On Rescher’s Dialectical Logic

The history of dialectics has developed from ancient Greek argumentation to the study of medieval logic in a way of logical dialogue.Hegel put forward the basic idea of dialectical logic and clarified the logic of dialectic for the first time: a series of negative spiral upward process.Speculative philosophers and formal logicians have made profound interpretations of Hegel’s dialectical logic.A famous contemporary American philosopher Nicholas Rescher(the founder of the Quarterly Journal of the American Philosophy)as the leading character in Pittsburgh scientific philosophy center for half a century,has a particularly broad research horizon.His formal dialectical system just fills the gap between formal logic and speculative logic and guides rational inquiry.This paper consists of seven chapters.The first chapter discusses that dialectical logic is the logic to study the way of thinking of dialectics.The history of dialectics and dialectical logic is reviewed,and the origin of dialectics is traced back to the dispute dialogue.The source of Rescher’s dialectical logic thought is analyzed.His theory of knowledge,pragmatism and process thought embodies in his dialectical logic.The second chapter introduces the formal dialectical system constructed by Rescher,and reveals the dialectical tools and formal features of the system.He concerned about dialectical process and put forward a dialectical system of formal disputes with three parties by examining the historical dialectics of dialogue.The main instrumental elements in the system are burden of proof,presumption and plausibility,so that the dialectical process can be evaluated rationally.He tried to reconcile the contradiction between the standard logician and the dialectical scholars,and reinterpreted the logical law with situation,so as to establish a system of dialectical logic to solve new(dialectical)and old(formal)logic,as well as to make the rules of dialectical logic and the rules of classical logic be compatible.The third chapter studies the epistemology of Rescher’s dialectical logic.Reschertook dialectics as a method to deal with cognitive problems and set up a dialectical cognitive inquiry model.He studied the cognitive method from dispute inquiry,and rebottled the Skepticism step by step,and then he established the pragmatical basis for dialectical cognitive theory--practical effect.Finally he explore the”making knowledge”function of his formal dialectical system,that is the successful dialectical cognitive mechanism is on the mutual adjustment between the rational and the practice,and so the cognitive concept has the dialectical tension.Rescher studied the science from social community,and he took the science as a kind of social interaction activities,thus in his dialectical cognitive model of scientific inquiry,the disputes,contradictions and competition is the necessary part of scientific progress.The fourth chapter discusses the methodology of Rescher’s dialectical logic.It is including the triple tension among instrument and ends,static structure and dynamic evolution,biological evolution and cultural evolution.Rescher took dialectics as a tool,combined with pragmatism,to explor the practical effect of dialectical logic as a methodology.The evaluation of this method mainly examines the dialectical process of theoretical method improvement from the static dialectical structure dimension and the dialectical process of historical actual development from the dynamic dialectical evolution dimension.Finally,it is concluded that the rationality of his dialectical logic methodology is the rational choice supported by both biological evolution and cultural evolution.The fifth chapter discusses the ontology of Rescher’s dialectical logic.It pointed out that the dialectical logic of Rescher is a further explanation of the ontology of Hegelian dialectics.And This paper analyzes the inevitability,generative and potential of dialectics from the perspective of history,logical process and rationality.The sixth chapter discusses Rescher’s meta-philosophy.Rescher researched the philosophy of philosophy from two aspects.on the one hand,he analyzed the dialectical process of philosophical inquriy in a transverse way and pointed out that the development of philosophical theories have a three phase dialectical program structure,as apory(problem thinking),dialectic(for and against evaluation)and harmony(system coordination).On the other hand,he analyzed the dialectical development of philosophy history in a vertical way,and points out that philosophy history has a tree-shaped development structure,and philosophy is a dialectical development in pursuit of rational consistency.In the seventh chapter,the dialectical logic thought of Rescher is further commented,and it is pointed out that his dialectical logic thought is the crystallization of his entire philosophy thought.And His formal dialectical system is deeply influenced by the mainstream of historical development of dialectical logic and points out a new direction for the study of dialectical logic.