Contraction and Protraction in Philosophy: Part 03

In my first treatment on contraction and protraction in philosophy, I used a graphical image in its contracted and protracted forms, and showed that contraction and protraction are two aspects of a single conceptual relationship between representations of an idea. In the same way that division and multiplication are co-related concepts, or integration and differentiation are co-related, contraction and protraction are co-related actions of the mind.

By the end of my first illustration, I had suggested that, while computers were particularly good at contracting information, such as graphical images, by means of compression algorithms, they were not capable of hypothesizing the lost data back into existence. A bitmap contracted to a GIF format can not be restored to its original data resolution.

In my second illustration of contraction and protraction in philosophy, I showed how the human mind can contract ideas into languages, themselves possessing both logical and semantic undercurrents. Having done this, I showed how our minds can again protract this data to reconstitute its original meaning. But my second illustration, being formal and mechanical, might raise questions as to the distinction between the human mind and computerized logical machines. I wish now to return to a familiar example in order to show this important distinction.

Consider the following passage:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and calls the emergency services.

He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, now what?"

How did you react when reading this? Did you laugh? Maybe just a little bit, or barring that perhaps you felt a bit of shock. The passage above is a joke, and many people consider it funny. But why? The piece is ironic--it contains elements of classical irony. Let me protract this explanation.

Irony hinges on ambiguity, misinterpretation, and difference. The joke above begins when the operator says "First, let's make sure he's dead" and the hunter interprets that as "shoot him so that he's dead for certain". But there are many layers to this joke. In addition to the pure misinterpretation of the operator's intent, the blind obedience of the average man (the hunter), to the expert or official (the operator) informs us about the danger of suspending common sense at the behest of authority. So there is at least one subtle and embedded moral in the joke as well. The misinterpretation makes the moral poignant. In the difference between what was said and what was heard, a man dies.

This is why, even if you find yourself laughing, your laughter is tinged at some level with horror at the man's blind obedience. And so, even in the irony there is tension between the comic and tragic. This is particularly fitting, because both classical comedy and classical tragedy are constructed from ironic elements. The difference between events in the joke and how you might hypothetically have interpreted the operator's instructions unveils the idea of the joke to you.

So, if irony is bound in misinterpretation and hypothesis, this explains something extremely important about computerized logical systems. Computers have no sense of humor. Why not? Because logical systems cannot produce hypotheses! Logical systems are hard-bound and literal contractions of ideas, but what connects the contraction with its protraction? A hypothesis.

Think back to my first illustration, the fractal contraction. When you consider the following image, can you imagine the internal spirals, each branching into additional internal spirals, each continuing in this manner ad infinitum?

Can you imagine placing this under a microscope to get a better look at it, and finding its internal motions to be as intricate as they appear here?

But these are different images entirely! The first is a different file on the computer filesystem. If we were to actually zoom in on the first image, we'd find this pixelated garbage:

In other words, our hypothesis about the first image is more expressive of its internal parts than the image itself. Why? The image is contracted. Making the picture larger doesn't change this. The same is true of logic. Logic is contracted reason. What is lost in the contraction? Hypothesis.

People understand jokes but computerized conversational agents do not, because logical systems are less expressive contractions of the human mind, which employs reason and hypotheses to form judgements. Logic is nothing more than Reason's footprint.

In consideration of this, might it not be possible that ideas themselves are mere contractions of objective truth? As I continue to explore the concept of contraction, I believe that this hypothesis will be lent additional weight and salience.

Enquiries on Contraction and Protraction in Philosophy

• Part 01
• Part 02
• Part 03