The Cognition of Conflict: Ontology, Dynamics, and Ideology - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 5

1. Either X has (which does not mean “pursues”!) and formulates the goal P and the
goal Not P; thus, they are intrinsically incompatible or logically contradictory
(I would like my father to be alive and I would like him to be dead);
or X has the goal P and the goal Q, but P logically implies Not Q (I would like
my father to be alive and I would like someone to kill my father).
2. Or P just “practically” entails that Not Q since it makes Q practically impossible :
They are incompatible because they require the same resource (e.g., money,
time, place), which does not exist in sufficient quantities, i.e., it is scarce, or they
require two incompatible practical conditions for their achievement.
(Of course, the practical case can be phrased as - and finally entail - a logical
contradiction: if I pursue P, then, since pursuing P means not realizing/pursuing
Q, this implies that Not Q: in a sense, in pursuing P I am pursuing Not Q)
(Fig. 1.1 ).

Fig. 1.1 Two kinds of

CONFLICTS

conflicts

INTRINSIC or
LOGICAL

EXTRINSIC or
PRACTICAL

3. Conflicts can exist between two different kinds of goals :
An intention can be in contrast with, for example, a set-aside desire ; a desire
can contradict a duty , or a duty (or desire or intention) a felt need .
Any goal can elicit conflicts: this is a property of “goalness,” not of desires or
needs or pursued goals per se.
4. There are “explicit” and “implicit” conflicts :
Since we do NOT derive all the logical consequences of what we know
or believe (no “closure”), which would be 99 % redundant and cumbersome,
we just infer what and when we need it; and since, for this reason, alarge
proportion of our “knowledge” is just implicit and more precisely “potential”
in our minds/brains, it follows that it is possible (frequent!) that we have the goal
that P and the goal that Q, they are/would be in conflict since Q implies Not P,
but we are not aware of this, we do not derive “Not P” from Q. Thus, subjectively
speaking we have no conflict at all. We will realize this either by reasoning
or, when pursuing both, and by discovering that one thwarts or harms the
other.
5. Not only might there be objective conflicts between my goals that I do not realize,
but the other converse might also hold. It is possible that subjectively I perceive
as a conflict desiring or pursuing P and desiring/pursuing Q, though they are not
incompatible at all. But subjectively what matters is that I believe them to be
incompatible, for example, that I (wrongly) derive Not P from Q.