Creative Reasoning and Content-Genetic Logic

Abstract

In decision making quite often we face permanently changeable and potentially infinite databases when we cannot apply conventional algorithms for choosing a solution. A decision process on infinite databases (e.g. on a database containing a contradiction) is called troubleshooting. A decision on these databases is call d creative reasoning. One of the first heuristic semi-logical means for creative decision making were proposed in the theory of inventive problem solving (TIPS) by Genrich Altshuller. In this paper, I show that his approach corresponds to the so-called content-generic logic established by Soviet philosophers as an alternative to mathematical logic. The main assumption of con tent-genetic logic is that we cannot reduce our thinking to a mathematical combination of signs or to a language as such an d our thought is ever cyclic and reflexive so that it contains ever a history.