, those whose performance on these tests is clearly inadequate (more than three years of retardation for children, less than 12 years of ‘mental age’ in the Binet scale for adults, less than 70 in today standardized IQ tests) will be unable to think logically. The history of intelligence tests is thus connected to the classification of ‘mental retardation’. The ca