Logic, Executive Functioning, Organization, Yoga
What does Logic have to do with Yoga? More than you think, probably because you have the wrong idea about what Yoga is. But also, you may not be quite sure what logic is. I certainly wasn’t sure even when I was a student.
As an undergraduate I took a great interest in the philosophy of logic. For a time, leading thinkers like John Stuart Mill argued that the laws of logic are psychological regularities, and that to learn logic we have to study the mind. This a position called Psychologism. The reason to take this view seriously is that it provides us with some real world data that we could use to frame our understanding of logic. But this is also its weakness.
The best refutation of this view that I can think of comes from Husserl’s Prolegomena to Pure Logic (his only good work if you ask me).
Husserl’s Criticism and the Problem of Normativity
Here is the thought experiment that Husserl sets up. Let us assume that the laws of logic were merely an empirically observable process. If this were the case, we could (and should) study logic by studying machines, such as computers. However, we can also design these machines to miscalculate; we could easily design a calculator that produces the result 2+2=5. If reasoning were just a type of observable physical process, then this result should be considered as “logical” as 2+2=4. But it is not.
Husserl rightly noted that the reason we can distinguish between these two results is that reasoning is a normative endeavor. It is because we have norms of reasoning that we can criticize some calculations and inferences as correct and others as wrong. This means that we cannot use our observations of mental processes to define what reasoning is.
While this part of the argument is solid, it leaves us with a difficult question: what accounts for the normativity of reasoning? Husserl claimed that there were ideal laws that govern reasoning, but a similar problem can be generated for these: how do we know them?
(1) If we observe them, how can we distinguish between correct laws and incorrect laws without already presupposing the very logic we are trying to justify? If this requires higher-order logical laws to identify lower logical laws, we are in for an infinite regress.
(2) If the suggestion is that by observing them we will come to know them (which Husserl attempted to describe in his Phenomenology), then this is a relapse into Psychologism, for in this case we will conflate the norms of logic with our minds and what we are aware of.
Yoga: The Philosophy
Most people think they know about Yoga because they have seen it offered at studios, or they may practice it themselves. The reality is that such practices are actually far-off descendants of a more basic ethical theory. Without appreciating what that theory is, people are likely not actually practicing Yoga at all.
I can say this with confidence because the reason we now associate postural or breathing practices with Yoga—rather than a basic ethical theory—is colonization. This history changed India from a place where people felt they could occupy public space to engage in an anti-colonial moral practice, to one where they re-understood the practice agoraphobically: as a private means of dealing with the stress of colonization. That is the inheritance we have received.
If you are interested in this history, you can find my explication of these changes in my book: Yoga: Anti-Colonial Philosophy.
At the metaethical level, Yoga is the view that we have to take responsibility for organizing mental content to preserve epistemic autonomy.
What Yoga Teaches: Executive Functioning, Organizational Responsibility
The basic philosophy of Yoga, as we find in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, begins with the observation that there are two approaches we can take to data. According to the ordinary one—which is not recommended—we allow what we are contemplating to influence us emotionally. This is what I identify as interpretation. In contrast, Yoga is defined as a responsible ordering of mental content to its conclusions, and we know we have succeeded when our independence is protected.
If you want a concrete example of the difference, consider the promulgation of conspiracy theories. If you interpreted, then you would approach these theories emotionally. You would also want to watch for whether the beliefs they express correspond to your own. In this case, a person so interpreting has surrendered their autonomy to what they are contemplating. This is why people drawn to such theories can be manipulated into doing extreme and irrational things.
In contrast, if we took an organizational approach, we would be responsible for how we organize it, and our main guardrail would be our epistemic autonomy. We have to engage in this organizational behavior without conflating what we are organizing with our contingent view of the world. Or put another way, we have to engage in organizing mental content by not collapsing the project into an interpretation.
For example, the rule of logical validity (if the premises of an argument are true, the conclusion has to be true) is one such logical rule that governs how we evaluate deductive arguments. Inductive arguments have their own specifications, as does Inference to the Best Explanation. And there could be other forms of logic too. But what they have in common is that they are all ways to organize information without collapsing into an interpretation. This helps us avoid the regress of assuming that there has to be a higher-level law we are aware of that is the criterion of lower-level logical laws. It also helps us avoid Husserl’s Psychologism for logic is nothing we recognize: it’s something we create by protecting our epistemic autonomy.
In addition to working out the details of the interpretation–explication distinction, I’ve also used this Yoga based philosophy of logic in my analysis of the possibilities of all learning. You will find this in several of my books. Most recently, it takes center stage in Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism.
Logic so understood has important implications for our own executive functioning: we need it as a practice to make sure we do not lose our epistemic autonomy. Also, it has important implications for leadership. A leader has to be able to keep possibilities straight without getting confused by them. That takes reasoning.
Logic as Research Methodology
The organizational approach to logic provides a structured methodology for research. This is the fully realized version of explication.
(1) Deductive logic renders explicit reasons for controversial conclusions about first-order options.
(2) Induction—the logic of generalizing from samples—helps determine the general topic of controversy by examining a representative sample of first-order disagreement.
(3) Inference to the Best Explanation (Abduction) discerns the explanation that accounts for the first-order disagreement.
This is a method of research applicable wherever controversy is possible. It allows us to arrive at objective answers—not based on our beliefs or outlook—about the controversy. Once we reach this point, we have reason to conclude what is objectively true: it consists of the integrated findings across all three levels.
This schema is content-neutral. You can use it for the empirical sciences and philosophy alike.