Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bernard M. Patten, MD (Seabrook, TX), now retired, was formerly the chief of the Neuromuscular Disease Division, vice chairman of the Department of Neurology, and attending neurologist at the Baylor College of Medicine. He now lectures in clear thinking, mental gymnastics, logic, and neuroscience at Rice University and the Women’s Institute of Houston. Among other books, he is the author of Truth, Knowledge, or Just Plain Bull: How to Tell the Difference and Cruising on the Queen Elizabeth 2: Around the World in 91 Days.

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THE LOGIC OF Alice

Prometheus Books

Contents

INTRODUCTION..............................................91. Down the Rabbit Hole..................................292. The Pool of Tears.....................................1113. A Caucus Race and a Long Tale.........................1294. The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill.....................1535. Advice from a Caterpillar.............................1556. Pig and Pepper........................................1677. A Mad Tea Party.......................................2078. The Queen's Croquet Ground............................2559. The Mock Turtle's Story...............................26110. The Lobster Quadrille.................................27911. Who Stole the Tarts?..................................28312. Alice's Evidence......................................293VALE (FAREWELL)...........................................309SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY.....................................311BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.....................................319INDEX.....................................................323

Chapter One

The phrase "down the rabbit hole" has become the symbol for adventure into the unknown. That is why Neo in the movie The Matrix is told to follow the White Rabbit, which he soon sees is a tattoo on a woman's arm.

Neo's curiosity, like that of Alice, leads him to follow the signaling woman (her arm has a White Rabbit tattoo) to the disco. From thence he goes on to meet Trinity. Thus begins Neo's journey of enlightenment and adventure.

Which pill would you choose, the red or the blue? Is ignorance bliss? Or is the truth worth knowing, no matter what? The blue pill contains nothing and will not change Neo's situation. The red pill has neurotrophins and lysins that will liberate Neo from the pink goop in the pink pod. The red pill will take Neo out of the (pleasant) unreal world of the Matrix and release him into the (harsh) real world of the non-Matrix.

Those of you who saw the movie may recall that Neo took the red pill. His reason: he wanted to "see how far down the rabbit hole goes."

What? What are we talking about here? What have a rabbit hole and The Matrix to do with anything?

On the anagorical level-well, I'll leave that to you to work out. Mystical interpretations are not my forte. And Carroll repeatedly denied that any exist in AAW. He wrote to Edith Rix, "I have a deep dread of argument on religious topics. My vew [sic] of life is, that it's next to impossible to convince anybody of anything because one of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another."

CURIOSITY DRIVES ALICE AND THE ALICE NARRATIVE

O.K. Alice followed the rabbit down the hole for the same reason that Neo followed the rabbit tattoo, for the same reason that you are probably reading this book-(no special reason at all) just CURIOSITY and a certain bursting youthful spirit avid for mischief, adventure, and new knowledge. Recall how Alice plunged right in: "never once considering how in the world she was to get out again."

Humans are by nature a curious lot. Our expansive sense of time and space stimulates us to ponder our place in the scheme of things. That's what we do.

But what is curiosity? Who has it? And why? And what good is it?

The fact that you are reading this book is evidence that you are curious. In general, our species remains curious about anything and everything. Aristotle held that certain basic drives were part of human nature, among these he reckoned drives toward food, drink, sex, and knowledge. Yes, knowledge. "All men," said Aristotle, "desire to know." Aristotle was therefore asserting that all men are curious; they want to experience and understand. They want to know.

That's good. I like the idea. And wouldn't it be nice if it were true?

In a sense, curiosity is the seeking of the truth and knowledge. Truth seeking is good and normal. Most of us are curious. Most of us normally seek the truth. That's what Aristotle implied when he said in book I of The Metaphysics: "All men by nature seek to know."

But was he right?

ARISTOTLE WAS WRONG

Strictly speaking, Aristotle was wrong. He was wrong because the all-inclusive word "all" makes his claim overly general, simple and simplistic, and easily refuted by finding just one counterexample.

If just one man does not seek to have knowledge, then the statement "All men by nature seek to know" cannot be true. If the statement cannot be true, then it is false.

The reason that the statement would be false is that the word all means all. In the parlance of logic school and logicians, the statement "All men seek the truth" is a statement in the Universal Categorical Affirmative form (what the medieval scholastics called mood A) that entails several subaltern claims including multiple particular claims like "some men seek to know," "many men seek to know," "this man currently drinking his can of Bud seeks to know," and so on, as well as the bigger and more general claim "No man seeks not to know."

Here's the nub and the rub: If we find one man who doesn't seek to know, then Aristotle's statement is proven false.

Personally I know quite a few men who don't want to know (much about anything) and prove it every day. Whether or not most men seek to know is also debatable. If that were true, then how come most men don't know the names of the bushes, flowers, and trees in their front yard? How come most men don't have the foggiest idea of how their TV works or what mathematical algorithms let their computer fetch the e-mail?

Neo and Alice are different. They are not like all men. They are not like most men. They are like us, you and me. They are curious. They are curious in both senses of the word. They are curious (inquisitive and prying) to explore, learn, find out, and know. And they are curious (strange, unusual, and odd-set off from the group and the ordinary), arousing our attention and interest.

It so happens that "curious" is also the favorite word of Mr. Spock, an emotionless Vulcan, an almost purely intellectual personality on the television series Star Trek. Spock is never excited, amazed, or dreadfully afraid. He is detached, sometimes amused, and (like Alice) always curious (interested in finding out stuff) and also he is always curious (strange and unusual), especially with those long ears (or are those ears just pointy, simply appearing long?). But unlike Alice, characters like Spock and the others in Star Trek are as unbelievable as the rest of television.

What I did just then by using a word like "curious" in a single context while implying different meanings is an equivocation, something Carroll is fond of demonstrating and that is of course a classic error in thinking. For in a given context the meaning of a word must remain constant else we are likely to reach an erroneous conclusion. Here's the classic example of this error:

All men are rational. Women are not men. Therefore, women are not rational.

Women not rational? That can't be true. So where is the error?

The error is in the equivocation or double meaning of the word "men." In...