Logic

Many NLP language patterns work because they break the laws of logic.

We do not succeed in both affirming and negating one and the same thing: that is a subjective empirical proposition which expresses not a ‘necessity’ but only ‘a non-ability’. If, according to Aristotle, the principle of non-contradiction is the most certain of all principles, if it is the final and most fundamental one upon which all proofs are based, if the principle of all other axioms lies within it: then one ought to examine all the more carefully what it actually presupposes in the way of theses. Either, as if it already knew the real from somewhere else, it asserts something with respect to the real, to what is: namely, that opposite predicates cannot be ascribed to the real. Or does the principle mean that opposite predicates shall not be ascribed to it? Then logic would be an imperative, not to know the true, but to posit and arrange a world that shall be called true by us. In short, the question remains open: are the axioms of logic adequate to the real, or are they measures and means to create for us the real, the concept ‘reality’? … But to be able to affirm the former one would, as I have said, already need to be acquainted with what is; and that’s simply not the case. The principle thus contains not a criterion of truth, but rather an imperative about what shall count as true. Supposing there were no A identical with itself, such as that presupposed by every logical (including mathematical) principle, supposing A were already an illusion, then logic would have as its presupposition a merely illusory world. And indeed we believe in that principle under the impression of endless experience which seems continually to confirm it. The ‘thing’ – that is the real substratum of A: our belief in things is the precondition for our belief in logic. The A of logic is, like the atom, a re-construction of the ‘thing’ … By not grasping that, and by making of logic a criterion of true being, we are well on the way to positing all those hypostases – substance, predicate, object, subject, action, etc. – as realities: i.e., to conceiving a metaphysical world, i.e., a ‘true world’ (- but this is the illusory world once again . ..). The most basic acts of thought – affirming and negating, holding-to-be-true and holding-to-be-not-true  are, inasmuch as they presuppose not only a habit but a right to hold-to-be-true or hold-to-be-not-true in general, themselves ruled by a belief that there is knowledge for us, that judging really can reach the truth. In short, logic does not doubt its ability to state something about the true-in-itself (namely, that this cannot have opposite predicates). Here the crude, sensualist prejudice reigns that sensations teach us truths about things – that I cannot say at the same time of one and the same thing that it is hard and it is soft (the instinctive proof’I cannot have two opposite sensations at the same time’ – quite crude and false). The conceptual ban on contradiction proceeds from the belief that we are able to form concepts, that a concept doesn’t merely name what is true in a thing but encompasses it … In fact logic (like geometry and arithmetic) only applies to fictitious truths that we have created. Logic is the attempt to understand the real world according to a scheme of being that we have posited, or, more correctly, the attempt to make it formulatable, calculable for us …

Notebook 9, autumn 1887 paragraph 97

Logic is tied to the condition: assuming that identical cases exist. Indeed, in order to think and conclude logically, the fulfillment of this condition must first be feigned. That is: the will to logical truth cannot realize itself until a fundamental falsification of all events has been undertaken. From which it follows that a drive rules here which is capable of both means, firstly of falsifying, then of implementing a single viewpoint: logic does not originate in the will to truth.

Notebook 40, August – September 1885 paragraph 13

Lost performative

All sentences that express a norm, rule, opinion or judgment without stating whose judgement, opinion, rule or norm it is, is a lost performative and is part of the metamodel. It is classified as a distortion of reality whereas one can, of course, also argue that it is a deletion. The word “lost” certainly suggests that.

Man as the measurer. – Perhaps all the morality of mankind has its origin in the tremendous inner excitement which seized on primeval men when they discovered measure and measuring, scales and weighing (the word ‘Mensch’, indeed, means the measurer, he desired to name himself after his greatest discovery!). With these conceptions they climbed into realms that are quite unmeasurable and unweighable but originally did not seem to be.

Human, All Too Human book 3, paragraph 21

Injustice necessary. – All judgments as to the value of life have evolved illogically and are therefore unjust. The falsity of human judgement derives firstly from the condition of the material to be judged, namely very incomplete, secondly from the way in which the sum is arrived at on the basis of this material, and thirdly from the fact that every individual piece of this material is in tum the outcome of false knowledge, and is so with absolute necessity. Our experience of another person, for example, no matter how close he stands to us, can never be complete, so that we would have a logical right to a total evaluation of him; all evaluations are premature and are bound to be. Finally, the standard by which we measure, our own being, is not an unalterable magnitude, we are subject to moods and fluctuations, and yet we would have to know ourselves as a fixed standard to be able justly to assess the relation between ourself and anything else whatever. Perhaps it would follow from all this that one ought not to judge at all; if only it were possible to live without evaluating, without having aversions and partialities! – for all aversion is dependent on an evaluation, likewise all partiality. A drive to something or away from something divorced from a feeling one is desiring the beneficial or avoiding the harmful, a drive without some kind of knowing evaluation of the worth of its objective, does not exist in man. We are from the very beginning illogical and thus unjust beings and can recognize this: this is one of the greatest and most irresolvable discords of existence.

Human, All Too Human Part 1, paragraph 32

Love

One of Richard Bandler’s favorite sayings is: “Freedom is everything and love is all the rest.” These are the two values of NLP: freedom and love.

Love. Is the most astonishing proof wanted of how far the transfigurative force of intoxication can go? ‘Love’ is that proof, what’s called love in all the languages and mutenesses of the world. Intoxication here gets the better of reality in such a way that, in the consciousness of the lover, the cause seems obliterated and something else located in its place – a quivering and a sudden gleam of all the magic mirrors of Circe. Here man or animal makes no difference; even less do spirit, goodness, probity … One is made a fine fool of if one is fine, a gross fool of if one is gross; but love, and even love of God, the saintly love of ‘saved souls’, at root remains one thing: a fever that has reasons to transfigure itself, an intoxication that does well to lie about itself. And anyway, when one loves one is a good liar, to oneself and about oneself: one strikes oneself as transfigured, stronger, richer, more perfect, one is more perfect … Here we find art as an organic function: we find it embedded in life’s most angelic instinct: we find it as life’s greatest stimulus – art, thus, sublimely expedient even in its lying … But it would be a mistake to stop at love’s power to lie: it does more than just imagine, and actually alters the ranking of values. And not only does it change the feeling of values … The lover is more valuable, is stronger. With the animals, this state produces new substances, pigments, colors and forms: especially new movements, new rhythms, new calls and seductions. With man it’s no different. The economy of a man is richer than ever, more powerful, more whole than the non-lover’s. The lover becomes a spendthrift: he’s rich enough for it. He now dares, becomes an adventurer, becomes a donkey of generosity and innocence; he believes in God again, he believes in virtue because he believes in love. On the other hand this idiot of happiness grows wings and new capacities, and even the doors of art open up to him. Discount from poetry in sounds and words the suggestion of that intestinal fever – and what remains of poetry and music? … L’art pour l’art, perhaps: the virtuoso croaking of abandoned frogs despairing in their swamp … All the rest was created by love …

Notebook 14, spring 1888 paragraph 120