1st Logic - "1L" / "Dogmatists"

"Dogmatic"(1st Logic) 

The title "dogmatist" in this case has a twofold meaning: that of today, in which a dogmatist is someone incapable of changing once learned truths, and in the ancient sense of the word, in which a dogmatist was understood as a thinker inclined to a monologic, affirmative form of intellectual activity, as opposed to a dialectician, who preferred a dialogic, questioning form. 

In principle, both the modern and the ancient Greek meanings apply equally to the 1st Logic. Since the internal, psychological setting of Logic is reflected only in the way of thinking, but not in its quality, the "dogmatist" can turn out to be both a great sage and an impenetrable dullard. The 1st Logic is united by the results of thinking, and what the results are is a purely individual matter. 

Among the external features of the 1st Logic, the most noticeable and revealing is the unambiguously affirmative form of communication. Even when the "dogmatist" seems to ask, it does not follow that he expects an answer, and the question itself is usually posed in such a way as to contain a deliberate evaluation. For example, a question like, "Did you hear what this moron said?" - obviously does not imply an unbiased exchange of opinions. For this reason, communication with the 1st Logic can be considered rather difficult; the "dogmatist's" communication is so oppressive that the conversation is reduced to a monologue; it can be interesting, useful, brilliant or, on the contrary, tedious, aimless, wretched, but it will still be a report, speech, and not a conversation. 

The monologism of the 1st Logic is insurmountable even when it tries to speak on someone else's behalf and reproduce a fundamentally alien dialogic intonation. This was the case, for example, with the great "dogmatist" Plato, who vainly imitated the style of his teacher Socrates, until nature took its course and he reduced his "Socratic dialogues" to pure monologues in the end, the title of which was already a blatant fiction of Socrates, a lover and connoisseur of communication. 

Fortunately, the dogmatist is not talkative, has the ability to hear, and takes his time to speak on any of the topics offered. He allows himself to begin a monologue only under comfortable conditions, i.e., in connection with a problem in which he considers himself competent. How well-founded is such an opinion of oneself, is another question, but, most importantly, when discussing topics in which the "dogmatist" is afloat or has no information at all, he prefers to keep silent. 

This, I think, is a characteristic cautiousness of the 1st Logic. It is not able to communicate outside the affirmative form, and the discovery of the failure of its First - the supporting and most powerful function - during a cavalry assault on the subject is fraught with selfdestruction of the personality. 

Another reason for the silence of the 1st Logic: lack of the gift and taste for discussion. In arguments with a "dogmatist," truth is not born; it is either asserted or rejected. There is no third. 

He usually goes into the dispute with a billet, a cudgel of absolute truth, with which he sometimes quite effectively silences his opponent. But the 1st Logic's billet is equally strong and weak. A trifling, dislocating question, an irrelevant remark, or even a simple nonsense, takes the "dogmatist" out of the equilibrium and closes his mouth. And while he is trying to reassemble the collapsed construction of his home speculative scheme, there comes a painful silent scene, excruciating for the 1st Logic and unpleasant for the listeners. 

This happened, for example, to Demosthenes. Being an orator by profession, he was a "dogmatist" by way of thinking. That is why he never, even in extreme cases, gave impromptu speeches, but always first wrote and memorized a speech at home, and only then took it to the rostrum. It would have been all right, but the violent Athenian people often interrupted the speaker by shouting, and here Demosthenes was so tetanus that he lost the gift of speech and illiterate left the rostrum, which was immediately climbed by his party-mate Demades, capable of responding more flexibly to the crowd. 

The "dogmatist" in general is a stoicist, not a sprinter of the intellect. He is, as the Russians say, strong in his hindsight (the English call it humor on the stairs), so he has no taste for discussion and does not enter into it without extreme necessity. Darwin confessed: "I am not endowed with the ability to grasp on the fly or the sharpness of mind that so impresses us in gifted people, such as Huxley. Accordingly I am an unimportant critic." 

The third reason for the silence of the 1st Logic: an aversion to idle chatter, hypotheses, and private opinion in general. The "dogmatist" seeks absolute truth, not opinion. Only absolute truth can be placed as a brick in the intellectual pillar that 1st Logic builds for itself. Hence the outright alienation and even dislike that the "dogmatist" feels for chatter, hypotheses and opinions. One of the scientists who knew Einstein intimately wrote: "To approach absolute truth was the most important thing for him; in this endeavor he knew no delicacy and spared not the ego of his opponents." 

I will not say that the "dogmatist" himself is not the author of hypotheses. It happens and very often ridiculous hypotheses. Another thing is that he usually does not consider them as such, does not consider them to such an extent that he is not inclined to check the correctness of their life by experience. It happens not out of negligence, God forbid, but because for the 1st Logic thought is primary and self-sufficient, it is objective and does not need any crutches. 

Going from conception to fact and not vice versa is the usual way of acting in the 1st Logic. It is also natural in this way of thinking that for a "dogmatist" there is no sight more grievous than that of a theory struck down by fact. Once, while talking to Huxley about the nature of the tragic, someone mentioned Spencer. "Ha!" exclaimed Huxley, "tragedy in Spenser's view is deduction deadened by fact. 

The "dogmatist" in his trust in thought (or rather, not in thought, but in the First Function, the function of the highest certainty) happens to go so far that those around him begin to classify this infatuation with speculation as insanity. Obsession with an idea, confidence in its super-value, reliance on logic to the detriment of fact and experience has its own special name in psychiatry - "paranoia". And it happens that such a diagnosis is given to the 1st Logic. However, as in the case of manic-depressive psychosis in the 1st Emotion, paranoia is not a mental illness in the proper sense of the word, it is just an extreme expression of the 1st Logic, which is naturally overly trusting of speculative schemes. And if we classify paranoia as an illness, it is not a mental illness, but a psychotypical one, i.e., conditioned by the individual's mental type. 

However, the clinical title "paranoid" of the 1st Logic is given rather seldom, more often we are talking about a borderline condition characterized usually by epithets like: "mentor", "doctrinaire", "scientific donkey". Indeed, however unfortunate it is to admit, the 1st Logic, with its superpower giving man support and protection, at the same time deprives his brain of flexibility and ability to grow, generates herds of scientific asses. 

The reaction, which the 1st Logic reacts to any obvious stupidity, nonsense, illogic, gibberish, which other Logics usually perceive quite indulgently, is also very similar to madness. Knowingly nonsense, that is, direct mockery of the best, most important side of the psyche "dogmatist" almost immediately knock him out of the rut, driving him to madness, to hysteria. Paustovsky described in his memoirs one of his gymnasium teachers, who pathologically hated gibberish. The young fools in gymnasium soon recognized this weakness of his and, yelling some deliberate stupidity at the beginning of the lesson, just knocked out the teacher, immediately brought to the hysterical seizure and insanity. 

* * * 

The 1st Logic's thinking may not be the best in the world, but it is certainly the most HONEST. This is because there is nothing above Logic here, and no other function twists its arms to please itself, or presses from above, dictating the direction and way of thinking. The lower functions of the "dogmatist" can only ask, not demand from Logic something for themselves, something working for self-interest according to Physics, for sensitivity according to Emotion, for vanity according to Will - and only. Therefore, the 1st Logic, more than any other, is honest and pure in its reasoning, and the rigor of its intellectual constructions can be quite relied upon. 

The ability to immerse oneself in thought to the point of total disconnection from the outside world is noticed in a "dogmatist" already in childhood. Extreme and, even more importantly, lonely brooding characterizes such a child. He can be alone for hours, preoccupied with his thoughts, not reacting to what is going on around him. Sometimes a thought grabs him at the most inopportune moment, for example, at a meal, and grabs him so strongly that the child "dogmatist's" look turns to stone, and the spoon hangs in the air for a long time, not carried to the mouth. 

The tendency to somnambulistic immersion in thought in the 1st Logic is well illustrated by episodes from Einstein's life. It is said that one day Einstein was seen wheeling a baby carriage down the street; suddenly he stopped at the most inappropriate place, from the point of view of traffic rules, and, taking paper and pencil from his pocket, began to take hurried notes. Only when he was finished with his notes did Einstein continue driving. Or another case. Wishing to celebrate the scientist's birthday more extravagantly, friends invited Einstein to a restaurant and, among other things, ordered a rare delicacy - Russian caviar. When the caviar was brought, Einstein was just "talking about Newton's law of inertia and its possible physical explanation. He sent the caviar into his mouth and continued to comment on the law of inertia. When the caviar was eaten and the speaker stopped to put an invisible point, his interlocutors asked him if he knew what he had eaten. "No, why?" - "It was caviar!" - "How, was it really caviar?" - Einstein exclaimed sadly..." 

The memory of the 1st Logic is also notable for its peculiarity. It holds ideas, theories, concepts well, but is rather weak on facts, names, dates, numbers. When Einstein was asked a simple question about the speed of sound, he replied: "I don't know it by heart. Why burden your memory with what you can find in any reference book." Einstein's explanation is only half true; the root of this kind of forgetfulness is in the efficiency of "dogmatist" thinking. He is not interested in disparate out-of-system factual material, because it cannot be used to build that complete intellectual construction on which 1st Logic tries to rely. According to the "dogmatist," facts are sand, a worthless building material in and of themselves; only the visible addition of the cement of thought, which can turn the sand grains of facts into the concrete from which alone can form the true and unshakable pillar of personality, makes them valuable. 

For the same reason, the "dogmatist" is usually not curious and often not even well-read. In general, if the circle of his professional interests is far from the intellectual sphere, with its baggage "dogmatist" almost does not stand out from the crowd, and does not seek to do so. His end game is system analysis, not information storage. Niels Bohr, for example, none of his colleagues considered him to be seriously erudite, but no one denied his great talent for structuring disparate, at first glance randomly caught in the field of view, facts. Bohr himself said: "You know, I'm an amateur. When others begin to exorbitantly complicate the apparatus of theory, I cease to understand anything... I can only think with a pinch of salt. 

A "dogmatist" is a philosopher, a philosopher even when his occupation is formally far from philosophy. For example, Einstein and Bohr are considered to be physicists, but in fact they were natural philosophers and were much closer to Democritus than to Rutherford. The philosophical leanings of the "dogmatist" can be explained by the fact that the thinking of the 1st Logic is strategic from the beginning and gravitates toward the creation of closed universal systems. It is an unattainable, but constant goal of the "dogmatist" to link all things in the world with thought. As another famous physicist, Hevesi, wrote: "The thinking mind does not feel happy until it manages to link together the disparate facts it observes. This 'intellectual unhappiness' is what drives us most to think - to do science." 

* * * 

The conceit of the "dogmatist" as to the capacity of his mind extends far and wide. George Eliot once asked Spencer why he had no forehead wrinkles when he worked so hard. "It's probably because I'm never puzzled," the famous scientist replied. "Dogmatist" selfconfident to the point that, perhaps, only he leaves indifferent to the general enthusiasm for crossword puzzles, logic tests and the like means of intellectual self-control. And in vain. This self-confidence sometimes serves the 1st Logic badly, because when a person's fate depends on test results (employment, admission to an educational institution, etc.), the 1st Logic does not always get high scores. And it's not just because the "dogmatist's" mind is undeveloped and stiff. The very assumption that the power of mind given by nature is not only plentiful, but even abundant, can be challenged seems so ridiculous to a "dogmatist" that he sometimes considers straining his hemispheres simply unnecessary. Hence the often more than modest results of intellectual testing of the 1st Logic. 

* * * 

About Style. In its pursuit of brevity, the 1st Logic is very similar to the 1st Emotion. Like the "romantic," the "dogmatist" is brief in his self-expression and seeks to present to human judgment only the result of his solitary reflections, the "raisin" of thought, excluding everything that has preceded it, that is, the process of rational inquiry. For example, Einstein wrote his famous theory of relativity in three pages, and spent eighteen pages on his thesis, without even providing a list of references. 

The lapidary expressions of the 1st Logic is rarely for her benefit and almost always to her detriment. Sometimes one can directly associate with it some irreplaceable, tragic losses. For example, Heraclitus - the greatest and deepest philosopher of antiquity - was already nicknamed "Dark" during his lifetime, and only a few brilliant quotations from his entire philosophical heritage have reached our days. Such is the bitter toll of the 1st Logic for the high concentration of its emphatically productive style. 

The handwriting of the "dogmatist" is very recognizable. It is ugly, difficult to read, and by its principles is close to stenography (I think the inventor of stenography had the 1st Logic). The main formal attributes of "dogmatic" handwriting are as follows: one chooses the simplest and the fastest variant of lettering, also the links between letters are short, direct and maximally adapted to shorthand. In short, the handwriting of the 1st Logic is extremely rational and neglects clarity and aesthetics for the sake of speed and simplicity.