creativesoulMay 13, 2020 at 05:2812150 views231 comments
Let us start by supposing that there are two opposing opinions on some matter. Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?
Depends. Is this matter of any relevance or importance to us?
Assuming it is and we are one of the relevant parties or stakeholders. Is what could be lost worth what could be gained? How sure are the chances of both? Or that we even understand the matter in full detail?
Let us start by supposing that there are two opposing opinions on some matter. Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?
It seems to me this hinges on what was meant by "best to believe."
The reasons for accepting a specific claim will depend on the claim and the evidence for it. I doubt there is a general recipe that applies to all claims and all evidence that will tell you just when to believe and when not to believe. I believe it is much more productive to think of adjustments that can be made to one's own propensities to believe and personal evaluation of whether a claim is justified. There is a huge asymmetry between how easy it is to show something is flawed or impoverished and how hard it is to show something is a well justified complete picture. It's easier to demonstrate falsehood than truth, and easier to find a flaw than construct a position.
Untrustworthy people or institutions will use that asymmetry, letting you construct their position for them while never spelling out the complete picture, and being unable to say what would make them change their mind about the statements/the defeaters for their justifications of it, or their interpretations of evidence.
So here are some rules of thumb I find helpful:
(1) Sources, is the person's claim backed up by data?
(2) Is it from a person or institution you trust?
(2a) An institution that relies on sourced arguments that terminate in interpretations of data is a more reliable truth teller than otherwise.
(2b) A person who has a habit of backing up their claims with sources or data, or at least tells you where they're getting their information from, is a more reliable truth teller than otherwise.
(2c) When a person or institution uses a sourced argument, can you find other people or institutions which do the same thing? Can you find ones that you cannot establish are politically partisan who do the same thing?
(3) Be on the lookout for question substitution and cognitive shortcuts; are a person or institution's claims regarding a question actually demonstrating a much weaker or different claim? EG: "There are racial differences in intelligence" vs "There are statistically significant differences between the mean scores of race categories in IQ tests that are entirely attributable to biological factors"; the first is a lazy claim that relies on a lot of priming and framing to be interpreted as true, it does not spell out its truth conditions or justifying conditions or potential defeaters, whereas the second spells out its truth conditions, justifying conditions and gives a recipe for constructing defeaters. Find the latter kind of statement more worthy of investigation and plausible entertainment than the former.
(4) The form a question is posed in or a claim is made are not innocuous and innocent; we can be primed to alter our dispositions. If the truth conditions of a claim are only explicable (as in, can be stated), given that you already are predisposed to evaluate it as true, make some extra effort to doubt that claim.
(5) If you're looking to cut through noise, don't use raw Google to check something, use Google scholar. That will give you access to peer reviewed papers, their abstracts will tell you who wrote them and sometimes who funded them, which you can check for conflict of interest if you don't trust them. You also get a sense of how much that work is used by their citation count, though it is not a particularly good measure of inherent truth or usefulness for various reasons like peer review being its own kind of filter bubble.
(6) Consume media that reacts more slowly than Twitter and other social media. It takes longer to read a thinkpiece and follow its sources than to knee jerk True/False assign a soundbite, but over a long time of practicing intellectual hygiene you get a more fruitful knee jerk reaction; True/False/Frame or Priming dependent/Plausible/Well justified.
(7) No one is immune to the effects of ideology or thinking from the wrong perspective about something. Do not let yourself be filterbubbled and confirm all your suspicions through constant saturation in their content. As much as it pains you, if you're on the right read what the left is saying, if you're on the left read what the right is saying. And try your hardest not to dismiss something just because it's from a source you're discinclined to like.
(8) Dismissing a source due to being unreliable should be done on a domain by domain basis: if you trust the UK newspaper the Guardian on one topic (say, to report the effects of healthcare spending cuts), that doesn't mean you should trust it on another (say, to report about security overreach from British institutions - their team of journalists that dealt with Snowden got dissolved and their head was replaced with someone very sympathetic to GCHQ).
(9) The more domains a source relies on bullshit to justify its claims in, the less trustworthy it is (like the UK's Sun).
We are always in error, the goal is to learn to be less wrong.
So you are basically asking if there is a universal method of identifying truth?
Not so much. The very idea that we can identify something bears the burden of explaining what that particular thing is.
But what does it mean to talk in terms of "identifying truth"?
I am inquiring to see if there is a universally reliable method for ascertaining which - if any - of multiple competing reports upon the same things is true?
Is there a reliable method for discriminating between true and false statements?
Is this matter of any relevance or importance to us?
I would think that knowing what sorts of things can be true and what makes them so is of the utmost relevance, significance, and/or importance to anyone and everyone attempting to successfully navigate the world they live in.
The reasons for accepting a specific claim will depend on the claim and the evidence for it. I doubt there is a general recipe that applies to all claims and all evidence that will tell you just when to believe and when not to believe. I believe it is much more productive to think of adjustments that can be made to one's own propensities to believe and personal evaluation of whether a claim is justified. There is a huge asymmetry between how easy it is to show something is flawed or impoverished and how hard it is to show something is a well justified complete picture. It's easier to demonstrate falsehood than truth, and easier to find a flaw than construct a position.
Untrustworthy people or institutions will use that asymmetry, letting you construct their position for them while never spelling out the complete picture, and being unable to say what would make them change their mind about the statements/the defeaters for their justifications of it, or their interpretations of evidence.
So here are some rules of thumb I find helpful:
(1) Sources, is the person's claim backed up by data?
(2) Is it from a person or institution you trust?
(2a) An institution that relies on sourced arguments that terminate in interpretations of data is a more reliable truth teller than otherwise.
(2b) A person who has a habit of backing up their claims with sources or data, or at least tells you where they're getting their information from, is a more reliable truth teller than otherwise.
(2c) When a person or institution uses a sourced argument, can you find other people or institutions which do the same thing? Can you find ones that you cannot establish are politically partisan who do the same thing?
(3) Be on the lookout for question substitution and cognitive shortcuts; are a person or institution's claims regarding a question actually demonstrating a much weaker or different claim? EG: "There are racial differences in intelligence" vs "There are statistically significant differences between the mean scores of race categories in IQ tests that are entirely attributable to biological factors"; the first is a lazy claim that relies on a lot of priming and framing to be interpreted as true, it does not spell out its truth conditions or justifying conditions or potential defeaters, whereas the second spells out its truth conditions, justifying conditions and gives a recipe for constructing defeaters. Find the latter kind of statement more worthy of investigation and plausible entertainment than the former.
(4) The form a question is posed in or a claim is made are not innocuous and innocent; we can be primed to alter our dispositions. If the truth conditions of a claim are only explicable (as in, can be stated), given that you already are predisposed to evaluate it as true, make some extra effort to doubt that claim.
(5) If you're looking to cut through noise, don't use raw Google to check something, use Google scholar. That will give you access to peer reviewed papers, their abstracts will tell you who wrote them and sometimes who funded them, which you can check for conflict of interest if you don't trust them. You also get a sense of how much that work is used by their citation count, though it is not a particularly good measure of inherent truth or usefulness for various reasons like peer review being its own kind of filter bubble.
(6) Consume media that reacts more slowly than Twitter and other social media. It takes longer to read a thinkpiece and follow its sources than to knee jerk True/False assign a soundbite, but over a long time of practicing intellectual hygiene you get a more fruitful knee jerk reaction; True/False/Frame or Priming dependent/Plausible/Well justified.
(7) No one is immune to the effects of ideology or thinking from the wrong perspective about something. Do not let yourself be filterbubbled and confirm all your suspicions through constant saturation in their content. As much as it pains you, if you're on the right read what the left is saying, if you're on the left read what the right is saying. And try your hardest not to dismiss something just because it's from a source you're discinclined to like.
(8) Dismissing a source due to being unreliable should be done on a domain by domain basis: if you trust the UK newspaper the Guardian on one topic (say, to report the effects of healthcare spending cuts), that doesn't mean you should trust it on another (say, to report about security overreach from British institutions - their team of journalists that dealt with Snowden got dissolved and their head was replaced with someone very sympathetic to GCHQ).
(9) The more domains a source relies on bullshit to justify its claims in, the less trustworthy it is (like the UK's Sun).
We are always in error, the goal is to learn to be less wrong.
Are so and so being effected/affected in 'disproportionate' numbers?
The data may lend some weak support to charges and/or implications of race discrimination by showing that there is a larger percentage of X's being Y'd than other races/ethnic groups. However, it could be the case that out of every group being Y'd, the X's far outnumber the individuals in any other group, and everyone is being Y'd, so...
The quantity of X's being Y'd is indeed much higher than the quantity of any other group, as one would expect without any racial underpinnings whatsoever. If one compares the number of X's to the overall number of those being Y'd and arrives at knowing that that percentage is very high(say 55%), then one could claim that that is the evidence that shows a disproportionate amount of X's are getting Y'd.
However, from there it does not warrant further concluding that such 'disproportionate' numbers count as sufficient evidence for, or proof of, discrimination. It's not.
Had you asked if there were any "tried and true universally applicable method" to determine fact or truth, then you've got a discussion, but one needing preliminary remarks on the terms used.
That's no discussion I want to get involved in. It devolves into arguing about which definition is best when faced with competing opinions about the meaning of the same word.
That is precisely the issue I'm looking to resolve.
Reply to creativesoul The Socratic Method is a nice place to start - it encourages conflicting opinions to actively question each other with more focus on articulating these opinions and offering up investigative lines of questioning rather than relying on terms like ‘that’s dumb’ or crass use of hyperbole.
Let us start by supposing that there are two opposing opinions on some matter. Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?
Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?
My initial reaction was "logic" is the answer - look at the arguments and decide which position has the best ones.
However, if we look at it closely, opposing positions are already reasoned to by their respective proponents. In other words both have a rightful claim to logic and rationality.
The difference between them, ergo, is not logic in the sense one side has used it well and the other side has not; rather the actual source of disputes is the assumptions each side has made in their arguments and assumptions are not a matter of logic. Assumptions are made in the low visibility fog of ignorance and you may just as well flip a coin to decide which ones you want to base your views on for logic is utterly useless in this regard.
I suggest we refrain from quarreling because if logic isn't the issue then everything is a matter of opinion.
The difference between them, ergo, is not logic in the sense one side has used it well and the other side has not; rather the actual source of disputes is the assumptions each side has made in their arguments and assumptions are not a matter of logic. Assumptions are made in the low visibility fog of ignorance
Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.
~Descartes
Something I want to draw a distinction between: framing and priming. Priming is when someone shows you a picture like this:
Next to the statement: "Brexit negotiations stall again due to harsh terms from Bojo's Britain" - the intended effect being that you recognise the face as being stupid and angry, and it resonates with the statement phrasing (like calling Boris Johnson Bojo and making "harsh" match up with the scowl). Priming in general is explicitly applying some prompt or accompanying device to some other statement/claim/argument that is intended to make someone more likely to interpret the statement/claim/argument in the intended mood. Successful priming strongly promotes the intended interpretive mood and its behavioural corollaries.
No one can ignore priming effects, just like you can't look at this sentence without reading it.
It's a well documented thing (though there are plenty of papers that exaggerate its effects). Newspapers especially use priming to convey the mood they intend you to read their article in.
Now framing; a frame is a context of interpretation for a claim. No one is in full control of their context of interpretation for any claim. When US Republicans make "states rights" arguments, say against gay marriage being a federal law, the purpose of that (and it was designed by Goldwater IIRC for this regarding civil rights) is to impede the adoption of the law by changing the narrative that supports the imposition from a religious/prejudicial one to an autonomy/jurisprudential one. People who believe in "small government" will be able to say "it's a state's decision" and argue in terms of the benefits of political devolution even though before it was a federal law binding all of 'em that gay marriage was not allowed .
Questions can prime for framing: "Should individuals always be allowed to decide who can use their business?" as a counter argument against "Gay marriage should be legal US wide" primes people to talk in terms of the supporting narrative for the "small government" argument.
Also wanted to add 2 to the list that you see on the forum:
(10) A priori reasoning is over-rated; people's speculations are done within a frame, a priori reasoning often uncovers the founding principles of the frame rather than the truth of the matter. Logic alone doesn't let you decide the truth or falsity of any contingent proposition, one whose truth maker is not arbitrary; and for this reason almost all propositions we encounter , reject or adopt are contingently true or false. "Self evident" usually just means "it seems this way to me for reasons I cannot state". Another way of saying this: satori is not a justification or evidence, it is a frame announcing its presuppositions.
(11) Do not hang back and simply ask questions; if you position yourself always as the critic and the cynic, you can bolster your own beliefs simply by rejecting all others - and it is much easier to show a flaw or falsify than to get a good picture of something or confirm. Do not let the asymmetry in difficulty between justification and falsification be a reason your beliefs never change; all doubt is done within a motivating context - a frame - which can, itself, be more or less occlusive or productive to generating well justified beliefs regarding the matter at hand.
Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.
~Descartes
:up: :ok:
Clearly, he was not entirely correct. Some of us think they have more common sense than others.
Common sense is over rated. The only reason anyone would say that anything non-trivial is common sense is because they cannot or will not justify it for other reasons. People appealing to common sense usually do so regarding matters where evidence and careful argument is mandatory. "Geopolitics, only common sense!", "Economics, only common sense!", "The mind, it's common sense!". It's usually just another way to avoid providing evidence or argument and to mock whoever or whatever you disagree with. A "salt of the earth" version of self evidence.
Maybe. I think, as Descartes says, the reality is that everyone thinks they have common sense, implying that not everyone does. So, yes, maybe the appeal to commonsense (in an argument) is overrated. I think, by definition, common-sense (when it is genuine) is absolutely fundamental.
Let us start by supposing that there are two opposing opinions on some matter. Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?
My emphasis, and probably not the OP's, in which case apologies for going off topic. Anyways...
Something often missed is a variety of advantages which may be enjoyed by a discourse that tolerates both of two opposed opinions on some matter. I don't say that pointing this out will necessarily lead to world peace, but I do wonder whether the extent (admittedly partial) of its observable application might deserve further scrutiny.
An obvious hoped-for benefit (of the mentioned toleration) is the peaceful co-existence of the disputants. But then, an associated cost is a notional divide between matters of fact and of opinion, which is of course a price almost universally thought to be worth paying. And so the conflict is merely deferred: have your opinions about this or that regardless of mine, but expect your factual claims to stand or fall against mine.
What we usually fail to notice is that our disagreements about certain cases, if they are the intrinsically unclear ones, are often the largely unconscious method by which we keep the overall shape of the discourse in good repair, so that our usage of mutually exclusive terms remains just that.
We disagree about borderline cases of, say, "acceptable abortion" not necessarily to ensure the "correct" judgment in those cases: even though that might be exactly what we think we are doing, such that if only we had our way... etc. The disagreements serve, rather, to maintain the myth (or social construct) of an extension of the word or concept, made all the more realistic by its having a fuzzy border: cases that are variously judged to be both included and not included. That in itself might be useful for the discourse; but what it also probably helps with is the parallel maintenance of the extension of a mutually exclusive concept, perhaps "murder".
To the extent (debatable no doubt) that "abortion" and "murder" are recognised as mutually exclusive, the borderline cases of each fix a theoretical limit on the possible reach of the other. Any even alleged abortion then exemplifies (in the discourse) a clear enough case of non-murder. And likewise, any alleged case of murder is a clear non-case of abortion. What we can offer the recalcitrant extremists on either side, as an incentive to join in the discourse on this basis, is the surprising prospect of opinions creating complete unanimity with respect to judgements of clear non-cases, and therefore the impossibility of pointing certain words at certain cases, exactly as those same opinions seem to be expressing a free choice of what words to point at what cases. Not only do the enemy camps share common ground but their battles maintain it in good condition.
The surprising result is explained when we notice that disagreements about borderline cases are themselves negotiated, because each party agrees (implicitly) to agree which judgements are real events inside the discourse, and which ones are, as exemplified by attempts to point "black" at white, or "murder" at abortion, simply invalid, and (literally) not counted. So speech acts will not be more (or less) defiant of others than is good for their credibility as contributions to the implicit shared project.
Another, probably less emotive, example is consciousness. Ok, even more emotive...
Let us start by supposing that there are two opposing opinions on some matter. Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?
— creativesoul
Logic.
However, if we look at it closely, opposing positions are already reasoned to by their respective proponents. In other words both have a rightful claim to logic and rationality.
I think that that's exactly wrong in that it is true, but totally irrelevant.
Either can say what they want about whether or not they are thinking logically and rationally. Saying that and being that are two completely different things. Being that is not solely up to the speaker. Saying that is.
Either can say what they want about whether or not they are thinking logically and rationally. Saying that and being that are two completely different things. Being that is not solely up to the speaker. Saying that is.
Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.
~Descartes
The two of you concur in your outlook but don't you think it's equally a fault to think that some people lack common sense as it is for us to think we have common sense? In both cases we think we're better at it than we actually are, one in an absolute sense and other in a relative sense.
Common sense is over rated. The only reason anyone would say that anything non-trivial is common sense is because they cannot or will not justify it for other reasons. People appealing to common sense usually do so regarding matters where evidence and careful argument is mandatory. "Geopolitics, only common sense!", "Economics, only common sense!", "The mind, it's common sense!". It's usually just another way to avoid providing evidence or argument and to mock whoever or whatever you disagree with. A "salt of the earth" version of self evidence.
While the above is a true report of some, it is not a true report of all... uses of "common sense". The notion of "common sense" when used to classify some belief or other, can be an irrevocably important aspect used to compel the audience to place the utmost importance upon the simplest of true statements, arguments, and/or lines of thought.
I will employ the notion of common sense in the appropriate circumstances.
One has to know what sorts of things can be true and what makes them so. That's the easy part. The hard part is remembering that after inadequate language use begins.
You quoted my response to you and compared it to another's response to you. In doing so, you managed to completely avoid what we were talking about.
Sorry. My apologies.
Well, firstly my take on "common sense" is that it's a nebulous concept. What exactly does it mean? Is common sense just another name for logic or is it something else altogether like an attitude of pragmatism, stressing on being realistic about life and everything else?
If it means logic then as I already mentioned logic isn't the source of our differences, isn't the reason behind opposing views. We differ in our opinions/views/philosophies not because of problems in logic but because we've made incompatible assumptions. Assumptions, as we all know, are not proven - they, by definition, need no argument. Ergo, it must be that when people assume different things, it's not a logical problem unless you can come up with a reductio ad absurdum argument to disprove them.
If so, the right way to deal with this issue of opposing views is to investigate how we make assumptions. What are your views on this? As far as I know, assumptions are either purportedly self-evident (most philosophical positions I assume) or else arbitrary ( like in math). As you can see, the only kind of assumption that concerns us are the self-evident ones. The problem is that there are many self-evident "truths" out there that can be assumed and there's a good chance that these assumptions will lead to opposing conclusions. Thus, the source of conflict can be traced to assumptions that clash with each other.
Reply to TheMadFool Presumably "common sense" denotes a certain type of knowledge that can be qualified and quantified. Something akin to our prejudicative grasp of background knowledge maybe? Probably we all lie somewhere on a spectrum of accuracy with respect to this.
Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?
It is as others have said the Platonic method of dialogue. But one can say some more about the elements of dialogue. First, it requires an assumption of equality. We must begin our dialogue with the assumption that we are both able to change our opinions and both able to understand each other. This begins the second element - finding the common ground.
We need the common ground at least of this much in order to even disagree. So if one is unable to begin this dialogue with an equality and an engagement that will look for first common ground and then for the detail of disagreement, then it all becomes impossible. Someone, for example, with a strong sense of superiority, or even infallibility, cannot begin such a conflict resolution, but will resort to authority, dictat, threats or insults. They cannot communicate.
Thus the answer, without discussion, "Logic." partakes of this authoritarian attitude. One might suppose that reputable logicians have never been known to disagree. Yet we surely know that this is not the case, and so the word becomes nothing more than a stick to beat one with.
Presumably "common sense" denotes a certain type of knowledge that can be qualified and quantified. Something akin to our prejudicative grasp of background knowledge maybe? Probably we all lie somewhere on a spectrum of accuracy with respect to this.
Descartes' quote which you posted a couple of rows above suggests Descartes had a very high opinion of common sense which leads me to believe he equated it to what these days we call critical thinking.
What is critical thinking?
Critical thinking or Descartes' common sense encompasses a broad range of skills inclusive of formal logic, ability to identify/avoid fallacies, recognizing and steering clear of cognitive biases - both our own and that of others, knowing how to and where to look for supporting evidence and be proficient in judging their quality, and to be, above all, dedicated to the truth whether comforting or not.
Descartes' quote which you posted a couple of rows above suggests Descartes had a very high opinion of common sense which leads me to believe he equated it to what these days we call critical thinking.
I am very much aligned with your introduction of the concept of critical thinking, as a recent convert to Popper's theories of critical realism. However I must point out that you have misconstrued Descartes' account of common sense. Descartes is acknowledging that there is a universal tendency to believe that one is possessed of common sense, but the fact that no one "desires more" than they already have implies that this is can also be a huge "blind spot."
I would say that common sense is the prime target of critical thinking. In more modern parlance, excavating our prejudicative presuppositions, so-called background knowledge of which the lebenswelt is constructed.
Descartes is acknowledging that there is a universal tendency to believe that one is possessed of common sense, but the fact that no one "desires more" than they already have implies that this is can also be a huge "blind spot."
I thought he was being sarcastic - scoffing at people who are under the impression that they have common sense when in fact they do not. Anyway :up:
The agreement resonated within while reading. Literally... a visceral affect/effect.
Thank you. My respect for you has just increased exponentially.
Anyway, logic is presupposed by every sentence and every thought. Even by doubting the laws of logic, you’ve affirmed them, as thinking that something “might be false” presupposes that there’s such a thing as “true” and “false” in the first place.
Even by doubting the laws of logic, you’ve affirmed them, as thinking that something “might be false” presupposes that there’s such a thing as “true” and “false” in the first place.
There's always the question of which logic is appropriate for the task, and which describes people's conduct the best. Say we go back in time and people are still wrestling with electron orbitals and coulomb's law; people were committed to theory that entailed that electrons would be slowly drawn to the nucleus of an atom through electrostatic attraction, but people also knew that didn't happen. The theory predicted one thing, and was believed to some degree, the experiments found another. People still believed in the predictions of Coulomb's law by and large, but stopped applying it. They didn't act in accordance with the principle of explosion and suddenly believe arbitrary positions because they believed a contradiction, they stopped the explosion by restricting the applicability of Coulomb's law in calculating the distribution of positions of electrons in atoms.
Most arguments people make do not obey classical propositional logic, or paraconsistent logic, or any other formal logic. Most arguments scientists make do not rely on any formalisation of inductive logic; there aren't logical constraints on what makes a sensible explanatory hypothesis in general, they are domain specific.
Thus the answer, without discussion, "Logic." partakes of this authoritarian attitude. One might suppose that reputable logicians have never been known to disagree. Yet we surely know that this is not the case, and so the word becomes nothing more than a stick to beat one with.
And so we find ourselves arguing about the length of the stick and who has the better grasp on it. And the original question is quite forgotten.
Does this statement presuppose some truth about what you think, and that you think?
The statement is not about me, it is about dialectical logic. You are conflating the reference of the statement with its origin. Smacks of the genetic fallacy. Dialectical logic can be many-valued.
The statement is not about me, it is about dialectical logic. You are conflating the reference of the statement with its origin. Smacks of the genetic fallacy. Dialectical logic can be many-valued.
Thus the answer, without discussion, "Logic." partakes of this authoritarian attitude. One might suppose that reputable logicians have never been known to disagree. Yet we surely know that this is not the case, and so the word becomes nothing more than a stick to beat one with.
Logic, like any other process, puts out what you put in. If you put in false premises, you will get false conclusions.
Logic also helps you to determine what to put in. Appeals to popularity, authority, and the genetic fallacy are all logical fallacies. So it seems to me that one kind of logic not being applied appropriately has a detrimental effect on the rest of your types of logic that you might use.
:100:
Great stuff, I regularly screw up on these and then afterwards realize something is wrong but can't always articulate it. A list like this is gold. Stick it together and pin it in the learning centre!
If you are asking if I think that there is any logic that doesn't presuppose that there is such a thing as true and false, then no.
Even if we allow that it is trivially true that my statement is really my statement, you asked merely if there was any logic that doesn't presuppose true and false. I merely pointed out that dialectical logic transcends the true-false simpliciter dyad. I'm prepared to acknowledge that it is always true that I have made any statement I have made. Are you prepared to expand the concept of modal logic beyond the scope of true and false?
Even if we allow that it is trivially true that my statement is really my statement,
I would like to suggest to you, in relation to the topic we are supposed to be discussing, that this conflict cannot be resolved, because no genuine communication is taking place. You might as well argue with Trump, because you are a a very bad person, and very illogical, and you are dealing with a very stable genius.
Even if we allow that it is trivially true that my statement is really my statement, you asked merely if there was any logic that doesn't presuppose true and false. I merely pointed out that dialectical logic transcends the true-false simpliciter dyad. I'm prepared to acknowledge that it is always true that I have made any statement I have made. Are you prepared to expand the concept of modal logic beyond the scope of true and false?
Just read the first sentence in the link you provided. It presupposes some truth.
In making your statement you are presupposing the truth that "dialectical logic transcends the true-false simpliciter dyad".
I would like to suggest to you, in relation to the topic we are supposed to be discussing, that this conflict cannot be resolved, because no genuine communication is taking place. You might as well argue with Trump, because you are a a very bad person, and very illogical, and you are dealing with a very stable genius.
The topic we are supposed to be talking about isn't a political one. You might want to remove those politically partisan glasses you have on.
LNC doesn't give you a logic by itself. It says very little about valid inferences; or plausibility of claims; or evidentiary status; it just tells you not to believe something and its negation at the same time. This is nowhere near enough.
It's impossible to be vigilant all the time, or even all but a tiny fraction of the time. We're hardwired to take shortcuts. It takes a lot of effort; both cognitive and emotional labour; to actually think in a way that sticks to what can plausibly be inferred from what we know.
If you are asking if I think that there is any logic that doesn't presuppose that there is such a thing as true and false, then no.
Translation:
X = Does Harry Hindu think (Y = there is a logic that doesn't suppose T/F)?
Interpretation 1: Harry Hindu believes believes X - truth about Harry Hindu.
Interpretation 2: Multi-valued (dialectical) logic does not fit the simplistic interpretation T/F) - so Y is not true, in the sense at the very least that it is incomplete.
If we are talking about interpretation one, we could basically stick "I think" in front of everything that everybody says, and it will always be true. But why would we ignore the external referents of propositions in this way?
LNC doesn't give you a logic by itself. It says very little about valid inferences; or plausibility of claims; or evidentiary status; it just tells you not to believe something and its negation at the same time. This is nowhere near enough.
Sure it does. It basically mandates that the opposite of true is false. It is the root of all philosophical conclusions. If you keep asking, "why?", it basically comes down to, "because it is.", and something cannot be something that it isn't.
Yeah, but not on the topic at hand, because you decided to engage in ad hominem political attacks rather than defend your statements on the topic at hand.
If we are talking about interpretation one, we could basically stick "I think" in front of everything that everybody says, and it will always be true. But why would we ignore the external referents of propositions in this way?
I find it very strange that you don't see your own presuppositions of truth in every sentence that you make - that every statement you make is about how things are - from what dialectical logic is to what your thoughts are.
Yeah, but not on the topic at hand, because you decided to engage in ad hominem political attacks rather than defend your statements on the topic at hand.
Sorry, are you saying we shouldn't be discussing how to resolve conflicts of opinion or that we should be? I take the latter view - do you agree?
Note. I am here following my own stricture of trying to establish some common ground.
The rules of correct inference(logic) cannot tell us whether or not some statement or other is true. If the aim is to determine which of two competing statements is true, then logic is of no help here. It can, however, be used to establish whether or not a statement has been arrived at by virtue of following those rules, if we know the particular kind of logic being used. Logic can help us to determine if statements are reasoned.
Typically, logical statements are held to be better(more reliable) than those that are not arrived at via logical means, however, a statement/opinion can be both valid(a logical statement/conclusion that follows the rules of correct inference) and false.
Logic alone is utterly inadequate for the task at hand.
I find it very strange that you don't see your own presuppositions of truth in every sentence that you make - that every statement you make is about how things are - from what dialectical logic is to what your thoughts are.
That's because I am capable of dialectical reasoning.
If A mans his post in the face of an attack, then A is brave.
But A can man his post for a while, but abandon it when the fighting becomes too fierce.
So A is both brave and not-brave.
I guess the whole point is that there are scenarios where the true/false (binary) state is inadequate. Even in physics, particles can be in more that one state simultaneously, it's what makes quantum computing possible. So it seems that there are empirical conditions in which the true/false dyad breaks down. Nature, it seems, never learned boolean logic.
So in terms of the OP, can we achieve a mutual understanding such that both your notion, that logic is foundational, and my notion that logic transcends the boolean form, co-exist?
Sometimes when there are competing opinions, both sides include some true stuff, but arrive at starkly different opinions regarding say... the way things are and what ought be done next.
When to "reopen the economy" is a fine example of this.
This is a much more difficult situation for a listener to ascertain, and drake is fairly spot on regarding much of what it takes. The shame is that one needs to be able to do that, because that shows us that we cannot trust some of those elected officials.
If A mans his post in the face of an attack, then A is brave.
But A can man his post for a while, but abandon it when the fighting becomes too fierce.
So A is both brave and not-brave.
Introduce a timeline. Brave at this time, not at the other. A is not both brave and not-brave at the same time.
In order to choose better, one must perform a comparison/contrast between the opposing views. Not just any comparison will do here though. We need one that increases our chances of successfully navigating the world we all find ourselves deeply embedded within. It ought be fairly uncontentious to exclaim this much, for it is precisely opposing opinions that we are contemplating the worth/value of.
Which, of either, opinions are true and what makes them so?
We must know what sorts of things can be true and what makes them so, in order to know which of multiple conflicting opinions is best(reliable and true).
For those leaning on logic, please remember this...
The sole aim of logic is to preserve truth. The sole aim of logical notation is to take proper account of pre-existing thought, belief, and/or statements thereof, all of which also presuppose truth somewhere along the line.
I'd like to reprise common sense for a moment, and suggest that it is common, not in the sense of there being no shortage, but in the sense of it being shared. Meaning is shared, senses are shared, and this is the bedrock on which all communication is founded. Our discussion cannot begin without this commonality.
It is hard to communicate with a deaf-blind person, because the senses we have in common are not the ones we usually philosophise with.
Sorry, are you saying we shouldn't be discussing how to resolve conflicts of opinion or that we should be? I take the latter view - do you agree?
Note. I am here following my own stricture of trying to establish some common ground.
You SAY that, unenlightened, but then your concept of "discussing how to resolve conflicts of opinion" involves bringing politics into a discussion that doesn't involve politics in order to make personal attacks on the person you've disagreed with politically in other discussions.
What you do is different than what you say, so what am I suppose to believe?
The rules of correct inference(logic) cannot tell us whether or not some statement or other is true. If the aim is to determine which of two competing statements is true, then logic is of no help here. It can, however, be used to establish whether or not a statement has been arrived at by virtue of following those rules, if we know the particular kind of logic being used. Logic can help us to determine if statements are reasoned.
Typically, logical statements are held to be better(more reliable) than those that are not arrived at via logical means, however, a statement/opinion can be both valid(a logical statement/conclusion that follows the rules of correct inference) and false.
Logic alone is utterly inadequate for the task at hand.
Well sure, empiricism is just as necessary as rationality, if that is what you mean. If not, then I would encourage you to give examples of where logic/empiricism, alone is inadequate. We can make claims all day, but if you aren't willing to provide examples that can falsify my statements, then it seems that we are at an impasse.
That's because I am capable of dialectical reasoning.
If A mans his post in the face of an attack, then A is brave.
But A can man his post for a while, but abandon it when the fighting becomes too fierce.
So A is both brave and not-brave.
Huh? :brow:
No, no, Pantagruel. This just means that bravery comes in degrees, not on or off.
Haven't we already been over this?
To say that one is both brave and not-brave just makes bravery meaningless. Bravery cannot be brave and not-brave (law of non-contradiction). If this were the case, then how do we know we are talking about the same thing when we discuss "bravery"?
I asked that question of you before in the other thread, and your response was another contradiction.
So, it seems to me that you think dialectic logic is the solution to everything. It seems that your use of dialectic logic is a bit religious, as if that is the type of "logic" that is used to escape the truth of solutions that you don't like.
I guess the whole point is that there are scenarios where the true/false (binary) state is inadequate. Even in physics, particles can be in more that one state simultaneously, it's what makes quantum computing possible. So it seems that there are empirical conditions in which the true/false dyad breaks down. Nature, it seems, never learned boolean logic.
So in terms of the OP, can we achieve a mutual understanding such that both your notion, that logic is foundational, and my notion that logic transcends the boolean form, co-exist?
There are never scenarios where the true/false (binary) state is inadequate. To say that there is, is to deny the law of non contradiction, but to deny the law of non contradiction actually makes use of it, so you end up defeating your own argument.
The problem isn't the logic, it is the premise that everything is black and white, like bravery.
What you do is different than what you say, so what am I suppose to believe?
I don't want to discuss what I think you ought believe about what I claim to believe, because, apart from being off-topic, I cannot expect you to believe what I might have to say about it, given that you already don't believe what I have just said as clearly as possible more than once, and done my absolute damnedest to elicit your agreement about. But you don't want to agree, even about what we are talking about. So we seem to have a disagreement about what we have a disagreement about, but without actually disagreeing, but merely by not believing what is being said. It's a very neat demonstration of the limitations of logic and common sense. If I am not to be trusted in what I say, no amount of logic can resolve that. Our disagreement cannot even be expressed.
Well sure, empiricism is just as necessary as rationality, if that is what you mean. If not, then I would encourage you to give examples of where logic/empiricism, alone is inadequate.
The question is whether or not there is some universally applicable reliable method for determining which opinion is true when we find ourselves being presented with conflicting opinions about the same things.
You stated "logic". I answered that logic alone is inadequate for determining which conflicting opinion is true.
Now you're invoking a philosophical position called "empiricism" and adding it to logic alone, as if to say logic and empiricism are enough - when used in conjunction with one another - to tell which conflicting opinion is true. I'm still objecting to that for it's not true. Logic and empiricism are inadequate. They are not capable of being used as a means to discriminate between true and false claims.
So, in effect you're changing your answer, and/or moving the goalposts. I could object on those grounds, but that would look like a hollow victory, and I'm not interested in winning. I am interested in shedding some much needed light upon an everyday problem.
If speaker A says "We should re-open the economy" and speaker B says "We should not re-open the economy" we have ourselves a real life everyday example to discuss.
So...
Tell me how logic alone can discriminate between which of these two statements is true, if either is and exactly how logic determines that much.
I'll tell you how it cannot, even when - especially when - accompanied by empiricism.
I'd like to reprise common sense for a moment, and suggest that it is common, not in the sense of there being no shortage, but in the sense of it being shared. Meaning is shared, senses are shared, and this is the bedrock on which all communication is founded. Our discussion cannot begin without this commonality.
Indeed...
Here's a few common sense lines of thought regarding that...
Names have referents. Naming practices pick individual things out of this world. It is often the case that a disagreement amounts to different people using the same name to talk about very different things.
Not at all. I am merely pointing out that it exists, in contrast with your claim that everything reduces to true and false. Cheers.
But you aren't merely pointing out that it exists. You attempted to show an example of it's use and failed miserably. In pointed out that it exists, you are pointing out a truth, and even provided (what you thought) is the nature of it's existence.
In doing my own research, there is nothing about dialectic logic that implies that it "transcends the true/false dyad of traditional logic". Even your own link seems to imply that there is an underlying truth in our opposing views. This is akin to what I have said before in that we can have different views of the same thing, but we have to be careful that we aren't confusing our views with what our views are of. In discussing opposing views, we are discussing our views, not what our view is of. To get at what our views are of, we have to find similarities between our views, not differences between our views.
The fact that our views may differ says nothing about what our views are about, but more about ourselves - the viewers.
The question is whether or not there is some universally applicable reliable method for determining which opinion is true when we find ourselves being presented with conflicting opinions about the same things.
Like I said to Pantagruel. If our opinions are conflicting, then how do you know that our opinions are of the same thing?
You stated "logic". I answered that logic alone is inadequate for determining which conflicting opinion is true.
Now you're invoking a philosophical position called "empiricism" and adding it to logic alone, as if to say logic and empiricism are enough - when used in conjunction with one another - to tell which conflicting opinion is true. I'm still objecting to that for it's not true. Logic and empiricism are inadequate. They are not capable of being used as a means to discriminate between true and false claims.
So, in effect you're changing your answer, and/or moving the goalposts. I could object on those grounds, but that would look like a hollow victory, and I'm not interested in winning. I am interested in shedding some much needed light upon an everyday problem.
If speaker A says "We should re-open the economy" and speaker B says "We should not re-open the economy" we have ourselves a real life everyday example to discuss.
So...
Tell me how logic alone can discriminate between which of these two statements is true, if either is and exactly how logic determines that much.
I'll tell you how it cannot, even when - especially when - accompanied by empiricism.
If you're asking if you can apply logic to ethical questions, then no. There is no such thing as an objective morality. When it is right to open an economy is when individuals feel safe in going out in public, and that can vary from individual to individual. So it seems to me that you are attempting to answer an unanswerable question, or attempting to answer a subjective question as if it had an objective answer.
So, you tell me creativesoul, what other methods are there besides logic to determine what is true? It seems to me that you used logic in your post to attempt to show how logic is inadequate. In showing that something is inadequate, does it make sense to use the very thing that you claim is inadequate to show how it is inadequate? :roll:
"Many-valued logics are non-classical logics. They are similar to classical logic because they accept the principle of truth-functionality, namely, that the truth of a compound sentence is determined by the truth values of its component sentences (and so remains unaffected when one of its component sentences is replaced by another sentence with the same truth value). But they differ from classical logic by the fundamental fact that they do not restrict the number of truth values to only two: they allow for a larger set W of truth degrees."
This is all I proposed. Dialectical logic is just a different style of many valued logic one which is not limited to a dyadic truth relationship. I only ever suggested it as an example, and never proposed it as authoritative. In fact, I specifically stipulated that. I have nothing beyond that to contribute to this particular conversation.
they do not restrict the number of truth values to only two: they allow for a larger set W of truth degrees.
Seems to support what I said, not what you said. Bravery comes in degrees, not on or off / true or false. Some are braver than others. Tell me, Pantagruel, what room does the word "braver" have in your example? You seem to say that the word would be meaningless if you were to apply dialectic logic to bravery. So it seems that either you have the wrong idea about dialectic logic or the wrong idea about bravery, and how and when to apply dialectic logic (it doesn't seem to work for bravery), and it is reflected by your example
What I find interesting is that there can only be truth degrees, but no degrees of falsity? So dialectic logic is a way for everyone to be right? How convenient. How religious.
Seems to support what I said, not what you said. Bravery comes in degrees, not on or off / true or false. Some are braver than others. Tell me, Pantagruel, what room does the word "braver" have in your example? You seem to say that the word would be meaningless if you were to apply dialectic logic to bravery. So it seems that either you have the wrong idea about dialectic logic, and how and when to use it, and it reflects in your example.
Au contraire. It was a perfectly valid choice of a dialectical problem. It was never intended to be conclusive, only illustrative (as I have repeatedly pointed out, yet you inexplicably refuse to acknowledge).
"Dialectical thinking refers to the ability to view issues from multiple perspectives and to arrive at the most economical and reasonable reconciliation of seemingly contradictory information"
Certainly your counter-argument was applicable, and amplified the issue. In doing so, you thereby participated in the process of dialectical reasoning, and gave a strong argument yourself for the use of many-valued (versus dyadic) logic.
Having read the Critique of Dialectical Reason a couple of months ago. I feel I have a pretty solid grasp of the basics.
Au contraire. It was a perfectly valid choice of a dialectical problem. Itwas never intended to be conclusive, only illustrative (as I have repeatedly pointed out, yet you inexplicably refuse to acknowledge).
:lol: What did you attempt to illustrate if not the conclusive nature of dialectic logic? Or are you saying that your illustration is just scribbles and isn't about anything?
"Dialectical thinking refers to the ability to view issues from multiple perspectives and to arrive at the most economical and reasonable reconciliation of seemingly contradictory information"
This is akin to what I have said before in that we can have different views of the same thing, but we have to be careful that we aren't confusing our views with what our views are of. In discussing opposing views, we are discussing our views, not what our view is of. To get at what our views are of, we have to find similarities between our views, not differences between our views.
The fact that our views may differ says nothing about what our views are about, but more about ourselves - the viewers.
See how it says "reasonable reconciliation of seemingly contradictory information".
What does it mean by "reasonable" if not "logical" in the classical sense?
What does "seemingly contradictory" mean if not that it appears contradictory but actually isn't once you reconcile the differences using reason (classical logic)? So it seems to me that classical logic is necessary for dialectic logic to work.
Certainly your counter-argument was applicable, and amplified the issue. In doing so, you thereby participated in the process of dialectical reasoning, and gave a strong argument yourself for the use of many-valued (versus dyadic) logic.
This doesn't fit with what you just quoted. You and I have opposing views, that have yet to be reasonably reconciled. So we haven't yet engaged in any dialectic logic because you don't want to reasonably reconcile our opposing views. You just want to go off-topic and say that I don't understand, or that I'm not grasping it, as if dialectic logic has this nature that I'm not grasping and that my view of it is false, not some degree of truth of it. You keep contradicting yourself with every post.
1) according to the rules of logic
his answer is perfectly reasonable
This says that logic is reasonable, not that reason is logical.
If it is logical that if A then B, then it is reasonable to believe B given A.
On the other hand, it is reasonable to believe that particles can exist simultaneously in two different places because scientific experiments have established this as a fact. However this paradoxical result is not logical. In fact, it arguably contradicts all the rules of logic.
If it is logical that if A then B, then it is reasonable to believe B given A.
On the other hand, it is reasonable to believe that particles can exist simultaneously in two different places because scientific experiments have established this as a fact. However this paradoxical result is not logical. In fact, it arguably contradicts all the rules of logic.
Which is to say that it contradicts other reasons that we have for believing that particles can exist simultaneously in two different places. Science says one thing, our senses say another. So, how do we reasonably reconcile these opposing viewpoints to the point where our opposing viewpoints aren't actually in opposition, but were seemingly in opposition prior to any reasonable reconciliation?
Dialectical thinking refers to the ability to view issues from multiple perspectives and to arrive at the most economical and reasonable reconciliation of seemingly contradictory information"
So, how do we reasonably reconcile these opposing viewpoints to the point where our opposing viewpoints aren't actually in opposition, but were seemingly in opposition prior to any reasonable reconciliation?
Yes, that is the challenge to which dialectic aspires.
So, is the "reasonable reconciliation" ...arrived at via correct or incorrect reasoning?
Hmmm. Can you arrive at correct conclusions from incorrect premises? Insofar as the conclusion is viewed as a synthesis of its premises it is not possible to do so. This was Aldous Huxley's construal of the ends-means relationship. One cannot achieve a goal through methods that contradict the goal because the means are constitutive of the end.
However some people do hold true beliefs without being aware of the foundations of those beliefs. Also, it seems quite possible to think completely reasonably, and yet arrive a spurious beliefs. If significant information is missing. The history of science testifies to this.
Which is to say that you didn't have all the relevant reasons to support your conclusion. What seems logical and reasonable actually wasnt - the difference between inductive and deductive logic. One is based on the laws of logic, the other on observation over time.
When reasonable reconciliation fails, is that a failure of the dialectic method, or the failure of one of the participants to fully grasp what is being said and talked about? If the former, then dialectic logic fails to aspire to do what you claim it does. If the latter, then you are advocating that the conclusion fits more with the law of non-contradiction, not some kind of multi-value logic.
Let us start by supposing that there are two opposing opinions on some matter. Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?
"Dialectical thinking refers to the ability to view issues from multiple perspectives and to arrive at the most economical and reasonable reconciliation of seemingly contradictory information"
Looking at this, it seems to me that we've simply been talking past each other this whole time.
You and fdrake agreed that some form of logic is required, but which kind of logic was the question.
My point has basically been that any kind of logic you choose always resolves down to the law of non-contradiction being a necessary component of determining truth because in asking the question the OP is asking, it presumes that there is something that is best to believe and best not to believe, regarding some subject matter. I took "best to believe" to be the "useful to believe", and the truer the map, the more useful the map.
Maybe it should be up to creativesoul to clarify what he meant by "best to believe regarding some subject matter".
The difference between them, ergo, is not logic in the sense one side has used it well and the other side has not; rather the actual source of disputes is the assumptions each side has made in their arguments and assumptions are not a matter of logic. Assumptions are made in the low visibility fog of ignorance and you may just as well flip a coin to decide which ones you want to base your views on for logic is utterly useless in this regard.
Part of being logical is limiting the amount of assumptions to a bare minimum - like things cannot exist and not exist at the same time. There comes a point in where we need to really think about what we say because we've reached a point in the evolution of our language-use where words are being convoluted and loaded with with meanings that contradict how words are used in other instances, which just makes words useless if they can mean their opposites in the same context.
The whole point of condoning the idea that truth can be found in contradictions is to make it easier on the emotional control center of the brain. It is a means of deluding ourselves into thinking that what we believe is true, even when others think the opposite.
we've reached a point in the evolution of our language-use where words are being convoluted and loaded with with meanings that contradict how words are used in other instances, which just makes words useless if they can mean their opposites in the same context.
I think that you have hit on a key idea here. Words are indeed polysemous, and in the very lively sense you allude to here. But it isn't necessarily in the "same context" as it is I think in "overlapping contexts". Whatever our current state of accord might be, the foundational experiences that circumscribe your life-world are necessarily different than mine.
Reply to Pantagruel What I'm referring to is how language-use contradicts how we think about things.
If you find it possible to think about something that both exists and doesn't exist at the same time, or a married bachelor, in your mind that doesn't simply take the form of the scribbles or the sounds in saying it, then the very concept of "thinking" would be different for both of us because I can't think of something that both exists and doesn't exist at the same time, or a married bachelor, except thinking about the words themselves, which are just scribbles or sounds without referring to any conceivable thing.
A contradiction can be a thought of as a complete absence of any overlap.
So, you tell me creativesoul, what other methods are there besides logic to determine what is true?
Looking.
Logic can help us determine how well grounded the opinion is by asking for the reasoning behind the opinion. So, in that way, logic can help us to determine which opinion is more reliable. Not alone though.
Reply to Harry Hindu What I was referring to was the hermenutic circle, where the meaning of anything (word, concept, idea) is determined by the context in which it occurs, while simultaneously the context is composed of such meanings. Then the concept of "thinking" is different for us to the extent that we have different contextual-histories involving the concept of thinking.
What I was referring to was the hermenutic circle, where the meaning of anything (word, concept, idea) is determined by the context in which it occurs, while simultaneously the context is composed of such meanings
Where truth is whatever we say it is, because we said so...
What about the things that exist in their entirety prior to our naming them? What role do they play in this circle?
Then the concept of "thinking" is different for us to the extent that we have different contextual-histories involving the concept of thinking.
Not involving the concept of thinking, but how to communicate the concept of thinking to others. In asking for definitions we are asking where each of our boundaries for such a thing as thinking are - where we might be overlapping and where we aren't, and why, and we are forced to do so via language - symbolism - because we aren't telepathic.
When we find that we have no overlap (a contradiction), we have reached the point where we have to ask ourselves if we are actually talking about the same thing - that our scribbles refer to the same bounded concept in each of our minds. In teasing out each other's usage we can discover conceptual failures of the thing we are talking about. The incorrect usage of words could be the result of not being aware of all the grammatical rules of a language, or it could be a manifestation of the deeper problem of how you see the world.
Think about learning a second language. You have the concepts down, but how to communicate them using new rules is something else.
If telling me that someone is brave and not-brave at the same time isn't an error in word usage, then it must be a conceptual error of what it means to be brave. The boundary of how you define bravery needs to be compared to mine to understand what aspects of reality (how people behave in stressful situations) we are really talking about when using words, like "bravery" - where the boundaries of our concepts that the scribble, "bravery" refers to.
It still stands that people behave in certain ways in stressful situations (fight or flight). It's simply the boundaries we each have established for defining where "bravery" begins and ends among those behaviors. For you, how much flight is too much to then say that the person is no longer brave? What if running allowed you to be brave another day? Bravery presumes the truth that people either run or fight for what they want. How much of each entails "bravery" is for each of us may be subjective, but if we are going to start giving out awards for bravery, then it needs to be defined as awards are not given to the not-brave.
Logic can help us determine how well grounded the opinion is by asking for the reasoning behind the opinion. So, in that way, logic can help us to determine which opinion is more reliable. Not alone though.
If you claim that logic can't do it alone, then you must have a reason to say such a thing - a time when logic didn't provide the best thing to believe and the best thing to believe wasn't something subjective, as logic isn't meant for determining what is subjectively best to believe - what makes you feel good as logic entails understanding that your feelings should have no bearing one determining what is true, and therefore useful.
Part of being logical is limiting the amount of assumptions to a bare minimum - like things cannot exist and not exist at the same time. There comes a point in where we need to really think about what we say because we've reached a point in the evolution of our language-use where words are being convoluted and loaded with with meanings that contradict how words are used in other instances, which just makes words useless if they can mean their opposites in the same context.
The whole point of condoning the idea that truth can be found in contradictions is to make it easier on the emotional control center of the brain. It is a means of deluding ourselves into thinking that what we believe is true, even when others think the opposite.
I've offered at least three already. Address those.
You're not being very helpful. Your behavior indicates that you really aren't interested in what you put out in your OP. You seem to be showing that, at least for you, there is no method for Quoting creativesoul
determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?
I said "Logic". You disagree and claim that something else is needed, yet you can't even name the thing that is needed, or what logic is missing. The funny thing is that you keep using logic to make your case, and no other method.
For those leaning on logic, please remember this...
The sole aim of logic is to preserve truth. The sole aim of logical notation is to take proper account of pre-existing thought, belief, and/or statements thereof, all of which also presuppose truth somewhere along the line.
So, you tell me creativesoul, what other methods are there besides logic to determine what is true?
— Harry Hindu
Looking.
Logic can help us determine how well grounded the opinion is by asking for the reasoning behind the opinion. So, in that way, logic can help us to determine which opinion is more reliable. Not alone though.
If you claim that logic can't do it alone, then you must have a reason to say such a thing
The above are explicitly stated reasons that existed in time prior to your statement above. In your defense, I did not let you know about it at the time. Perhaps you missed that?
If you claim that logic can't do it alone, then you must have a reason to say such a thing - a time when logic didn't provide the best thing to believe and the best thing to believe wasn't something subjective, as logic isn't meant for determining what is subjectively best to believe - what makes you feel good as logic entails understanding that your feelings should have no bearing one determining what is true, and therefore useful.
If you're asking if you can apply logic to ethical questions, then no. There is no such thing as an objective morality. When it is right to open an economy is when individuals feel safe in going out in public, and that can vary from individual to individual. So it seems to me that you are attempting to answer an unanswerable question, or attempting to answer a subjective question as if it had an objective answer.
You're establishing a pattern of arguing with your own imagination... strawmen abound.
I said the above as a result of those paragraphs immediately preceding it... You invoked all sorts of loaded language that I had not used. I suggest copy my words and then give it a bit... think about them as they are written. Do not add to them, for they are very carefully chosen. Trust me.
Logic can help us determine how well grounded the opinion is by asking for the reasoning behind the opinion. So, in that way, logic can help us to determine which opinion is more reliable. Not alone though.
— creativesoul
If you claim that logic can't do it alone, then you must have a reason to say such a thing
One who knows nothing at all about using logic can tell whether or not all sorts of simple statements are true. So, if one such individual already knew 'X', and suddenly found themselves witnessing conflicting opinions in direct conflict to 'X', they could, quite possibly already be, one step forward in determining which of the opinions were reliable and true.
That is not because one was using logic. It's because they already knew 'X' and thus could not believe a statement to the contrary. That's the human condition grounding the 'LNC'.
Logic is not always needed and is never adequate for determining/establishing which conflicting statement is true, if any are.
Some logic is still being used despite the fact that it's little more than an accounting malpractice of certain thought and belief. For example, here's a famous, or perhaps infamous one...
If one follows the logic of Gettier, one will arrive at saying that Smith has belief that he does not have. Smith does not believe that Jones will get the job. Jones getting the job does not make Smith's belief true. It makes it false, for Smith believed that Smith, himself, would get the job.
The so-called 'rules of logical entailment' permit changing the referent of "the man with ten coins in his pocket" from Smith to Jones. In doing so that changes Smith's own belief about who will get the job from himself to Jones. It changes the truth conditions(and meaning) of Smith's belief. The problem of course, is that while Smith believes the statement, that belief includes a rigid designator for "the man with ten coins in his pocket". That phrase - in Smith's own belief - refers to himself, and no other individual.
However, in order to agree with Gettier - regarding Case I - the reader has to also agree that if Jones got the job, Smith's belief would somehoe be true. Clearly, Smith's belief could only be true if he, himself, got the job, because that is what he believed would happen.
What happens in that case is that Gettier loses sight of what Smith's belief is by virtue of talking about it as though it were equivalent to the statement/proposition. It's not. That's a sleight of hand, because...
The statement/proposition has truth conditions aside from, and/or greater than Smith's belief. Smith's belief does not.
The statement, when held in isolation, when looked at as though it is somehow separate from Smith's belief, is true regardless of who the man is, so long as he has ten coins in his pocket.
However, and this is key...
Smith's belief statement would have been true if, and only if, he got the job, because he was the man with ten coins in his pocket that he believed would. He did not. Smith's belief was false.
So...
Logic alone is inadequate for establishing whether or not any particular statement is true. True statements are more reliable than false ones. Determining which opinion is best requires seeking out true ones whenever we can. Logic alone cannot do that.
The above are explicitly stated reasons that existed in time prior to your statement above. In your defense, I did not let you know about it at the time. Perhaps you missed that?
Let us start by supposing that there are two opposing opinions on some matter. Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?
If you have a problem with logic "presupposing some truth", then why did you presuppose that there are two opposing opinions and that there is a best one to believe?
It seems to me that logic doesn't presuppose some truth, you do, and logic is simply used to determine if another truth (the conclusion) can follow from your presupposed truth (the premise).
Name a method of seeking what is best to believe that doesn't presuppose that there is something best to believe - a truth. What else could you have meant by what is "best to believe"?
The fact is that there are other methods that others claim to use to decide what is best to believe and that you seem at a loss of naming. They are faith, revelation, authority and popularity to name a few, but as you might already know, these are logical fallacies.
One who knows nothing at all about using logic can tell whether or not all sorts of simple statements are true. So, if one such individual already knew 'X', and suddenly found themselves witnessing conflicting opinions in direct conflict to 'X', they could, quite possibly already be, one step forward in determining which of the opinions were reliable and true.
How did you come to know X, and in knowing X, are you not saying X is a truth, in which case you used logic to know X?
if someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?
Well I don't think logic can create values. It might be that you have found for yourself a limitation of logic, unless you have an answer to your own question.
But what I was asking, was about the conflict between you and everyone else commenting. And I can see of course that that conflict has not at all been resolved. So I wonder if it is to some extent an externalisation of that internal conflict that you claim is resolved by logic?
But what I was asking, was about the conflict between you and everyone else commenting.
You're mistaken. I have shown that fdrake and Pantragruel agreed with me that logic is indeed necessary. It is only creativesoul that seems to have a problem with this. However I have shown that although creativesoul claims that they disagree, they keep attempting to use logic to make their case. So, while they disagree with their words, they agree with their actions.
And I can see of course that that conflict has not at all been resolved. So I wonder if it is to some extent an externalisation of that internal conflict that you claim is resolved by logic?
You're mistaken. I have shown that fdrake and Pantragruel agreed with me that logic is indeed necessary. It is only creativesoul that seems to have a problem with this. However I have shown that although creativesoul claims that they disagree, they keep attempting to use logic to make their case.
Kindly do not misrepresent my position. I consider that a reportable offence.
Logic is one constituent of reason. Reason most emphatically does NOT reduce to logic. Reason also functions through analogy, intuition, synthesis, etc.
Frankly, this seems to me to be trivially true and trivially evident; I can't imagine why anyone would have trouble with this.
No Harry. As you see, I am not mistaken. @Pantagruel, @creativesoul and myself, (and @fdrake can speak for himself), but three of us are fairly clear in our continued disagreement with you. You cannot "show" that people agree with you and call that a resolution, you have to allow their autonomy and persuade them to agree.
Well I hope,Harry, that you have some fairly clear evidence of my making that confusion, because otherwise it would be a rather cheap rhetorical (not logical) ad hom. But again, it rather looks as though it is you that has the delusion that you have been persuasive when you have not.
I think you might begin to see a pattern for yourself in these interchanges that treats the other's view as pathological whenever it differs from yours, or else as secretly agreeing even when they avowedly disagree. I have always found you to be a frustrating person to try and dialogue with, but here, I feel I am finally getting an insight into what is going on for you. You seem to have a great intolerance for ambiguity and disagreement that comes over to me, and I think to others, as a rather bullying arrogance that probably masks a deal of insecurity.
Kindly do not misrepresent my position. I consider that a reportable offence.
Yet I made the same statement here and you didn't say anything of the sort.
It's only after unenlightened started his bandwagon that you decided to jump on.
As I have shown, our disagreement has never been about whether logic is or isn't useful for determining the question the OP is asking - if there is a best method for determining what opposing opinion is best to believe. It has been on the nature of dialectic logic.
Logic is one constituent of reason. Reason most emphatically does NOT reduce to logic. Reason also functions through analogy, intuition, synthesis, etc.
As has been shown by me, you, fdrake and others, there are various forms of logic just as there are various forms of reason. It would be my bet that each form of logic maps onto each form of reasoning that you want to provide as an example.
I also showed that logical and reasonable are synonyms of each other. Do I seriously need to provide you with the definition of "synonym" as well?
No Harry. As you see, I am not mistaken. Pantagruel, @creativesoul and myself, (and @fdrake can speak for himself), but three of us are fairly clear in our continued disagreement with you. You cannot "show" that people agree with you and call that a resolution, you have to allow their autonomy and persuade them to agree.
Pantagruel has been so inconsistent and intellectually dishonest since their initial interaction with me, I seriously don't know what they think or believe.
Creativesoul's issue is that "logic presupposes truth". If that is a problem then there is a problem with their OP, as it presupposes some truth.
When asked to clarify what they meant by "best to believe" creativesoul responded with: Quoting creativesoul
Change it to which opinions or parts thereof are true.
So, what methodology helps to determine what opinions are true. That would be logic.
The fact that fdrake's post is the long drawn out version of simply saying "Logic" and both creativesoul and Baden gave high marks for the post, then it seems that they all agree as well. The high marks might be for the detailed complexity of their post, or it might be a sign of favoritism being that my post, though much shorter, said the same thing and now is when they want to disagree that logic is necessary. In doing so, they just disagreed with fdrake and contradicted themselves.
As for you, you can keep posting because all it does is help my case and hurt yours. Every time you use logic to show how logic isn't useful, you defeat your own argument and strengthen mine. The fact that we disagree has more to do with your inability to remove your politically partisan glasses. You argue for the sake of arguing. You sound like my 13 year old son sometimes.
I also showed that logical and reasonable are synonyms of each other. Do I seriously need to provide you with the definition of "synonym" as well?
Yes, I saw how you cherry-picked the definition you used also. I surveyed a number of other definitions available online that did NOT offer that simplistic equivocation.
Every time you use logic to show how logic isn't useful, you defeat your own argument and strengthen mine
Do you seriously think I have made an argument against logic? I'd like you to quote me on that or withdraw the claim. If the question is "what do elephants eat?" and unenlightened says 'well they don't eat logic.' that does not amount to a rejection of logic. Again, you don't have an argument of your own, but only the negation of a ridiculous straw man.
I notice you have not attempted to substantiate your previous claim that am confusing logic with delusions, but here you are with another invention. It's rather sad, and a waste of time, because we cannot possibly resolve anything while you are arguing against your own fantasy.
Again and more strongly than ever, the impression is that you are not engaging with what anyone here is saying, but using our posts to conduct an internal argument of your own, presumably against some non-rational aspect of yourself that you find difficult to reconcile yourself to.
if someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?
I see now, it is a cry for help. But alas "Reason is and ought only to to be the slave of the passions." Hume's insight would be a liberation for you if you let it.
So, how's the conflict resolution going, chaps? Is all that truth and logic doing it for you?
:smile:
As has been already mentioned... we first have to agree on what it is that we're talking about. It seems clear to me that there are different senses of the same term being used by different individuals. Namely, the terms "logic" and "truth".
Maybe it should be up to creativesoul to clarify what he meant by "best to believe regarding some subject matter".
When faced with competing valid explanations for what's happened and/or is happening, it is always best to err on the side of the one with the fewest unprovable premisses, the most falsifiable/verifiable claims, and the fewest entities necessary in order for it to have the explanatory power that it does - whatever that may be, and/or amount to.
The fewer the terms necessary for adequate explanation the better. The fewer falsehood, the better. Etc.
That's what's best to believe at all times regarding any and all competing explanations for the same events.
If you have a problem with logic "presupposing some truth", then why did you presuppose that there are two opposing opinions and that there is a best one to believe?
I have no such problem. Logic does presuppose truth. That's not a problem unless we forget to 'keep it in mind', so to speak.
Name a method of seeking what is best to believe that doesn't presuppose that there is something best to believe - a truth.
"A truth"???
:confused:
I do not talk like that. Have not. Would not, unless I was intentionally and deliberately temporarily adopting another's use/sense of the term "truth".
On my view truth IS correspondence with/to what's happened and/or is happening. So, no...
I'm not using the term "truth" as a means for referring to some true thought, belief, and/or statement thereof that is best to believe. I use the term "opinion" or "statement" to pick out opinions that consist of statements. They are true(or not) if and only if they correspond to what's happened and/or is happening.
Which is the best(out of the group) is the question, and more importantly, is there a universally applicable and reliable method for determining which competing explanation(conflicting statements) is true, if any are...
I'm puzzled by the lack of understanding regarding some stuff talked about heretofore. For example...
It's by definition alone that seeking "what's best to believe" when faced with competing explanations of the same events presupposes a remarkable and significant difference between the explanations.
How else could they be competing? Or better... conflicting, because that's the terminology invoked in the OP.
You act as if there's something wrong with presupposing that not all explanations are on equal footing; are well-grounded; are true; etc.
They are not.
That's a factual statement Jack, and the presupposition is a true belief!
Do you seriously think I have made an argument against logic? I'd like you to quote me on that or withdraw the claim. If the question is "what do elephants eat?" and unenlightened says 'well they don't eat logic.' that does not amount to a rejection of logic. , you don't have an argument of your own, but only the negation of a ridiculous straw man.
I know... right?
I have made serious allegations about some logic(paraconsistent, I think is what they call it?), and yet Harry has neglected those altogether. Weird.
It does not follow that I reject logic wholesale, or that I find no value whatsoever in logic and our use of it.
I've spelled out - as clearly and simply as I know how - the limits of logic that I'm aware of(or at least that I think I'm aware of).
The conflicts that matter most are the moral/ethical ones...
What ought we do given the way things are.
First...
Spell out the way things are. Second, discuss what we ought do as a means to effect/affect the change(s) we would like to take place. In politics, such talk of morality and/or being moral/ethical is shunned. There is a collective aversion to the word and/or topic itself. It's an immediate emotional reaction akin to watching the observable effects of someone who says that something is making their skin crawl...
Eeeeww!!!
Such a shame.
In simple terms...
The elected officials' job is to act in ways that increase the quality of everyday American lives whenever it is possible to do so. It is not in the best interest of everyday Americans to be forced to choose between the health of themselves and/or their loved ones and/or economic survival - collapse - during a pandemic that was caused by circumstances completely beyond their own control...
Push 'em out there... make em work. Some will suffer more than others. People will die. The cure cannot be worse than the disease.
Covid19 is not the only disease eating American politics and life from the inside out. It's certainly not the worst. The worst is making the 'novel corona virus' even more deadly than it needs to be.
I was just reading something by Mead that shed some light on this topic for me, as it offers a perspective on specialization and universe of discourse. Certainly, we can see in this thread that different universes of discourse are colliding, in particular one that is extremely logo-centric, versus some others that are less focused, more generalized. If this same topic were discussed by two logo-centric thinkers, presumably the conversation would have assumed a much different path.
Mead's concept of the social mind adds an interesting dimension; my summary is in the thread How did consciousness evolve?
Spell out the way things are. Second, discuss what we ought do as a means to effect/affect the change(s) we would like to take place.
I'd like to flag up the assumption built into your recipe, that I think is exposed in the conflict we have been having, that is always a central concern of my own philosophy - identification.
This 'we' - a lot of the time it can be taken for granted, 'we' agree already who 'we' are.
We are rational, honest and good. We are ready to subsume our personal interests to the collective interest. We cooperate. We are Americans.
_______________________________________________________
I am logical. (identification)
Therefore I have the best possible and only possible equipment for reaching the truth.
Therefore, if you disagree with me, you are illogical, dishonest, or deluded.
Therefore I have already resolved any conflict.
________________________________________________________
You cannot argue with a virus. And you cannot argue with the illogical, the dishonest, or the deluded.
To resolve a conflict with corona, or with Hitler, or whatever we are calling the unreasonable enemy this week, I.S. or Daish, or terrorism, or the Republican Party, you just have to completely destroy them.
Only 'we' can resolve a conflict, because only 'we' have the common ground. So the very first step must be one of generosity, of inclusivity, the admission that the other is not other, and has a point.
So here's the fundamental difficulty. I, as a rational honest and good person, am perfectly willing to admit you also to that status, and then we can talk things over and see where we differ and where we agree and so on. All those practical things that @fdrake listed come into play, sources can be compared etc. But if you are not prepared to admit me to that status as well, then we will be talking at cross purposes at best. Without the equality and mutuality of equality. 'we' does not exist. There is not a common language in which common sense can be expressed and prevail, for all that it may appear that there is.
Yes, I saw how you cherry-picked the definition you used also. I surveyed a number of other definitions available online that did NOT offer that simplistic equivocation.
You mean like how you cherry-picked your source on dialectic logic and how you cherry-picked this one small part of my post to respond to while ignoring the rest?
Actually, I just grew tired of what was obviously a one-sided discussion. unenlightened obviously has more patience than me.
Yet your patience was renewed once unenlightened started bandwagoning.
I grew tired of trying to reason with you long ago, so the discussion became more of a way of showing reasonable readers just how hypocritical you are.
Do you seriously think I have made an argument against logic?
If you don't have a problem with logic being the answer to the question as posed in the OP and then clarified as referring to what is true, then you have just made it more apparent what your actual problem is.
You have a political beef with me, which was actually apparent in when you inserted yourself into the discussion I was having with Pantagruel. You claim that I was being authoritarian, but you know I'm a libertarian. There was nothing authoritative about it. It's an internet post on a philosophy form that can be ignored or argued against. I don't know where you get such ideas other than you just can't stand me because of our political differences so you just want to assemble a bandwagon of hypocrites to pick a fight in a thread that has nothing to do with politics.
When faced with competing valid explanations for what's happened and/or is happening, it is always best to err on the side of the one with the fewest unprovable premisses, the most falsifiable/verifiable claims, and the fewest entities necessary in order for it to have the explanatory power that it does - whatever that may be, and/or amount to.
The fewer the terms necessary for adequate explanation the better. The fewer falsehood, the better. Etc.
That's what's best to believe at all times regarding any and all competing explanations for the same events.
Wow! Thanks, creativesoul. So this means that you like my one-worded reply better than fdrake's post that contains so many entities and presumed truths and all that stuff you just said?
I do not talk like that. Have not. Would not, unless I was intentionally and deliberately temporarily adopting another's use/sense of the term "truth".
Change it to which opinions or parts thereof are true.
So you want to know which method is useful for determining which of two opposing opinions is true. My answer was simply "Logic", which seems to be in line with the type of answer you are looking as described in your previous statement above. It is only when I pointed out your hypocrisy that the shit hit the fan in this thread.
You do realize that those are not mutually exclusive options, right? Logic does. I do. You do, as well.
Think of logic as the rules of a computer program. The rules are applied to input to provide output. The input (premise) is supplied by the user of the program, not the program. The conclusion is the output. If you have a faulty program (faulty logic) then the output will be incorrect.
We write programs to solve problems. Given the right program you can solve your problem.
The conflicts that matter most are the moral/ethical ones...
Without empiricism how would you be aware of happiness and suffering? Logic is necessary make the distinction between the two. Empiricism is necessary to find the causes of suffering and happiness. Logic is necessary to plan paths to avoid suffering and maximize happiness using what you found using your senses. Empiricism and logic are the only means of determining what is true in ethics and outside of ethics. The imperfections lie in our deep, fundamental premises that we start with, the very first input that produces erroneous output that we then use as input for other programs to solve other problems.
So it seems to me that it comes down to what is ethics and morality. Can you solve that problem with the very thing that you are questioning the nature of? Does the same problem apply to logic?
Do you seriously think I have made an argument against logic?
— unenlightened
If you don't have a problem with logic being the answer to the question as posed in the OP and then clarified as referring to what is true, then you have just made it more apparent what your actual problem is.
Fucking hell Harry! Your logic is a fucking joke. You are totally irrational. You make shit up left and right and you cannot follow the simplest argument because you don't even read properly. As I just said, because you have no charity, there is no talking to you at all. There is nothing between us to be resolved, because you are inventing my position and defeating it and I literally have nothing to say in the matter. That is the extent of your authoritarian arrogance. Not only is there no common ground between us and no common language, we are not even on the same planet; you are off in a little world of your own where you are very clever and everyone else is a bit slow. Enjoy.
?unenlightened So are we to take this post as true simply because you said it, or do I get to disagree? How authoritarian.
You get to disagree. But you actually have not disagreed. If you want to disagree, say something different. A question and a random insult is not disagreeing, merely disagreeable. But anyone else can see very easily that it is substantially true because it actually quotes you traducing my argument in order to pretend that I am being political (and you of course are being logical). It's hilarious in fact.
You get to disagree. But you actually have not disagreed. If you want to disagree, say something different. A question and a random insult is not disagreeing, merely disagreeable. But anyone else can see very easily that it is substantially true because it actually quotes you traducing my argument in order to pretend that I am being political (and you of course are being logical). It's hilarious in fact.
It's not a fact that you brought terms like "authoritarian" and "Trump" into a discussion that wasn't about either? Did I not show how my initial post in this thread wasn't authoritarian if someone could have just ignored it? You claim to see what others will see, but I don't see it.
More rhetorical questions. And very silly questions too. Of course in a discussion one brings in terms that were not in the op. Terms like "logic" for example. And no, an authoritarian does not cease to be an authoritarian because people ignore him. So yet again your rhetoric doesn't even disagree with what I have said. You claim logic, but you cannot construct an argument of your own or understand one when presented with it. Make an argument Harry, I dare you. Or link to an argument you have made in this thread. So us this all powerful logic you possess.
if you are not prepared to admit me to that status as well, then we will be talking at cross purposes at best. Without the equality and mutuality of equality. 'we' does not exist.
OK. This intrigued me as it seems like a thread common to many disputes. Can you be more specific about the practices which constitute 'admitting one to the status of an equal'? I'm particularly interested in how you avoid simply enjoying your own echo chamber (by declaring all opposition as simply not treating you as an equal); also in how you treat those who are not your equals - you wouldn't expect to be treated as an equal contributor to a discussion about all topics regardless of your expertise on the matter, so what approach delimits such interactions (again without simply declaring opposition to be non-expert)?
Say we have common agreements about some set of ideas {x} and we can thus discuss the disagreement about the nature of subset {xi, xii}. What's to stop us from simply declaring that we can only have a reasonable discussion with those who agree with us about set {xi} ("those who believe in set {xii} are simply not worth arguing with " ). So we limit our discussion to those who agree about set {xi}, and we happily engage in our disagreement about sub-subset {xia, xib}. Until we decide that those who agree with set {xib} are simply beyond the pale and cannot be reasonably engaged in discussion...
I'm particularly interested in how you avoid simply enjoying your own echo chamber (by declaring all opposition as simply not treating you as an equal); also in how you treat those who are not your equals - you wouldn't expect to be treated as an equal contributor to a discussion about all topics regardless of your expertise on the matter, so what approach delimits such interactions (again without simply declaring opposition to be non-expert)?
Well you treat me as an equal by quoting what I say, and asking me for expansion, justification an so on. I treat you as an equal, hopefully, by taking your comments seriously too. Are you part of my echo chamber? I don't think so, and I don't think any of the other contributors to the thread are either. We treat each other as equals by admitting our fallibility. I could be wrong about this... you might know more than me... let's try and find out.
So we are always in an echo chamber to the degree that we are speaking the same language, and we are both humans of the 21st century. So here we are discussing conflict resolution, and my first suggestion is that we need the common ground at least of a general agreement of the topic at hand. Not that we cannot discuss other things in other threads, but here we are discussing conflict resolution.
Hopefully we can have that much agreement so that we can then disagree about how to resolve conflicts.
Because I am a generalist, most topics here have a contributor who has more expertise than me, but where I think I can sometimes make a serious contribution is at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, and particularly matters of identity. But if I have some expertise, I still treat others as equals by laying things out clearly, and giving explanations and references as appropriate, and by being willing to reconsider in the light of the discussion.
Say we have common agreements about some set of ideas {x} and we can thus discuss the disagreement about the nature of subset {xi, xii}. What's to stop us from simply declaring that we can only have a reasonable discussion with those who agree with us about set {xi} ("those who believe in set {xii} are simply not worth arguing with " ).
Well there's nothing to stop us. But if someone does that habitually, they are probably not going to get on very well in a forum like this. This is a good game, that i like to play, to put my ideas out there and see how they stand up in public. Sometimes I have to go quiet and reconsider. But It is not even a problem. Serious philosophers of mathematics do not want the likes of me dragging their discussions down to a schoolboy level all the time, and should tell me to butt out whenever they want.
Nobody has to debate with another, but if you debate, then debate as equals until you have had enough. Equally entitled to speak, to argue to contribute, not equally knowledgeable or equally right. One can treat a 3-year-old as an equal, it's a matter of respect of the individual, mainly.
In the beginning of this thread, I asked if there was a universally applicable method for knowing which competing explanation is best when we are faced with a set thereof.
fdrake posted a very relevant list things to do pertaining to the OP. Particularly, that post was chock full of common and good advice for helping an audience decide between conflicting opinions. I want to revisit that post and the other one when the right time comes. I've been a bit distracted, and it deserves more attention than I currently have to offer it.
I would go waaaay out on a limb here(insert sarcastic tone) and say that many, if not most, of us would agree that logic is part and parcel to any reasonable methodology for establishing which explanation is best(if there is one that is, for they may very well be on equal footing, depending of course upon the events being explained). Logic is the means we have to follow another's argument. Choosing between conflicting statements sometimes requires understanding a rather nuanced opinion. Logic is of irrevocable importance here as well.
However, logic is inherently unreliable - incapable is better - when used in an attempt to discriminate between true and false statements of belief(which is precisely what all conflicting opinions amount to). Carefully considering which conflicting opinion is best, includes being able to know which is true, if any of them are. All else being equal, a true statement is more valuable, if for no other reason than our already knowing that true beliefs are the most reliable means available to us for successfully navigating the world.
I mean, logic is extremely reliable when used for certain purposes. It's capable of helping us to achieve understanding of another's position - at times. In can help us to understand nuanced arguments. It has all sorts of uses and benefits. It's use can also be a detriment at other times.
One thing is certain:Being able to reliably discriminate between mutually exclusive statements in order to determine which - if either - are true is not one of things that logic can do. The capability to discriminate between true and false statements is always needed for establishing which conflicting statement is best. Logic is inherently inadequate for that part of the task at hand.
The current - real life - conflict is about whether or not common everyday people ought be forced to choose between the health and safety of themselves and their loved ones or inevitable financial collapse - as a result of the pandemic, which is a result not of their own doing...
Sure... some will die, and some will suffer horribly. Many will suffer more than others. Acknowledgement alone is not enough though, especially coming from a world leader. When those who are the least secure, the least privileged, the least fortunate, the least lucky... when those people suffer far more than need be, and it is at 'the hands' of those who have the most, then we have a BIG problem.
The suffering is not all the same. Some will suffer financially and get by just fine. This pandemic may may a mere bump in the road to many... perhaps most. For others however, this pandemic could become the sure path to unnecessary financial and physiological(personal health) ruin. Such is the case when we're in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and far too much economic concern dominates the discussion table and we lose sight of what must be done before we make people go back to work and/or everyday normal life.
Defer all debt, until we have made it as safe as we can. Treat all debt like it's been in a time warp... a wrinkle in time. In the meantime, until we've done the best - everything we can do - to make the world safe from the serious threat of covid19 currently dominating the face of the planet, offer everyone without the necessary means to live the means to do so. This will come at a financial cost. Where will the money come from?
Who cares? We find the money for all sorts of things that are far less important than this. Pressed, it's simple. Figure out what it will take to do this and then take that amount from those who've benefitted the most from the global economy, or take away their ability to ever use it - and the consumers(ahem... victims) - again.
Such is the risk one takes in executing tremendous power over common people, being forced to care about their lives and/or livelihoods. When faced with a ten million dollar dent in a one hundred million dollar personal stash or the suffering and death of all those who could have been saved by using that money...
This pandemic has shown some of the inevitable problems that globalization brought to bear in terms of the sheer power that foreigners have over everyday citizens lives and livelihoods.
It's certainly showing what many find most disconcerting and/or troubling about the pandemic and it's effects/effects.
Well you treat me as an equal by quoting what I say, and asking me for expansion, justification an so on. I treat you as an equal, hopefully, by taking your comments seriously too...
We treat each other as equals by admitting our fallibility. I could be wrong about this... you might know more than me... let's try and find out...
if I have some expertise, I still treat others as equals by laying things out clearly, and giving explanations and references as appropriate, and by being willing to reconsider in the light of the discussion..
Yes, but all parties here have arguably done all those things (except admitting fallibility - I don't see much of that from either party). I'm not supporting Harry's position here (I disagree with it quite strongly in fact) what I'm interested in is that way in which generalities about rules of engagement seem to massively underdetermine. Everyone agrees with them, and yet think their interlocutors are the ones not adhering to the rules, it's always the other party being unreasonable. So 'the rules' do not, in fact, manage to specify anything useful, they're still nebulous enough for everyone to consider themselves to have met the required standard and if we could magically enforce them (by means of self-reporting) it would make virtually no difference at all to the progress of most disputes.
One can treat a 3-year-old as an equal, it's a matter of respect of the individual, mainly.
This may just have been a rhetorical device on your part, but it's so rare to hear this kind of attitude and it's one close to my heart so I wanted to acknowledge it with a "hear, hear!"
Everyone agrees with them, and yet think their interlocutors are the ones not adhering to the rules, it's always the other party being unreasonable. So 'the rules' do not, in fact, manage to specify anything useful,
I wrote a long convoluted answer to you, and then realised that what you say is simply not true. Anyone can be self-critical, and most people are to some extent. some people are more fair-minded than others. If you think it is always the other chap, then you are part of the problem, but by flagging up the danger you illustrate how it can be overcome.
I wrote a long convoluted answer to you, and then realised that what you say is simply not true.
So you're not going to either "[ask] me for expansion, justification an so on", nor "[admit] [y]our fallibility", nor "treat others as equals by laying things out clearly, and giving explanations and references as appropriate", nor "[be] willing to reconsider in the light of the discussion".
Just going to tell me I'm wrong in a single sentence. We're three exchanges in to our disagreement and already you're either breaking your own rules or you've decided that I'm so outside of the pale that I'm not worth engaging with in the spirit of resolving conflict.
I disagree that most people are self critical (effectively so), Whilst I agree that some people are more fair-minded than others, I disagree with the implication that our judgement of this property is sufficiently objective not to just create our own echo chamber. I disagree that simply flagging up the danger is sufficient to illustrate how it can be overcome.
So how do we proceed to resolve those disagreements if you're already at the stage where potentially mutually-respectful in-depth answers are already being discarded in favour of unsupported declarations of what is and is not the case?
I'm not clear on which part you disagree with, perhaps we could start there. All I'm saying is that if everyone agrees with 'the rules' and yet there are still invoked as evidence of unreasonableness then 'the rules' must underdetermine. Are you disagreeing with the fact that most people agree with the rules, or are you disagreeing with the fact that they are regularly invoked as evidence of unreasonableness?
Just going to tell me I'm wrong in a single sentence. We're three exchanges in to our disagreement and already you're either breaking your own rules or you've decided that I'm so outside of the pale that I'm not worth engaging with in the spirit of resolving conflict.
Sorry, I didn't realise we had a conflict going; I thought we were discussing. I'll lay it out in a bit more detail. There is a deal of literature one this stuff - 'cognitive bias'.
What I understand you to be saying is that everyone agrees the rules of engagement, and everyone always thinks they obey them and the other chap is at fault. I agree that the rules are widely agreed, and I agree that there is a widespread tendency to think it is the other chap that has a problem. But not always. The fact that thou and I have acknowledged the tendency is part of our resistance to it.
I disagree that most people are self critical (effectively so), Whilst I agree that some people are more fair-minded than others, I disagree with the implication that our judgement of this property is sufficiently objective not to just create our own echo chamber. I disagree that simply flagging up the danger is sufficient to illustrate how it can be overcome.
This is not a disagreement you have with me, because I agree with you. Flagging up the danger is not sufficient, but it is a sign of awareness of the problem, and the first step. There are no guarantees.
So how do we proceed to resolve those disagreements if you're already at the stage where potentially mutually-respectful in-depth answers are already being discarded in favour of unsupported declarations of what is and is not the case?
We cannot, in such a case. The whole thrust of my argument is that conflicts cannot always be resolved, and it at least takes a willingness to engage and attempt to be fair-minded in the knowledge that it does not come naturally.
But my style in the previous post was predicated on an assumption of agreement that I now see was mistaken. When we are in our echo-chamber, we can pass over what we agree without comment, and focus on where there seems to be a lack of clarity, or disagreement. I like to converse with naivety. You ask a question, and I do not look for a trap, but try to answer. But now you are moving towards at least an accusation of hypocrisy, so perhaps it is time to ask you, if you disagree with my proposals, to bring forth your better ones.
The fact that thou and I have acknowledged the tendency is part of our resistance to it.
Possibly, but if we were resisting it would others not notice this? Yet others accuse us of being the ones who are not abiding by the rules. So the other possibility arises that we are instead using our acknowledgement of this tendency to cut short disagreement simply to preserve our own beliefs. That's what I'm suggesting is a more universally applicable explanation for the phenomena.
Flagging up the danger is not sufficient, but it is a sign of awareness of the problem, and the first step.
See above. It depends heavily whether flagging up the danger is used as a tool to preserve one's own world view, or as tool for self-improvement. As you say, there are no guarantees. I think we only perhaps disagree as to scale not in any absolute sense. I see 'the rules' being far more often used as ready means of dismissing uncomfortable arguments than as the intellectual hygiene @fdrake rightly advises.
I should clarify, I'm talking about conflicting beliefs here, not necessarily the verbal progress of arguments. Prefacing every proposition with "I might be wrong but..." is just a obsequious nod if one never turns out to be.
The whole thrust of my argument is that conflicts cannot always be resolved, and it at least takes a willingness to engage and attempt to be fair-minded in the knowledge that it does not come naturally.
I agree with the first half, but my argument is essentially that the second half underdetermines. No-one thinks they've not not been willing to engage, no one thinks they're not fair-minded, and no one thinks this doesn't result from hard work on their part. But if we are to dismiss people from our discursive environment on the grounds of rule-breaking behaviour, some of them must be wrong about that. Is their wrongness something we can stand on (like the fact that the earth is round), or their wrongness just another disagreement we have, in which case identifying it hasn't helped us resolve the conflict at all.
if you disagree with my proposals, to bring forth your better ones.
Fair enough. I think appeals to vague concepts such as 'fair-mindedness' and 'honest engagement' cause more problems than they solve by distracting from the actual point of dispute to dispute about those terms. They should be avoided. I do think, however, that some of the rules can be very useful - have you supplied support for empirical claims, have you taken care to review alternative hypotheses, have you at least attempted to supply an argument for your position, have you asked for clarification before dismissing other's arguments.
These are all demonstrable in written or otherwise recorded discussions.
By and large though, I think most disputes are settled by demonstration, not by debate. Debate is largely a pass time, not a resolution method.
So you're not going to either "[ask] me for expansion, justification an so on", nor "[admit] [y]our fallibility", nor "treat others as equals by laying things out clearly, and giving explanations and references as appropriate", nor "[be] willing to reconsider in the light of the discussion".
Just going to tell me I'm wrong in a single sentence. We're three exchanges in to our disagreement and already you're either breaking your own rules or you've decided that I'm so outside of the pale that I'm not worth engaging with in the spirit of resolving conflict.
Now you're having the same problem I had, and many others have had with unenlightened.
More rhetorical questions. And very silly questions too. Of course in a discussion one brings in terms that were not in the op. Terms like "logic" for example. And no, an authoritarian does not cease to be an authoritarian because people ignore him. So yet again your rhetoric doesn't even disagree with what I have said. You claim logic, but you cannot construct an argument of your own or understand one when presented with it. Make an argument Harry, I dare you. Or link to an argument you have made in this thread. So us this all powerful logic you possess.
According to your statements in other threads on other topics, I don't need to show anything except express that is how I feel.
I feel logical. You say that I am illogical. That it offensive to me. Maybe I'm a logical person inside an illogical body. You need to address me as I wish, and I wish to be addressed as, "Logical".
I see 'the rules' being far more often used as ready means of dismissing uncomfortable arguments than as the intellectual hygiene fdrake rightly advises.
Happens in arguments all the time. We get hung up on flaws in our opponent's position and for some reason heuristically treat that as confirmation of our own. Critique for its own sake is always valuable, critique to bolster what remains unarticulated can sometimes be stifling or dangerous.
(11) Do not hang back and simply ask questions; if you position yourself always as the critic and the cynic, you can bolster your own beliefs simply by rejecting all others - and it is much easier to show a flaw or falsify than to get a good picture of something or confirm. Do not let the asymmetry in difficulty between justification and falsification be a reason your beliefs never change; all doubt is done within a motivating context - a frame - which can, itself, be more or less occlusive or productive to generating well justified beliefs regarding the matter at hand.
But if we are to dismiss people from our discursive environment on the grounds of rule-breaking behaviour, some of them must be wrong about that. Is their wrongness something we can stand on (like the fact that the earth is round), or their wrongness just another disagreement we have, in which case identifying it hasn't helped us resolve the conflict at all.
If we resolve our conflicts, have we produced an echo chamber?
There's a certain amount of vulnerability involved in discussions that actually change how people think. I mean, we have them with our partners (or, ideally, should be able to); I've realised I've been an arse for reasons that were hitherto that moment beyond my comprehension due to a strong emotional reaction or castigation a lot. A performative demonstration of the effects of my commitments or lack of care. I've had that a lot when seriously studying something; like, reading a book, taking notes, finding secondary literature; but a lot less in debates and discussions.
I think there's quite a lot of value in hearing "you're not playing by my rules", or such frustrations, as an invitation; in the same way we'd (I'd?) treat a partner's anger. That requires rather a lot of emotional and cognitive work to do so though, and even then isn't always worth the effort.
I think appeals to vague concepts such as 'fair-mindedness' and 'honest engagement' cause more problems than they solve by distracting from the actual point of dispute to dispute about those terms. They should be avoided.
You could be right, but I think differently. We haven't resolved that conflict, so neither of us has demonstrated our method successfully.
I feel logical. You say that I am illogical. That it offensive to me.
Yes, I realise that. I'm sorry it offends, and I wish it did not. I don't suppose you want to hear anything much from me, but I wonder if you think that feelings are logical? If I feel attractive, I might have good evidence in the way the girls swoon around me, or I might just be flattering myself. When someone calls me ugly, I'm offended because I feel attractive.
I know I have all sorts of feelings and very easily take offence, and I know that these feelings have a major effect on the way I respond. I think everyone is sensitive like that, everyone is not entirely logical, but also emotional. I think philosophers and scientists forget this at their peril.
You have suggested strongly that one cannot argue against logic except by employing logic. So I accept this, and suggest back to you that you never need to defend logic, since it can never be attacked.
There's a certain amount of vulnerability involved in discussions that actually change how people think. I mean, we have them with our partners (or, ideally, should be able to); I've realised I've been an arse for reasons that were hitherto that moment beyond my comprehension due to a strong emotional reaction or castigation a lot. A performative demonstration of the effects of my commitments or lack of care. I've had that a lot when seriously studying something; like, reading a book, taking notes, finding secondary literature; but a lot less in debates and discussions.
I have had discussions that have changed the way I think less than I would like, but more than once, and more than once someone has told me that a discussion has changed their thinking. So I know that communication is possible, and I know it is difficult, and uncertain.
Vulnerability is exactly the right idea, I think. One discovers that one was wrong, that one was not good, or logical or clever, or honest or whatever virtue one had awarded oneself by way of identity, and one is wounded. A good friend, or a good lover, is not afraid to wound one the way a surgeon does, and a good friend can be trusted to do so when necessary. We fight; we are wounded; and if our egos are well pruned, they will bear more fruit.
(11) Do not hang back and simply ask questions; if you position yourself always as the critic and the cynic, you can bolster your own beliefs simply by rejecting all others - and it is much easier to show a flaw or falsify than to get a good picture of something or confirm.
I've made over 2,000 comments and not started a single thread. I think number 11 is my Achilles heel.
There's a certain amount of vulnerability involved in discussions that actually change how people think.
Yeah, the problem, I think, is no matter what the mode of the discussion, the underlying subject matter is still some conflicting belief about the world and such beliefs are updated reluctantly (to say the least) so there's some lag between the mode of communication (discursive, emotional, logical, persuasive...) and the effect those methods should have. In that time you kind of know you're wrong, but are still looking around for ways to avoid that pain. That's essentially what I mean by suggesting we avoid many of the more vague 'rules of engagement'. They're simply too tempting at that fragile stage. Also your interlocutor knows you should know you're wrong ("that should have worked!") and are sometimes frustrated at the delay. I certainly learnt that one with my children, don't push for the admission of wrongness... just wait.
I think there's quite a lot of value in hearing "you're not playing by my rules", or such frustrations, as an invitation; in the same way we'd (I'd?) treat a partner's anger.
I think I understand what you're saying here, that, like a partner's anger, we can interpret the expression as "I'm not having that kind of discussion" like realising that when your partner is having a discussion about your not having done the dishes, it is not appropriate to ask for supporting evidence (learnt that one the hard way).
We haven't resolved that conflict, so neither of us has demonstrated our method successfully.
When someone keeps contradicting themselves when asked to clarify their beliefs, how are we suppose to know whether we are disagreeing or agreeing on anything?
It seems like the first step would be to clarify each of our beliefs in such a way that the other side can determine whether we are actually agreeing or disagreeing.
When someone keeps contradicting themselves when asked to clarify their beliefs, how are we suppose to know whether we are disagreeing or agreeing on anything?
It seems like the first step would be to clarify each of our beliefs in such a way that the other side can determine whether we are actually agreeing or disagreeing.
Yes indeed. One of my very early suggestions was that to resolve a conflict we have to establish the conflict. Quoting unenlightened
if one is unable to begin this dialogue with an equality and an engagement that will look for first common ground and then for the detail of disagreement, then it all becomes impossible.
If I am not to be trusted in what I say, no amount of logic can resolve that. Our disagreement cannot even be expressed.
This is why I talk about wooly concepts like trust and respect. I cannot find a better way to express that necessary intention to find out what the other chap is saying, rather than to prove him wrong or contradictory regardless.
If we discuss combatively, but also cooperatively, then no one loses because we are all on the side of truth and understanding. To be deprived of one's error is a privilege even if at times it is a painful and laborious process. And if we are not on all on the side of truth and understanding, then there is zero point in our talking at all. But now I am actually somewhat frightened, because I have been persuaded back to this discussion, and find myself saying the same things again and at least half expecting another four pages of the same back again.
hat's essentially what I mean by suggesting we avoid many of the more vague 'rules of engagement'. They're simply too tempting at that fragile stage. Also your interlocutor knows you should know you're wrong ("that should have worked!") and are sometimes frustrated at the delay. I certainly learnt that one with my children, don't push for the admission of wrongness... just wait.
The thing about the interlocutor knowing they're wrong; I think that applies mostly when two people have implicitly accepted the same background rules for the discussion (or part of the discussion). If two people involved in the discussion disagree on what the matter they're discussing is, or what's especially significant about it (cognitively/factually or emotionally), in my experience I and my hypothetical interlocutors find that place of mutual understanding, even if the disagreement persists, much harder to reach.
But I think what you're saying's otherwise very true. To check if we're on the same page, I think a paradigmatic instance of it that we see on the internet a lot is those one line fisking posts that just say the name of a fallacy. It's little more than gainsaying with Latin spices.
I think I understand what you're saying here, that, like a partner's anger, we can interpret the expression as "I'm not having that kind of discussion" like realising that when your partner is having a discussion about your not having done the dishes, it is not appropriate to ask for supporting evidence (learnt that one the hard way).
I actually had a similar conversation with an ex!
I guess maybe the intersection of all these things is the problem: what strategies can be used to ensure that people cultivate being responsive to their interlocutors? Maybe it's a question of intellectual sensitivity; how can I make my thought formation process sensitive and relevant to yours, and vice versa?
I'm compelled to make a better attempt at building a bridge of mutual understanding.
Please know that my participation here is all about one thing... Attempting to figure out if it is actually possible to acquire knowledge of how to best discriminate between competing/conflicting opinions.
Given that the thread is about conflict resolution, and you and I have not been communicating our thoughts as clearly and concisely as I think we are both capable of doing, I'm making this deliberate atttempt because we may not be as far apart as it may seem. As Banno tends to say, and rightly so, we agree on far more than we disagree.
I'm thinking of this post as an attempt at a fresh start built upon pre-existing agreement(s). Let's bring some into view. That seems as good a path as any. So...
Here's a good list of proposed agreements to form a basis for better discussion.
1 Some conflicts get resolved. 2 Sometimes the audience members are uncertain which side to believe(assuming two different opinions/narratives/explanations for the same events).
Do we agree that the two statements above report upon two remarkably different situations, consisting of remarkably different things?
:smile:
P.S.
The irony of my misspelling the word "attempt" during an attempt...
If two people involved in the discussion disagree on what the matter they're discussing is, or what's especially significant about it (cognitively/factually or emotionally), in my experience I and my hypothetical interlocutors find that place of mutual understanding, even if the disagreement persists, much harder to reach.
Yes, I think this is the case too, but (stop me if I'm getting too psychoanalytical) there's an advantage there - in terms of game theory - to a person wishing to avoid cognitive dissonance but with low confidence in their belief. If they clearly present the nature of the disagreement and the terms of the argument (the mode it will take) then if they eventually have to admit they were wrong, they know the other person will know that earlier than they themselves would feel comfortable changing their belief. Muddy the waters regarding terms of the discussion and you buy yourself time to change a belief if necessary without it being clear to all that you're wrong.
I think a paradigmatic instance of it that we see on the internet a lot is those one line fisking posts that just say the name of a fallacy. It's little more than gainsaying with Latin spices.
Yeah, I hate that, like we're playing 'name that fallacy'. The other is 'you obviously haven't read...' as if merely reading a text imparts automatic agreement.
what strategies can be used to ensure that people cultivate being responsive to their interlocutors?
This is key, and it's worth emphasising that it's far from natural so it will take work. We've created a game here 'having a discussion' which is made up out of a set of tools 'using language' which were - according to popular theory - not even created for the job.
I think your initial posts covered a lot of good ground that is measurable and can act in a self-regulatory way, for those who actually care in the first place. But I think principles like charitable interpretation, honest representation and a collective agreement about the goal are also really important, it's just that they're too open to abuse (anyone can claim 'foul' on such broad concepts for nefarious advantage, like tripping in the box to get a free kick), and I'm including inadvertent abuse to avoid the pain of cognitive dissonance here, so I'm talking about self-regulation, not regulation of others. So I think any solution will involve pinning down ways of more clearly defining these nebulous concepts.
to find out what the other chap is saying, rather than to prove him wrong or contradictory regardless.
This we can recognise. How much of one's interaction is composed of questions? How many times the word 'wrong' has been used? How frequent a reference to what is 'true'? These could act as useful triggers, I think.
if one is unable to begin this dialogue with an equality and an engagement that will look for first common ground and then for the detail of disagreement, then it all becomes impossible.
Exactly. The common ground is logic. If you refuse to use it, then there is no point in us having a discussion as I would never be able to understand your position to assert that I either agree or disagree.
Accusing people of being authoritarian simply for making assertions, which we all do on this forum, is an ad hom, hypocritical, and isn't a good way to start things off when attempting to find some common ground.
That is the point here, that with you, creativesoul and Pantagruel, I haven't been able to make heads or tails of your arguments because they end up contradicting something else you said before. So, as it stands right now, I can't tell you whether any of us agree or disagree on anything we've "discussed".
I'm thinking of this post as an attempt at a fresh start built upon pre-existing agreement(s). Let's bring some into view. That seems as good a path as any. So...
The fresh start would be in addressing how we can disagree or agree on anything if what was said before contradicts what is said now?
If you can't be consistent in your explanations of your own beliefs, then it seems that you are unable to identify your actual beliefs.
Here's a good list of proposed agreements to form a basis for better discussion.
1 Some conflicts get resolved.
2 Sometimes the audience members are uncertain which side to believe(assuming two different opinions/narratives/explanations for the same events).
Do we agree that the two statements above report upon two remarkably different situations, consisting of remarkably different things?
Sure. But in (2) how do we know that the two different opinions are about the same thing?
Yeah, I hate that, like we're playing 'name that fallacy'.
You might think it a game, but I don't consider making logical fallacies a game. If you consider a philosophical discussion a game, then that is probably a good indicator that we aren't going to find any common ground.
If it makes you hate less, then use the term category error, as virtually any logical fallacy is a category error.
I don't think I want to go round again, even if you do.
If you read the reply, the first word was, "Exactly.", as in "I agree".
We both agreed that in order to determine whether or not we actually agree or disagree, we'd have to establish an understanding of each other's position. We would ask each other questions about each other's beliefs to see how it fits in with the rest of what we know (integration). If those questions receive contradictory answers to what they asserted before, then how can one come to understand such a belief?
So we do agree on some things. It is only when I say a particular five-letter word, "logic", that your panties get all tied into a knot.
Logic is a field of philosophy that sets the rules for correct thinking in all the other fields of philosophy. Why would you not want to integrate the conclusions from all fields into a consistent whole?
The interesting thing to note here is that when we agreed, we were both being logical. Neither of us contradicted ourselves in understanding the distinction between agreeing and disagreeing, or that what were both talking about was the same thing - the process of determining whether or not an agreement or disagreement is taking place.
Here's a good list of proposed agreements to form a basis for better discussion.
1 Some conflicts get resolved.
2 Sometimes the audience members are uncertain which side to believe(assuming two different opinions/narratives/explanations for the same events).
Do we agree that the two statements above report upon two remarkably different situations, consisting of remarkably different things?
— creativesoul
Sure. But in (2) how do we know that the two different opinions are about the same thing?
I'm going to go ahead answer this question myself since no one has been able to answer it without contradicting themselves.
The answer is that in disagreeing we aren't talking about the same thing - ever. We may use the same scribbles or sounds to refer to something, but it's not the same thing in each of our heads when we disagree. The implication here is that one is right and the other is wrong, or that we are both wrong and still not talking about the same thing in each other's mind.
Now the question is, how do we determine which is right and which is wrong, or if they are both wrong and there is some other option that is "best to believe"? Which statement is closest to a 1 to 1 correspondence with the actual state of affairs of what is best to believe? My answer, and several other answers in different forms but were all referring to the same thing, was "logic".
At least that is what I thought, because I thought that what fdrake and I were referring to was the same thing - logic, and I was confused when I received a contradictory response from creativesoul. They would have never contradicted themselves if they simply let my assertion stand without any rebuttal.
Yes, I think this is the case too, but (stop me if I'm getting too psychoanalytical) there's an advantage there - in terms of game theory - to a person wishing to avoid cognitive dissonance but with low confidence in their belief. If they clearly present the nature of the disagreement and the terms of the argument (the mode it will take) then if they eventually have to admit they were wrong, they know the other person will know that earlier than they themselves would feel comfortable changing their belief. Muddy the waters regarding terms of the discussion and you buy yourself time to change a belief if necessary without it being clear to all that you're wrong.
Vulnerability is exactly the right idea, I think. One discovers that one was wrong, that one was not good, or logical or clever, or honest or whatever virtue one had awarded oneself by way of identity, and one is wounded. A good friend, or a good lover, is not afraid to wound one the way a surgeon does, and a good friend can be trusted to do so when necessary. We fight; we are wounded; and if our egos are well pruned, they will bear more fruit.
So these two threads of the discussion strike me as two sides of the same thing. I don't know what they're two sides of, but I'm very convinced they're the same thing.
Side (1): Setting out one's claims defeasibly; paying attention to what would make you wrong, not just what makes you right. Writing so that the link between your claims and your motivation for having them is clear.
Side (2): Putting one's beliefs and identity at risk when arguing. Being not just open to, but enthusiastically pursuing, sites of tension in one's beliefs and identity as revealed in communication with the other.
It strikes me that writing in manner (1) requires willingness to engage in manner (2).
It also strikes me that it's easier to cultivate side (1) habits than side (2) habits. I base that on there being some general principles which can be written down, and some heuristics, like:
Being able to state what it would take for me to be wrong.
Being able to describe the connections between my claims in a somewhat neutral manner; why does x follow from y, and in what way does it follow?
Being able to describe the motivating context for my engagement.
that are relatively easy to understand in the context of side (1).
But, that "being able to describe the motivating context for my engagement" looks to me to be bleeding into side (2), often when I post on here I'm bringing baggage; intellectual and emotional; to the discussion. The things that motivate me to respond aren't just intellectual; they're aesthetic and emotional. Like when I correct someone who's doing mathematics really badly but being obstinate about their correctness; it strikes me as wrong cognitively, but also it's somehow a violation of my identity.
I speculate that there are motivational/emotional analogues of hinge propositions; statements and motivating contexts which are archetypical of my identity, and my attachment to those statements is very strong and very hard to revise. A hinge proposition is (roughly) an epistemic device that must be believed in order to have a discussion, but phrased as a statement; like "There is a world outside my mind". It is not something which can be doubted without doing considerable violence to how one makes sense of the world.
It seems to me that there are analogues to that regarding my identity insofar as it intersects with intellectual commitments; there are things I must believe to make sense of the world in the way I do. Someone who appears not to operate under those assumptions will simultaneously be judged by me to be wrong intellectually, but I'll condemn the belief to distance myself from it to save myself doing emotional work or to otherwise preserve my belief structure as it is.
That condemning might occur when a core belief; something strongly connected in my network of beliefs; is being challenged. Challenged in the manner that if I were to accept it, I wouldn't just have to change my mind or admit that I believed something falsely, I would also have to change how I think and thus what I believe about myself.
You do realize that you quoted me and referred to my statements first, which warrants a reply with the specific statements quoted. So, you're saying that you can quote me but I can't quote you?
In doing 2) you are necessarily doing 1). If you question your own beliefs before exposing them to external criticism, then you are essentially putting your identity at risk, as you would be in the process of questioning what you actually believe is the right thing to believe.
I questioning the other's beliefs, I was asking the same questions they should have asked themselves before presenting them to me. If their answers contradict what they said before, then it stands that they would have a contradictory identity.
Reply to unenlightened It seems that I can never oblige you in any discussion we've had. So I am therefore asking you to please stop quoting me, because it is always an ad hom, emotionally and politically charged response.
That certainly overlaps with what I'm saying. There are two aspects to conflict resolution which interest me, one is the actual methods which can be used to resolve conflict (or get to a satisfactory understanding that the conflict cannot be resolved), the other is the psychology of being in conflict and of undertaking some attempt to explore it (I don't say 'resolve it' here because I think many of the activities people undertake within conflict have nothing to do with resolving them).
The two aspects link together for me when considering the abuse of the methods determined in the first aspect to satisfy tangential or occult objectives arising from the second aspect. We cannot derive useful methods of conflict resolution without acknowledging the extent to which our choices can be thus abused.
when I correct someone who's doing mathematics really badly but being obstinate about their correctness; it strikes me as wrong cognitively, but also it's somehow a violation of my identity.
I think that really captures one of the most important issues within the second aspect I mentioned above. At some point during a disagreement (even a trivial hobbyist discussion) you might stumble across a contrary position to a belief which forms a central node of your Quinean Web of Beliefs. We feel compelled to quash it.
As you know I tend to see things through a computational lens, so that's how this is going to be phrased. I think we're bound, to a certain extent, to take cognitively efficient paths to modelling and re-modelling. When faced with the potential for a fundamental aspect of our thinking to require adjustment, it's simply more efficient to attempt to quash it (and only change if we absolutely fail to do so) than it is to explore it. The number of threads which would need to be hypothetically cut to really 'see' where the other person is coming from is simply too much work, we often just don't have the bandwidth.
I think people underestimate the consequences of the fact that all our concepts, beliefs etc are actually processes. It's not that we hold a concept that 'A leads to B' somewhere in our mind and so on perceiving A we apply the concept to some other cortex and make B. The having of the concept 'A leads to B' just is the fact that perceiving A makes B. This is very efficient, but makes it quite hard to really see how others might see some issue if the matter is quite fundamental.
So these two threads of the discussion strike me as two sides of the same thing. I don't know what they're two sides of, but I'm very convinced they're the same thing.
Elsewhere, I have claimed that community is made by communication, and communication is a movement of truth. But I'm not sure if I am understanding you or @Isaac. I wonder if it will help if I describe an ideal:
The end point to be ensvisaged, would be for us to reach the state of agreement that might be called 'being of one mind', about whatever our topic is. So if there is an action that follows, we cooperate to act. And this agreement cannot be a victory for one or a defeat for another, because they are not in agreement.
I happen to have mentioned this ideal, because it just seemed to come up for examination, but it is not my possession, and it does not possess me. Perhaps it will inform some state of mind that some people might share at some point, or maybe not. But if I am still counting how many of my ideas reach the final draft, compared to how many of yours, then we are not really resolving a conflict or properly communicating. So from this perspective, Game Theory is the structure of non-communication. It is that to which solitary silence is preferable.
The end point to be ensvisaged, would be for us to reach the state of agreement that might be called 'being of one mind', about whatever our topic is.
I'm not sure if you perhaps had this distinction in mind anyway, but this ideal surely only applies to quite a narrow (albeit important) range of differences. I couldn't care less if, after a discussion (disagreement) about the place of music in human culture, we remained entirely at odds. My goal in having such a discussion would be to try and understand why you think what you do. My method might be to poke at your beliefs with a stick to see what happens. I might even find myself disbelieving your own answers, if I've good cause, but reaching agreement wouldn't be a goal.
If we're discussing how best to help the homeless, however, I really want us to agree. I want either for you to adopt my methods or for me to find out from you that my methods were flawed and so arrive at better ones.
The purpose of entering into the conflict makes a huge difference to what constitutes a satisfactory outcome. Which I think is where much of the disingenuity we experience lies. Topics which really shouldn't have any need for unanimous agreement at any point, that should be quite satisfying without ever reaching that place, end up being approached as if they were the kind where agreement mattered.
I speculate this happens, in part, as @fdrake says. A discussion about something which should be innocuous stumbles upon something fundamental to one's character and all of a sudden entertaining an alternative perspective becomes hard work, dangerous even.
Of course it also happens for far more mundane reasons. Mostly to do with dishonesty about the purpose of the discussion. One party hiding the fact that they really wanted to play the role of teacher, or that they're deliberately trying to lead to some more important disagreement (usually about God).
Absent of either of these cases discussions about unimportant matters should be like cricket, we can just walk away at the end and say "good game".
If we're discussing how best to help the homeless, however, I really want us to agree.
We might not agree about what is and isn't important. I'm not clear what the distinction is for another.
__________________________________________________________ Quoting Isaac
I want either for you to adopt my methods or for me to find out from you that my methods were flawed and so arrive at better ones.
Ok, I'll adopt your methods.
_____________________________________________________________
I put it to you that this would not be at all a satisfactory discussion. You see the way I wish you would have put it is that you don't care whose method, all you care about is to find the best method. Because then you want to hear my method, and you want me to hear yours, and you want to hear what I think about your method and what I think about what you think about my method. That's a discussion.
Here's a good list of proposed agreements to form a basis for better discussion.
1 Some conflicts get resolved.
2 Sometimes the audience members are uncertain which side to believe(assuming two different opinions/narratives/explanations for the same events).
Do we agree that the two statements above report upon two remarkably different situations, consisting of remarkably different things?
— creativesoul
Sure.
Perfect!
Do we agree that there are some conflicts involving people who will not change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with?
You see the way I wish you would have put it is that you don't care whose method, all you care about is to find the best method.
Spot on. No need to openly admit fallibility in a discussion where everyone already knows it, and shows that much as well... with comments precisely like you've wished for above.
So these two threads of the discussion strike me as two sides of the same thing. I don't know what they're two sides of, but I'm very convinced they're the same thing.
Side (1): Setting out one's claims defeasibly; paying attention to what would make you wrong, not just what makes you right. Writing so that the link between your claims and your motivation for having them is clear.
Side (2): Putting one's beliefs and identity at risk when arguing. Being not just open to, but enthusiastically pursuing, sites of tension in one's beliefs and identity as revealed in communication with the other.
It strikes me that writing in manner (1) requires willingness to engage in manner (2).
It also strikes me that it's easier to cultivate side (1) habits than side (2) habits. I base that on there being some general principles which can be written down, and some heuristics, like:
Being able to state what it would take for me to be wrong.
Being able to describe the connections between my claims in a somewhat neutral manner; why does x follow from y, and in what way does it follow?
Being able to describe the motivating context for my engagement.
that are relatively easy to understand in the context of side (1).
But, that "being able to describe the motivating context for my engagement" looks to me to be bleeding into side (2), often when I post on here I'm bringing baggage; intellectual and emotional; to the discussion. The things that motivate me to respond aren't just intellectual; they're aesthetic and emotional. Like when I correct someone who's doing mathematics really badly but being obstinate about their correctness; it strikes me as wrong cognitively, but also it's somehow a violation of my identity.
I speculate that there are motivational/emotional analogues of hinge propositions; statements and motivating contexts which are archetypical of my identity, and my attachment to those statements is very strong and very hard to revise. A hinge proposition is (roughly) an epistemic device that must be believed in order to have a discussion, but phrased as a statement; like "There is a world outside my mind". It is not something which can be doubted without doing considerable violence to how one makes sense of the world.
It seems to me that there are analogues to that regarding my identity insofar as it intersects with intellectual commitments; there are things I must believe to make sense of the world in the way I do. Someone who appears not to operate under those assumptions will simultaneously be judged by me to be wrong intellectually, but I'll condemn the belief to distance myself from it to save myself doing emotional work or to otherwise preserve my belief structure as it is.
That condemning might occur when a core belief; something strongly connected in my network of beliefs; is being challenged. Challenged in the manner that if I were to accept it, I wouldn't just have to change my mind or admit that I believed something falsely, I would also have to change how I think and thus what I believe about myself.
I wanted to have a bit of discussion about some concern(s) that you've repeatedly expressed, but I'd like to take them one at a time.
Ok?
First up...
You seem to believe that because I use logic as a means to deny that logic is capable of discriminating between true and false statements, that that is somehow a problem for my denying that logic alone is enough to reliably determine and/or establish which competing/conflicting opinion is true.
I'm not sure what problem you think that that amounts to.
Could you explain how it is a problem that I use logic while denying it's ability to discriminate between true and false statements?
I wish you would have put it is that you don't care whose method, all you care about is to find the best method. Because then you want to hear my method, and you want me to hear yours, and you want to hear what I think about your method and what I think about what you think about my method. That's a discussion.
What happened to charitable interpretation? There are (at least) two methods in a conflict about how to help the homeless (my example). Your method and my method. If it is a conflict between me and you, then one of those methods can be identified with the label 'yours' and the other with the label 'mine'. It's just a linguistic device used in a single sentence. I could have called them method 'A' and method 'B', but I didn't, I chose the more conventional 'yours' and 'mine'. The post before you said you didn't understand my position, next post apparently you understand it so well that on the basis of a single sentence you find yourself so convinced you understand it that you're faced with no more charitable alternative than to conclude I'm an egotist so obsessed with my own thoughts that I don't even want to hear those of my interlocutors.
I let it go the first time you went on about honest enquiry and then simply declared everything I'd said to be untrue without even so much a sentence to explain why. Now you've spent another few posts writing about "concepts like trust and respect." and then accuse me of not even wanting to hear my interlocutor's arguments on the basis of a single ambiguous choice of expression. Where's the ""[asking] me for expansion, justification an so on" - again. Where's the "did you mean...?", or even the more charitable "I'm sure you didn't mean..."
These are not rhetorical questions, I seriously want to know what was going on in your head when you read that one sentence "I want either for you to adopt my methods or for me to find out from you that my methods were flawed and so arrive at better ones" and despite all our talk about respect, trust and charitable interpretation, you decide you're left with no choice but to presume it means I've no interest in hearing anyone else's opinion?
All premisses are statements/propositions/claims/assertions/expressions of thought and belief. Henceforth, I'll just use the term "statements".
All logic consists(in part) of statements.
All thought and belief presupposes correspondence with/to fact/reality by virtue of consisting entirely of correlations.
All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content.
So...
Logic presupposes truth.
When we use logic, we presuppose truth by virtue of treating premisses as if they are true, because that's precisely how one follows an argument. That's of the utmost importance here, because judiciously discriminating between conflicting opinions is an exercise of discriminating between mutually exclusive statements as well asidentifying the thought and belief that they are grounded upon, and doing that requires knowing the rules of correct inference(logic).
Fast forward to a pair of conflicting opinions about what's happened and/or is happening. When and if the pair of opinions can be adequately simplified to a pair of mutually exclusive statements, much becomes clear, even if only by virtue of coincidence. I think this is close to focusing upon "hinge propositions" or "core belief", in the sense that drake used earlier.
I wish you would have put it is that you don't care whose method, all you care about is to find the best method. Because then you want to hear my method, and you want me to hear yours, and you want to hear what I think about your method and what I think about what you think about my method. That's a discussion.
— unenlightened
What happened to charitable interpretation? There are (at least) two methods in a conflict about how to help the homeless (my example). Your method and my method. If it is a conflict between me and you, then one of those methods can be identified with the label 'yours' and the other with the label 'mine'. It's just a linguistic device used in a single sentence. I could have called them method 'A' and method 'B', but I didn't, I chose the more conventional 'yours' and 'mine'. The post before you said you didn't understand my position, next post apparently you understand it so well that on the basis of a single sentence you find yourself so convinced you understand it that you're faced with no more charitable alternative than to conclude I'm an egotist so obsessed with my own thoughts that I don't even want to hear those of my interlocutors.
While that could be what someone means when saying precisely what Un said... I can assure you that that's not an accurate report of Un's thought and belief on the matter. Those are certainly NOT the words he chose to use. That's only one of many different things that can be derived from those same words. I suggest you imagine a few other possibilities.
Report of what's happened and/or is currently happening...
Some guys poke and prod others and/or their beliefs in a deliberate intentional I'm-just-being-a-dick fashion, which is devaluing another. It's best for everyone to see that those guys are just dicks. The world is chock full of 'em.
Common sense...
Such people have no business wielding tremendous power over anyone they care so little about...
I can assure you that that's not an accurate report of Un's thought and belief on the matter.
Good.
But he used the contingent "I wish you would have..." along with the conditional "Because then you want to hear my method, and you want me to hear yours, and you want to hear what I think about your method and what I think about what you think about my method.". If I've missed some rhetorical use of the contingent/conditional paring that doesn't imply that in the absence of the condition, that upon which it is conditional does not occur, then I will be glad to be shown ways in which this new device is employed and what it means.
Additionally, if he's not implying that I've no desire to hear another's method, or hear what they think about mine, then I'm not sure what the conditional is trying to say. If that's the state of affairs as things stand, then what does the 'If...Because then...' do?
If I say "I wish you had said X because if you had then it would have meant Y", I can only think of either one of two cases. Either Y is currently not the case and only would become the case contingent on my saying X, or Y is contingent on X but not exclusively so, Y may be the case anyway - in which case the statement seems to have no purpose, as Y may or may not be the case regardless of my saying X.
Many people have been encouraged to feel hostile and angry about the economic shutdown and other consequence of covid19 such as the social distancing measures. So, there is a conflict between what the foremost experts in the field of infectious disease demand must be done in order to stop the novel corona virus, and the feelings that much of the American public have. Those negative, angry, and hostile feelings are the result of correlations drawn between the way they've come to terms with what's happened and what's happening(which includes not only the virus stuff, but also their own terrible feelings of uncertainty/discontent).
The idea of being mad about being forced to follow social distancing guidelines was encouraged and perpetuated. That was and is a horrible public disservice. It remains in place, and is as active as ever. Growing, in fact.
A diversion.
The focus has changed from Trump's undeniable incompetence and other real problems regarding the pandemic that are not Trump's fault, to a broad-based sense of fear that one's liberty and freedom have been taken away by virtue of being required to do what it takes to stop the spread of covid19.
I can assure you that that's not an accurate report of Un's thought and belief on the matter.
— creativesoul
Good.
But he used the contingent "I wish you would have..." along with the conditional "Because then you want to hear my method, and you want me to hear yours, and you want to hear what I think about your method and what I think about what you think about my method.".
I'm not saying that your interpretation would be mistaken regardless of who used those terms. I'm saying it is mistaken because not everyone uses them like that.
Had you said what was suggested, I too would have been a bit more convinced that who proposed the method did not matter, and that you were - in fact - interested in considering another method. It also would indicate that you were open to the idea that your own method could be improved, or that you were not all that certain that you have the best method. All of this is assuming the sincerity of the speaker. That's reading charitably.
Of course, in another vein of thought...
If one is certain that they have the best method, they will use it when it's appropriate to do so. Method is about attaining a goal, achieving something of worth, pursuing an end, etc.
The method here, as it pertains to the OP, is how to go about deciding which of two differing opinions is best. I think hearing them out(at least until they are found sorely lacking) is crucial in any such comparative analysis.
Don't you?
In that... Un not only hit the nail squarely on the head, he drove it home...
If I say "I wish you had said X because if you had then it would have meant Y", I can only think of either one of two cases. Either Y is currently not the case and only would become the case contingent on my saying X, or Y is contingent on X but not exclusively so, Y may be the case anyway - in which case the statement seems to have no purpose, as Y may or may not be the case regardless of my saying X.
Yeah. I can see that. However, it could also be the case that the reader/listener was looking for some confirmation that you were willing to do those things, but were uncertain based upon what you did say...
These are not rhetorical questions, I seriously want to know what was going on in your head when you read that one sentence "I want either for you to adopt my methods or for me to find out from you that my methods were flawed and so arrive at better ones" and despite all our talk about respect, trust and charitable interpretation, you decide you're left with no choice but to presume it means I've no interest in hearing anyone else's opinion?
I seem to be very good at upsetting people with my proposals in this thread, including myself. This is not surprising to me. I wrote:
this agreement cannot be a victory for one or a defeat for another, because they are not in agreement.
And when you replied in terms that I was at pains to rule out, it would not be charitable to assume you understood and agreed. This is my first duty as I see it; to make as clear as I can that every difficulty in discussion has its root in identification of the participants with their views. And whenever I point out that this is what is happening in the very discussion we are having, I get another demonstration of the truth of it from myself or someone else.
So let me try and piss everyone off at once with a proper pontification:
The only pain that can be felt in a discussion is that of a bruised ego, and there is no place for ego in a discussion.
Had you said what was suggested, I too would have been a bit more convinced that who proposed the method did not matter, and that you were - in fact - interested in considering another method.
Indeed, but charitable interpretation does not require that one use the language most likely to convince the listener of their positive intent. It is a duty on the reader to assume positive intent unless convinced otherwise, not a duty on the writer to do all in their power to prove positive intent.
it could also be the case that the reader/listener was looking for some confirmation that you were willing to do those things, but were uncertain based upon what you did say
Possible (although a strange way of going about it - what's wrong with "did you mean...? "), but my point is rather that there is no prior cause to even question this, why would anyone not simply presume such willingness of their interlocutors until overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary?
And when you replied in terms that I was at pains to rule out, it would not be charitable to assume you understood and agreed.
I think you and I have very different ideas of what 'charitable' means. To me it refers to seeking the most agreeable interpretation of someone's expressions. As such, the most charitable interpretation would be that I did agree with you unless my choice of words indicated overwhelmingly to the contrary. Simply labelling the two ideas under discussion 'mine' and 'yours', is not, by any stretch, overwhelming evidence that I disagree with your notion that "this agreement cannot be a victory for one or a defeat for another, because they are not in agreement." I can't even see how it could be interpreted that way, but am open to the possibility. What is absolutely beyond the pale is the idea that my choice of identifier provides overwhelming evidence that I disagree with your notion about victory and defeat in conflict resolution.
I think you and I have very different ideas of what 'charitable' means. To me it refers to seeking the most agreeable interpretation of someone's expressions.
Yes. It means something very different to me. So I would never assume within the limits of ambiguity, that you said whatever is most agreeable to me, but rather I make the interpretation that maximises your clarity and consistency. Thus wiki:
In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.
In this context, it occurs to me to remind y'all, and myself ,of the tradition of advocatus diaboli, whereby one adopts in discussion the view one opposes, in order to avoid that echo chamber effect. Something to add to that list of techniques...
would never assume within the limits of ambiguity, that you said whatever is most agreeable to me, but rather I make the interpretation that maximises your clarity and consistency.
OK, so in what way did you think my choice of identifiers ('yours' and 'mine') meant that the clearest and most consistent interpretation of my view is that I don't care to listen to other people's opinions, or that discussions must result in victory or defeat. What else had I said to that effect that led you to the conclusion that this was the most 'consistent' interpretation?
In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.
The wiki here uses the terms 'most rational', 'best' and 'strongest'. I don't see how that supports your emphasis on 'clarity and consistency', perhaps you could explain the link.
OK, so in what way did you think my choice of identifiers ('yours' and 'mine') meant that the clearest and most consistent interpretation of my view is that I don't care to listen to other people's opinions, or that discussions must result in victory or defeat.
Well you are responding to me, so I tend to assume that you haven't (in the context of my talking about how victory and defeat are not resolutions,) accidentally immediately brought in those terms that personalise the positions. but to be sure, because it might have been just from habit, I said well I "wish" you had put it this way instead because, bla bla. At which point I think if you hadn't been quite so primed for me to be being contemptuous, you might well have said something like 'yeah that's petty much what I meant'.
But now, I'm feeling again like we're going to go round and round in a circle, whereby my attempts at explaining my thinking simply serve to reinforce the insult you already perceive.
I'll just mention that I wrote my own explanation of how I meant 'charity', and added the wiki definition as an afterthought, and I leave it to you to pick over which of us has the more conventionally correct interpretation. That my agreement with you that we were using the word differently has now become an attack on you means to me that I need just to stop saying anything at this point. This will be my last post on this thread.
It is a duty on the reader to assume positive intent unless convinced otherwise, not a duty on the writer to do all in their power to prove positive intent.
I tend to assume that you haven't (in the context of my talking about how victory and defeat are not resolutions,) accidentally immediately brought in those terms that personalise the positions.
But throughout our recent disagreement about the meaning of 'charitable interpretation' you have consistently referered to the alternatives under consideration as 'yours' and 'mine', what 'I' and 'you' think. This seems an entirely normal and unimportant way of identifying two positions, completely devoid of significance. I'm still not understanding the thought process and that bothers me because some (obviously quite strong) false supposition has been made about my position and its a position which, as was discussed earlier, forms a core part of my world view. I can correct the supposition easily, as you say, I could have said "yeah that's petty much what I meant", but correcting the false supposition is only half the solution. What I really need to correct is the background which led to such a (seemingly) skewed interpretation of what was at best extremely ambiguous pointers as to what I might be thinking.
Here's a good list of proposed agreements to form a basis for better discussion.
1 Some conflicts get resolved.
2 Sometimes the audience members are uncertain which side to believe(assuming two different opinions/narratives/explanations for the same events).
Do we agree that the two statements above report upon two remarkably different situations, consisting of remarkably different things?
— creativesoul
Sure.
— Harry Hindu
Perfect!
No. Not perfect, because I asked you a question regarding your statement that you avoided.
So when someone keeps asking you questions that you answer, yet they won't answer the questions you posed to them, is that not a great example of someone who will not change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with.
Do we agree that there are some conflicts involving people who will not change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with?
Sure. So which method is useful for determining which party is the on that is unwilling to change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with?
When someone continually contradicts themselves and avoids questions, or when the questions get tough they abandon the discussion, or just ignore the questions while asking their own, or continually attack the person rather than what they say (ad homs), then I think those are great examples of someone that doesn't want to change their mind regardless of what they are presented with. Think of how religious people cling to their religion. You, unenlightened and Pantagruel have exhibited characteristics of the religious that cling to their religion.
You seem to believe that because I use logic as a means to deny that logic is capable of discriminating between true and false statements, that that is somehow a problem for my denying that logic alone is enough to reliably determine and/or establish which competing/conflicting opinion is true.
I'm not sure what problem you think that that amounts to.
Could you explain how it is a problem that I use logic while denying it's ability to discriminate between true and false statements?
Do you know what a contradiction is? Do you know what a self-defeating argument is?
The problem is that you continually avoid the questions I ask and then later on act as if I never asked the question.
If logic is missing something, then what is it? What other methods are there? You haven't been able to provide any. I did and they were all logical fallacies.
If logic is missing something, then what is it? What other methods are there? You haven't been able to provide any.
That last claim is false.
Logic presupposes truth, thus - all by itself - it is missing the ability to discriminate between true and false statements. I have provided an example showing how to discriminate between true and false statements without using logic... by looking.
One can actually do that here and now as well...
Look for yourself. I have already answered these questions several times over, and provided a method for discriminating between true and false statements(looking). Using logic will not provide a means of verifying/falsifying(discriminating between) these claims. Looking will.
I'm not denying that logic is needed, because it's needed to be able to know how well grounded an opinion is(by following the argument/reasoning), but it is not enough all by itself. I'm denying that it's all that's needed(that it's enough all by itself) because one also needs to be able to discriminate between true and false statements.
You seem to believe that because I use logic as a means to deny that logic is capable of discriminating between true and false statements, that that is somehow a problem for my denying that logic alone is enough to reliably determine and/or establish which competing/conflicting opinion is true.
I'm not sure what problem you think that that amounts to.
Could you explain how it is a problem that I use logic while denying it's ability to discriminate between true and false statements?
— creativesoul
Do you know what a contradiction is? Do you know what a self-defeating argument is?
Yes and yes. I do.
Would you care to explain how you think that that applies here?
I'm not using logic to discriminate between true and false claims while denying that it is capable of doing so. That is what would need to be happening in order for my argument to be self-defeating and/or self-contradictory. That's not happening though.
So when someone keeps asking you questions that you answer, yet they won't answer the questions you posed to them, is that not a great example of someone who will not change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with.
2 Sometimes the audience members are uncertain which side to believe(assuming two different opinions/narratives/explanations for the same events).
See there where it says two different explanations for the same events?
You asked a question about how we know that the two are talking about the same things, which is another matter altogether, and one that is completely beside the point that there are situations when they are.
So when someone keeps asking you questions that you answer, yet they won't answer the questions you posed to them, is that not a great example of someone who will not change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with.
There are any number of different reasons that an interlocutor does not answer a question. For my part, I wanted to build upon our agreements first. Then see where we disagree. So, no...
It is not always a great example of someone who will not change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with.
Logic won't help you here either. You have to look for/at real life examples/situations to the contrary. When you find one, and acknowledge that fact, you then ought know that not all unanswered questions are indicative of unshakable certainty in the one not answering(someone who will not change their mind no matter what they are presented with).
When someone continually contradicts themselves and avoids questions, or when the questions get tough they abandon the discussion, or just ignore the questions while asking their own, or continually attack the person rather than what they say (ad homs), then I think those are great examples of someone that doesn't want to change their mind regardless of what they are presented with.
Could be. Sure. But...
I've not contradicted myself. There have been no tough questions that I've avoided because they are tough. I've certainly not continually attacked you...
I'm left wondering how you've arrived at such belief about me based upon our interaction here...
Got some evidence? My words perhaps?
Now...
HERE is where you employ logic as a means to show me how you've arrived at your conclusions about me based upon my claims here.
Show my claims. Explain - using logic - how they led you to your conclusions about me.
The reasons for accepting a specific claim will depend on the claim and the evidence for it. I doubt there is a general recipe that applies to all claims and all evidence that will tell you just when to believe and when not to believe. I believe it is much more productive to think of adjustments that can be made to one's own propensities to believe and personal evaluation of whether a claim is justified.
So...
Can we set out this criterion for ourselves regarding what counts as sufficient/adequate reason to believe?
There is a huge asymmetry between how easy it is to show something is flawed or impoverished and how hard it is to show something is a well justified complete picture. It's easier to demonstrate falsehood than truth, and easier to find a flaw than construct a position.
Untrustworthy people or institutions will use that asymmetry, letting you construct their position for them while never spelling out the complete picture, and being unable to say what would make them change their mind about the statements/the defeaters for their justifications of it, or their interpretations of evidence.
[quote=fdrake;412383](2) Is it from a person or institution you trust?
(2a) An institution that relies on sourced arguments that terminate in interpretations of data is a more reliable truth teller than otherwise.
This makes no sense to me.
A sourced argument does not guarantee true premisses or conclusions. Even false claims can follow from sourced arguments that terminate in 'interpretations' of data.
[quote=fdrake;412383](2b) A person who has a habit of backing up their claims with sources or data, or at least tells you where they're getting their information from, is a more reliable truth teller than otherwise.
That's not true at all. A person who carefully arrives at whatever belief they hold strongly will be able to satisfy the above criterion, regardless of whether or not their belief is true.
(2c) When a person or institution uses a sourced argument, can you find other people or institutions which do the same thing? Can you find ones that you cannot establish are politically partisan who do the same thing?
Well having widespread agreement is crucial. However, we must not forget that convention is not always right.
The reasons for accepting a specific claim will depend on the claim and the evidence for it. I doubt there is a general recipe that applies to all claims and all evidence that will tell you just when to believe and when not to believe.
Regarding sources which do research being more reliable truth tellers:
Three factors:
A source which expends effort to find out what is true can be trusted to form opinions based on things which are more likely to be true.
A source which expends effort to find out what is true is less likely to form opinions based on falsehoods.
A source which researches a claim is more likely to put it in an appropriate context for its interpretation, and is thus less likely to give undue significance to irrelevant detail.
That there are well trusted sources, newspapers even, which do not care to do basic fact checking or contextualising claims is an indictment on discourse.
That's not true at all. A person who carefully arrives at whatever belief they hold strongly will be able to satisfy the above criterion, regardless of whether or not their belief is true.
It depends on how the source behaves. If a source carefully constructs their output to fit an established agenda, it is not a reliable teller of truths insofar as they relate to the agenda. If a source carefully researches a topic before publishing anything on it, they will report well contextualised truths more readily and fail to report falsehoods (unless explicitly highlighting them) more readily for the above reasons.
I'm still standing in awe of the tremendous amount of complex clarity regarding those first two posts. Even the bits like 2 and it's caveats retain value for me despite my objections regarding their standing as always being reliable. I've voiced my concerns briefly, and they remain. Although, by and large, even those parts are indeed useful and reliable means that one can take to help ensure that they've made the right choice between conflicting opinions.
The priming stuff is on point and can be observed on a daily basis from nearly all sides of media, to one degree or another. Powerful...
I am happy to see that you and I agree(for the most part anyway?) regarding the crucial importance of forming, having, and/or holding true belief. I note also that we agree for the most part regarding the limits of logic's role in this method to determine what's best to believe. Logic alone cannot discriminate, or "distinguish" in your terms, between true and false statements/claims.
There's an underlying element of 'truth seeking' for it's own sake that I find is crucial when considering whether or not an individual is a reliable "truth teller"... without some hidden agenda. I'm guessing we are in agreement here as well, based upon the following word choice of yours...
A source which expends effort to find out what is true...
A source which expends effort to find out what is true...
However, one can still seek to find out what is true with the intent to not disclose this to the public. Here, we can see that seeking what's true for it's own sake does not guarantee an honest speaker and/or a sincere speech act. It does not guarantee that the "truth be told". Truth telling is about more than just knowing, and/or seeking what's true. In involves the personal character and/or motivations of the speaker as well. It is worth mention here that I am adopting the sense of "truth" that you've been using rather than arguing against it.
Anthony Fauci comes immediately to mind regarding the information being broadcast to the American public about what counts as being ready to "open the economy back up" in as safe as possible a manner. That guy checks all the boxes of being a trustworthy truth-teller for all the right reasons... a focus upon public health during the outbreak of a highly infectious disease. One who has done it already.
Interestingly enough, in recent weeks there seems to be a concerted effort to either discredit Fauci or steer people away from agreeing with - or even hearing - his advice regarding safe conditions for reopening the economy. The priming effect/affect you so aptly brought my attention to is on display during such discourse. It's similar to poisoning the well in the cases where an attempt to discredit is made, but it's just the beginning of a case of plain 'ole changing the focus most of the time.
Reply to fdrake You gave this reply serious thought, and made it worth reading, so "thank you!"
Of all your suggested disciplines, the effort to step out of one's habitual frame of reference and into another conflicting, unsettling, even hostile frame of reference is the great challenge of the seeker of truth and wisdom. We use our "truths" to navigate the world and don't abandon or even modify them readily. There is however a tipping point in thinking where the model just will not continue to accommodate the incoming new data. In an extreme case, it's like an addict admitting that his efforts to control his addiction have been based on false premises, and it's either die or make changes. We hold to our falsehoods that strongly, and sometimes only a crisis is sufficient to break through our defenses. But what a wonderful world it might be if all people were to apply your listed guidelines for critical thinking.
You gave this reply serious thought, and made it worth reading, so "thank you!"
Of all your suggested disciplines, the effort to step out of one's habitual frame of reference and into another conflicting, unsettling, even hostile frame of reference is the great challenge of the seeker of truth and wisdom. We use our "truths" to navigate the world and don't abandon or even modify them readily. There is however a tipping point in thinking where the model just will not continue to accommodate the incoming new data. In an extreme case, it's like an addict admitting that his efforts to control his addiction have been based on false premises, and it's either die or make changes. We hold to our falsehoods that strongly, and sometimes only a crisis is sufficient to break through our defenses. But what a wonderful world it might be if all people were to apply your listed guidelines for critical thinking.
You're not alone here in this take... that's for sure!
Comments (231)
Assuming it is and we are one of the relevant parties or stakeholders. Is what could be lost worth what could be gained? How sure are the chances of both? Or that we even understand the matter in full detail?
It seems to me this hinges on what was meant by "best to believe."
Change it to which opinions or parts thereof are true.
So you are basically asking if there is a universal method of identifying truth? Again, that would depend on the context.
The reasons for accepting a specific claim will depend on the claim and the evidence for it. I doubt there is a general recipe that applies to all claims and all evidence that will tell you just when to believe and when not to believe. I believe it is much more productive to think of adjustments that can be made to one's own propensities to believe and personal evaluation of whether a claim is justified. There is a huge asymmetry between how easy it is to show something is flawed or impoverished and how hard it is to show something is a well justified complete picture. It's easier to demonstrate falsehood than truth, and easier to find a flaw than construct a position.
Untrustworthy people or institutions will use that asymmetry, letting you construct their position for them while never spelling out the complete picture, and being unable to say what would make them change their mind about the statements/the defeaters for their justifications of it, or their interpretations of evidence.
So here are some rules of thumb I find helpful:
(1) Sources, is the person's claim backed up by data?
(2) Is it from a person or institution you trust?
(2a) An institution that relies on sourced arguments that terminate in interpretations of data is a more reliable truth teller than otherwise.
(2b) A person who has a habit of backing up their claims with sources or data, or at least tells you where they're getting their information from, is a more reliable truth teller than otherwise.
(2c) When a person or institution uses a sourced argument, can you find other people or institutions which do the same thing? Can you find ones that you cannot establish are politically partisan who do the same thing?
(3) Be on the lookout for question substitution and cognitive shortcuts; are a person or institution's claims regarding a question actually demonstrating a much weaker or different claim? EG: "There are racial differences in intelligence" vs "There are statistically significant differences between the mean scores of race categories in IQ tests that are entirely attributable to biological factors"; the first is a lazy claim that relies on a lot of priming and framing to be interpreted as true, it does not spell out its truth conditions or justifying conditions or potential defeaters, whereas the second spells out its truth conditions, justifying conditions and gives a recipe for constructing defeaters. Find the latter kind of statement more worthy of investigation and plausible entertainment than the former.
(4) The form a question is posed in or a claim is made are not innocuous and innocent; we can be primed to alter our dispositions. If the truth conditions of a claim are only explicable (as in, can be stated), given that you already are predisposed to evaluate it as true, make some extra effort to doubt that claim.
(5) If you're looking to cut through noise, don't use raw Google to check something, use Google scholar. That will give you access to peer reviewed papers, their abstracts will tell you who wrote them and sometimes who funded them, which you can check for conflict of interest if you don't trust them. You also get a sense of how much that work is used by their citation count, though it is not a particularly good measure of inherent truth or usefulness for various reasons like peer review being its own kind of filter bubble.
(6) Consume media that reacts more slowly than Twitter and other social media. It takes longer to read a thinkpiece and follow its sources than to knee jerk True/False assign a soundbite, but over a long time of practicing intellectual hygiene you get a more fruitful knee jerk reaction; True/False/Frame or Priming dependent/Plausible/Well justified.
(7) No one is immune to the effects of ideology or thinking from the wrong perspective about something. Do not let yourself be filterbubbled and confirm all your suspicions through constant saturation in their content. As much as it pains you, if you're on the right read what the left is saying, if you're on the left read what the right is saying. And try your hardest not to dismiss something just because it's from a source you're discinclined to like.
(8) Dismissing a source due to being unreliable should be done on a domain by domain basis: if you trust the UK newspaper the Guardian on one topic (say, to report the effects of healthcare spending cuts), that doesn't mean you should trust it on another (say, to report about security overreach from British institutions - their team of journalists that dealt with Snowden got dissolved and their head was replaced with someone very sympathetic to GCHQ).
(9) The more domains a source relies on bullshit to justify its claims in, the less trustworthy it is (like the UK's Sun).
We are always in error, the goal is to learn to be less wrong.
Judge conflicting opinions with something of demonstrably greater certainty.
Not so much. The very idea that we can identify something bears the burden of explaining what that particular thing is.
But what does it mean to talk in terms of "identifying truth"?
I am inquiring to see if there is a universally reliable method for ascertaining which - if any - of multiple competing reports upon the same things is true?
Is there a reliable method for discriminating between true and false statements?
I would think that knowing what sorts of things can be true and what makes them so is of the utmost relevance, significance, and/or importance to anyone and everyone attempting to successfully navigate the world they live in.
Wouldn't you?
Ah drake...
That deserves permanent preservation!
Brilliant. Beautiful. Clear. Concise. Germane. Practical.
The agreement resonated within while reading. Literally... a visceral affect/effect.
Thank you. My respect for you has just increased exponentially.
The data may lend some weak support to charges and/or implications of race discrimination by showing that there is a larger percentage of X's being Y'd than other races/ethnic groups. However, it could be the case that out of every group being Y'd, the X's far outnumber the individuals in any other group, and everyone is being Y'd, so...
The quantity of X's being Y'd is indeed much higher than the quantity of any other group, as one would expect without any racial underpinnings whatsoever. If one compares the number of X's to the overall number of those being Y'd and arrives at knowing that that percentage is very high(say 55%), then one could claim that that is the evidence that shows a disproportionate amount of X's are getting Y'd.
However, from there it does not warrant further concluding that such 'disproportionate' numbers count as sufficient evidence for, or proof of, discrimination. It's not.
That's no discussion I want to get involved in. It devolves into arguing about which definition is best when faced with competing opinions about the meaning of the same word.
That is precisely the issue I'm looking to resolve.
Which statements are true and what makes them so?
How's that?
:wink:
Same solution.
That's just a misreading altogether. It's also very compelling evidence - to me in particular - that you've not read much of my writing.
:smile:
Logic.
My initial reaction was "logic" is the answer - look at the arguments and decide which position has the best ones.
However, if we look at it closely, opposing positions are already reasoned to by their respective proponents. In other words both have a rightful claim to logic and rationality.
The difference between them, ergo, is not logic in the sense one side has used it well and the other side has not; rather the actual source of disputes is the assumptions each side has made in their arguments and assumptions are not a matter of logic. Assumptions are made in the low visibility fog of ignorance and you may just as well flip a coin to decide which ones you want to base your views on for logic is utterly useless in this regard.
I suggest we refrain from quarreling because if logic isn't the issue then everything is a matter of opinion.
Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.
~Descartes
I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Something I want to draw a distinction between: framing and priming. Priming is when someone shows you a picture like this:
Next to the statement: "Brexit negotiations stall again due to harsh terms from Bojo's Britain" - the intended effect being that you recognise the face as being stupid and angry, and it resonates with the statement phrasing (like calling Boris Johnson Bojo and making "harsh" match up with the scowl). Priming in general is explicitly applying some prompt or accompanying device to some other statement/claim/argument that is intended to make someone more likely to interpret the statement/claim/argument in the intended mood. Successful priming strongly promotes the intended interpretive mood and its behavioural corollaries.
No one can ignore priming effects, just like you can't look at this sentence without reading it.
It's a well documented thing (though there are plenty of papers that exaggerate its effects). Newspapers especially use priming to convey the mood they intend you to read their article in.
Now framing; a frame is a context of interpretation for a claim. No one is in full control of their context of interpretation for any claim. When US Republicans make "states rights" arguments, say against gay marriage being a federal law, the purpose of that (and it was designed by Goldwater IIRC for this regarding civil rights) is to impede the adoption of the law by changing the narrative that supports the imposition from a religious/prejudicial one to an autonomy/jurisprudential one. People who believe in "small government" will be able to say "it's a state's decision" and argue in terms of the benefits of political devolution even though before it was a federal law binding all of 'em that gay marriage was not allowed .
Questions can prime for framing: "Should individuals always be allowed to decide who can use their business?" as a counter argument against "Gay marriage should be legal US wide" primes people to talk in terms of the supporting narrative for the "small government" argument.
Also wanted to add 2 to the list that you see on the forum:
(10) A priori reasoning is over-rated; people's speculations are done within a frame, a priori reasoning often uncovers the founding principles of the frame rather than the truth of the matter. Logic alone doesn't let you decide the truth or falsity of any contingent proposition, one whose truth maker is not arbitrary; and for this reason almost all propositions we encounter , reject or adopt are contingently true or false. "Self evident" usually just means "it seems this way to me for reasons I cannot state". Another way of saying this: satori is not a justification or evidence, it is a frame announcing its presuppositions.
(11) Do not hang back and simply ask questions; if you position yourself always as the critic and the cynic, you can bolster your own beliefs simply by rejecting all others - and it is much easier to show a flaw or falsify than to get a good picture of something or confirm. Do not let the asymmetry in difficulty between justification and falsification be a reason your beliefs never change; all doubt is done within a motivating context - a frame - which can, itself, be more or less occlusive or productive to generating well justified beliefs regarding the matter at hand.
:up: :ok:
Clearly, he was not entirely correct. Some of us think they have more common sense than others.
And those are the people who are always eager to share it....
Common sense is over rated. The only reason anyone would say that anything non-trivial is common sense is because they cannot or will not justify it for other reasons. People appealing to common sense usually do so regarding matters where evidence and careful argument is mandatory. "Geopolitics, only common sense!", "Economics, only common sense!", "The mind, it's common sense!". It's usually just another way to avoid providing evidence or argument and to mock whoever or whatever you disagree with. A "salt of the earth" version of self evidence.
Maybe. I think, as Descartes says, the reality is that everyone thinks they have common sense, implying that not everyone does. So, yes, maybe the appeal to commonsense (in an argument) is overrated. I think, by definition, common-sense (when it is genuine) is absolutely fundamental.
"that repository of ancient error"
My emphasis, and probably not the OP's, in which case apologies for going off topic. Anyways...
Something often missed is a variety of advantages which may be enjoyed by a discourse that tolerates both of two opposed opinions on some matter. I don't say that pointing this out will necessarily lead to world peace, but I do wonder whether the extent (admittedly partial) of its observable application might deserve further scrutiny.
An obvious hoped-for benefit (of the mentioned toleration) is the peaceful co-existence of the disputants. But then, an associated cost is a notional divide between matters of fact and of opinion, which is of course a price almost universally thought to be worth paying. And so the conflict is merely deferred: have your opinions about this or that regardless of mine, but expect your factual claims to stand or fall against mine.
What we usually fail to notice is that our disagreements about certain cases, if they are the intrinsically unclear ones, are often the largely unconscious method by which we keep the overall shape of the discourse in good repair, so that our usage of mutually exclusive terms remains just that.
We disagree about borderline cases of, say, "acceptable abortion" not necessarily to ensure the "correct" judgment in those cases: even though that might be exactly what we think we are doing, such that if only we had our way... etc. The disagreements serve, rather, to maintain the myth (or social construct) of an extension of the word or concept, made all the more realistic by its having a fuzzy border: cases that are variously judged to be both included and not included. That in itself might be useful for the discourse; but what it also probably helps with is the parallel maintenance of the extension of a mutually exclusive concept, perhaps "murder".
To the extent (debatable no doubt) that "abortion" and "murder" are recognised as mutually exclusive, the borderline cases of each fix a theoretical limit on the possible reach of the other. Any even alleged abortion then exemplifies (in the discourse) a clear enough case of non-murder. And likewise, any alleged case of murder is a clear non-case of abortion. What we can offer the recalcitrant extremists on either side, as an incentive to join in the discourse on this basis, is the surprising prospect of opinions creating complete unanimity with respect to judgements of clear non-cases, and therefore the impossibility of pointing certain words at certain cases, exactly as those same opinions seem to be expressing a free choice of what words to point at what cases. Not only do the enemy camps share common ground but their battles maintain it in good condition.
The surprising result is explained when we notice that disagreements about borderline cases are themselves negotiated, because each party agrees (implicitly) to agree which judgements are real events inside the discourse, and which ones are, as exemplified by attempts to point "black" at white, or "murder" at abortion, simply invalid, and (literally) not counted. So speech acts will not be more (or less) defiant of others than is good for their credibility as contributions to the implicit shared project.
Another, probably less emotive, example is consciousness. Ok, even more emotive...
Logic presupposes truth.
I think that that's exactly wrong in that it is true, but totally irrelevant.
Either can say what they want about whether or not they are thinking logically and rationally. Saying that and being that are two completely different things. Being that is not solely up to the speaker. Saying that is.
Quoting Pantagruel
The two of you concur in your outlook but don't you think it's equally a fault to think that some people lack common sense as it is for us to think we have common sense? In both cases we think we're better at it than we actually are, one in an absolute sense and other in a relative sense.
While the above is a true report of some, it is not a true report of all... uses of "common sense". The notion of "common sense" when used to classify some belief or other, can be an irrevocably important aspect used to compel the audience to place the utmost importance upon the simplest of true statements, arguments, and/or lines of thought.
I will employ the notion of common sense in the appropriate circumstances.
You quoted my response to you and compared it to another's response to you. In doing so, you managed to completely avoid what we were talking about.
Sorry. My apologies.
Well, firstly my take on "common sense" is that it's a nebulous concept. What exactly does it mean? Is common sense just another name for logic or is it something else altogether like an attitude of pragmatism, stressing on being realistic about life and everything else?
If it means logic then as I already mentioned logic isn't the source of our differences, isn't the reason behind opposing views. We differ in our opinions/views/philosophies not because of problems in logic but because we've made incompatible assumptions. Assumptions, as we all know, are not proven - they, by definition, need no argument. Ergo, it must be that when people assume different things, it's not a logical problem unless you can come up with a reductio ad absurdum argument to disprove them.
If so, the right way to deal with this issue of opposing views is to investigate how we make assumptions. What are your views on this? As far as I know, assumptions are either purportedly self-evident (most philosophical positions I assume) or else arbitrary ( like in math). As you can see, the only kind of assumption that concerns us are the self-evident ones. The problem is that there are many self-evident "truths" out there that can be assumed and there's a good chance that these assumptions will lead to opposing conclusions. Thus, the source of conflict can be traced to assumptions that clash with each other.
It is as others have said the Platonic method of dialogue. But one can say some more about the elements of dialogue. First, it requires an assumption of equality. We must begin our dialogue with the assumption that we are both able to change our opinions and both able to understand each other. This begins the second element - finding the common ground.
We need the common ground at least of this much in order to even disagree. So if one is unable to begin this dialogue with an equality and an engagement that will look for first common ground and then for the detail of disagreement, then it all becomes impossible. Someone, for example, with a strong sense of superiority, or even infallibility, cannot begin such a conflict resolution, but will resort to authority, dictat, threats or insults. They cannot communicate.
Thus the answer, without discussion, "Logic." partakes of this authoritarian attitude. One might suppose that reputable logicians have never been known to disagree. Yet we surely know that this is not the case, and so the word becomes nothing more than a stick to beat one with.
Descartes' quote which you posted a couple of rows above suggests Descartes had a very high opinion of common sense which leads me to believe he equated it to what these days we call critical thinking.
What is critical thinking?
Critical thinking or Descartes' common sense encompasses a broad range of skills inclusive of formal logic, ability to identify/avoid fallacies, recognizing and steering clear of cognitive biases - both our own and that of others, knowing how to and where to look for supporting evidence and be proficient in judging their quality, and to be, above all, dedicated to the truth whether comforting or not.
I am very much aligned with your introduction of the concept of critical thinking, as a recent convert to Popper's theories of critical realism. However I must point out that you have misconstrued Descartes' account of common sense. Descartes is acknowledging that there is a universal tendency to believe that one is possessed of common sense, but the fact that no one "desires more" than they already have implies that this is can also be a huge "blind spot."
I would say that common sense is the prime target of critical thinking. In more modern parlance, excavating our prejudicative presuppositions, so-called background knowledge of which the lebenswelt is constructed.
I thought he was being sarcastic - scoffing at people who are under the impression that they have common sense when in fact they do not. Anyway :up:
This is a strange response considering it's the TLDR version of 's post and you said, Quoting creativesoul
Anyway, logic is presupposed by every sentence and every thought. Even by doubting the laws of logic, you’ve affirmed them, as thinking that something “might be false” presupposes that there’s such a thing as “true” and “false” in the first place.
There's always the question of which logic is appropriate for the task, and which describes people's conduct the best. Say we go back in time and people are still wrestling with electron orbitals and coulomb's law; people were committed to theory that entailed that electrons would be slowly drawn to the nucleus of an atom through electrostatic attraction, but people also knew that didn't happen. The theory predicted one thing, and was believed to some degree, the experiments found another. People still believed in the predictions of Coulomb's law by and large, but stopped applying it. They didn't act in accordance with the principle of explosion and suddenly believe arbitrary positions because they believed a contradiction, they stopped the explosion by restricting the applicability of Coulomb's law in calculating the distribution of positions of electrons in atoms.
Most arguments people make do not obey classical propositional logic, or paraconsistent logic, or any other formal logic. Most arguments scientists make do not rely on any formalisation of inductive logic; there aren't logical constraints on what makes a sensible explanatory hypothesis in general, they are domain specific.
I don't see where your post disagrees with what you quoted, so I take it as an agreement that:
Quoting Harry Hindu
I mean, you entire post presupposes some truth.
Do you think there's more than one logic?
If you are asking if I think that there is any logic that doesn't presuppose that there is such a thing as true and false, then no.
I think dialectical logic transcends the simple true-false dyad of traditional logic.
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/4/4/69/pdf
And so we find ourselves arguing about the length of the stick and who has the better grasp on it. And the original question is quite forgotten.
Does this statement presuppose some truth about what you think, and that you think?
Seems like we have a real live example of a conflict to resolve....
The statement is not about me, it is about dialectical logic. You are conflating the reference of the statement with its origin. Smacks of the genetic fallacy. Dialectical logic can be many-valued.
Of course it is. It is about what you think:
Quoting Pantagruel
It even presupposes that thinking exists and that you think things.
Logic, like any other process, puts out what you put in. If you put in false premises, you will get false conclusions.
Logic also helps you to determine what to put in. Appeals to popularity, authority, and the genetic fallacy are all logical fallacies. So it seems to me that one kind of logic not being applied appropriately has a detrimental effect on the rest of your types of logic that you might use.
What laws does the logic you're talking about follow?
:100:
Great stuff, I regularly screw up on these and then afterwards realize something is wrong but can't always articulate it. A list like this is gold. Stick it together and pin it in the learning centre!
Even if we allow that it is trivially true that my statement is really my statement, you asked merely if there was any logic that doesn't presuppose true and false. I merely pointed out that dialectical logic transcends the true-false simpliciter dyad. I'm prepared to acknowledge that it is always true that I have made any statement I have made. Are you prepared to expand the concept of modal logic beyond the scope of true and false?
The law of non-contradicton.
I would like to suggest to you, in relation to the topic we are supposed to be discussing, that this conflict cannot be resolved, because no genuine communication is taking place. You might as well argue with Trump, because you are a a very bad person, and very illogical, and you are dealing with a very stable genius.
Just read the first sentence in the link you provided. It presupposes some truth.
In making your statement you are presupposing the truth that "dialectical logic transcends the true-false simpliciter dyad".
Your argument is self-defeating.
The topic we are supposed to be talking about isn't a political one. You might want to remove those politically partisan glasses you have on.
LNC doesn't give you a logic by itself. It says very little about valid inferences; or plausibility of claims; or evidentiary status; it just tells you not to believe something and its negation at the same time. This is nowhere near enough.
That's right Harry, I forgot, there's no conflict of opinion in politics is there?
It's impossible to be vigilant all the time, or even all but a tiny fraction of the time. We're hardwired to take shortcuts. It takes a lot of effort; both cognitive and emotional labour; to actually think in a way that sticks to what can plausibly be inferred from what we know.
Translation:
X = Does Harry Hindu think (Y = there is a logic that doesn't suppose T/F)?
Interpretation 1: Harry Hindu believes believes X - truth about Harry Hindu.
Interpretation 2: Multi-valued (dialectical) logic does not fit the simplistic interpretation T/F) - so Y is not true, in the sense at the very least that it is incomplete.
If we are talking about interpretation one, we could basically stick "I think" in front of everything that everybody says, and it will always be true. But why would we ignore the external referents of propositions in this way?
I thought we were supposed to be talking about the topic at hand?
Oh. I'm glad we agree.
Sure it does. It basically mandates that the opposite of true is false. It is the root of all philosophical conclusions. If you keep asking, "why?", it basically comes down to, "because it is.", and something cannot be something that it isn't.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting unenlightened
Yeah, but not on the topic at hand, because you decided to engage in ad hominem political attacks rather than defend your statements on the topic at hand.
Quoting Pantagruel
I find it very strange that you don't see your own presuppositions of truth in every sentence that you make - that every statement you make is about how things are - from what dialectical logic is to what your thoughts are.
Sorry, are you saying we shouldn't be discussing how to resolve conflicts of opinion or that we should be? I take the latter view - do you agree?
Note. I am here following my own stricture of trying to establish some common ground.
Typically, logical statements are held to be better(more reliable) than those that are not arrived at via logical means, however, a statement/opinion can be both valid(a logical statement/conclusion that follows the rules of correct inference) and false.
Logic alone is utterly inadequate for the task at hand.
That's because I am capable of dialectical reasoning.
If A mans his post in the face of an attack, then A is brave.
But A can man his post for a while, but abandon it when the fighting becomes too fierce.
So A is both brave and not-brave.
I guess the whole point is that there are scenarios where the true/false (binary) state is inadequate. Even in physics, particles can be in more that one state simultaneously, it's what makes quantum computing possible. So it seems that there are empirical conditions in which the true/false dyad breaks down. Nature, it seems, never learned boolean logic.
So in terms of the OP, can we achieve a mutual understanding such that both your notion, that logic is foundational, and my notion that logic transcends the boolean form, co-exist?
When to "reopen the economy" is a fine example of this.
This is a much more difficult situation for a listener to ascertain, and drake is fairly spot on regarding much of what it takes. The shame is that one needs to be able to do that, because that shows us that we cannot trust some of those elected officials.
Introduce a timeline. Brave at this time, not at the other. A is not both brave and not-brave at the same time.
In order to choose better, one must perform a comparison/contrast between the opposing views. Not just any comparison will do here though. We need one that increases our chances of successfully navigating the world we all find ourselves deeply embedded within. It ought be fairly uncontentious to exclaim this much, for it is precisely opposing opinions that we are contemplating the worth/value of.
Which, of either, opinions are true and what makes them so?
We must know what sorts of things can be true and what makes them so, in order to know which of multiple conflicting opinions is best(reliable and true).
The sole aim of logic is to preserve truth. The sole aim of logical notation is to take proper account of pre-existing thought, belief, and/or statements thereof, all of which also presuppose truth somewhere along the line.
It is hard to communicate with a deaf-blind person, because the senses we have in common are not the ones we usually philosophise with.
You SAY that, unenlightened, but then your concept of "discussing how to resolve conflicts of opinion" involves bringing politics into a discussion that doesn't involve politics in order to make personal attacks on the person you've disagreed with politically in other discussions.
What you do is different than what you say, so what am I suppose to believe?
Well sure, empiricism is just as necessary as rationality, if that is what you mean. If not, then I would encourage you to give examples of where logic/empiricism, alone is inadequate. We can make claims all day, but if you aren't willing to provide examples that can falsify my statements, then it seems that we are at an impasse.
Huh? :brow:
No, no, Pantagruel. This just means that bravery comes in degrees, not on or off.
Haven't we already been over this?
To say that one is both brave and not-brave just makes bravery meaningless. Bravery cannot be brave and not-brave (law of non-contradiction). If this were the case, then how do we know we are talking about the same thing when we discuss "bravery"?
I asked that question of you before in the other thread, and your response was another contradiction.
So, it seems to me that you think dialectic logic is the solution to everything. It seems that your use of dialectic logic is a bit religious, as if that is the type of "logic" that is used to escape the truth of solutions that you don't like.
Quoting Pantagruel
There are never scenarios where the true/false (binary) state is inadequate. To say that there is, is to deny the law of non contradiction, but to deny the law of non contradiction actually makes use of it, so you end up defeating your own argument.
The problem isn't the logic, it is the premise that everything is black and white, like bravery.
I don't want to discuss what I think you ought believe about what I claim to believe, because, apart from being off-topic, I cannot expect you to believe what I might have to say about it, given that you already don't believe what I have just said as clearly as possible more than once, and done my absolute damnedest to elicit your agreement about. But you don't want to agree, even about what we are talking about. So we seem to have a disagreement about what we have a disagreement about, but without actually disagreeing, but merely by not believing what is being said. It's a very neat demonstration of the limitations of logic and common sense. If I am not to be trusted in what I say, no amount of logic can resolve that. Our disagreement cannot even be expressed.
Not at all. I am merely pointing out that it exists, in contrast with your claim that everything reduces to true and false. Cheers.
The question is whether or not there is some universally applicable reliable method for determining which opinion is true when we find ourselves being presented with conflicting opinions about the same things.
You stated "logic". I answered that logic alone is inadequate for determining which conflicting opinion is true.
Now you're invoking a philosophical position called "empiricism" and adding it to logic alone, as if to say logic and empiricism are enough - when used in conjunction with one another - to tell which conflicting opinion is true. I'm still objecting to that for it's not true. Logic and empiricism are inadequate. They are not capable of being used as a means to discriminate between true and false claims.
So, in effect you're changing your answer, and/or moving the goalposts. I could object on those grounds, but that would look like a hollow victory, and I'm not interested in winning. I am interested in shedding some much needed light upon an everyday problem.
If speaker A says "We should re-open the economy" and speaker B says "We should not re-open the economy" we have ourselves a real life everyday example to discuss.
So...
Tell me how logic alone can discriminate between which of these two statements is true, if either is and exactly how logic determines that much.
I'll tell you how it cannot, even when - especially when - accompanied by empiricism.
Indeed...
Here's a few common sense lines of thought regarding that...
Names have referents. Naming practices pick individual things out of this world. It is often the case that a disagreement amounts to different people using the same name to talk about very different things.
But you aren't merely pointing out that it exists. You attempted to show an example of it's use and failed miserably. In pointed out that it exists, you are pointing out a truth, and even provided (what you thought) is the nature of it's existence.
In doing my own research, there is nothing about dialectic logic that implies that it "transcends the true/false dyad of traditional logic". Even your own link seems to imply that there is an underlying truth in our opposing views. This is akin to what I have said before in that we can have different views of the same thing, but we have to be careful that we aren't confusing our views with what our views are of. In discussing opposing views, we are discussing our views, not what our view is of. To get at what our views are of, we have to find similarities between our views, not differences between our views.
The fact that our views may differ says nothing about what our views are about, but more about ourselves - the viewers.
Like I said to Pantagruel. If our opinions are conflicting, then how do you know that our opinions are of the same thing?
Quoting creativesoul
If you're asking if you can apply logic to ethical questions, then no. There is no such thing as an objective morality. When it is right to open an economy is when individuals feel safe in going out in public, and that can vary from individual to individual. So it seems to me that you are attempting to answer an unanswerable question, or attempting to answer a subjective question as if it had an objective answer.
So, you tell me creativesoul, what other methods are there besides logic to determine what is true? It seems to me that you used logic in your post to attempt to show how logic is inadequate. In showing that something is inadequate, does it make sense to use the very thing that you claim is inadequate to show how it is inadequate? :roll:
Or else you simply failed to grasp it because it doesn't fit in your procrustean perspective..
No, that isnt the case. What is the case is that you see the world in black and white and you often confuse your black for white and vice versa.
"Many-valued logics are non-classical logics. They are similar to classical logic because they accept the principle of truth-functionality, namely, that the truth of a compound sentence is determined by the truth values of its component sentences (and so remains unaffected when one of its component sentences is replaced by another sentence with the same truth value). But they differ from classical logic by the fundamental fact that they do not restrict the number of truth values to only two: they allow for a larger set W of truth degrees."
Many Valued Logic
This is all I proposed. Dialectical logic is just a different style of many valued logic one which is not limited to a dyadic truth relationship. I only ever suggested it as an example, and never proposed it as authoritative. In fact, I specifically stipulated that. I have nothing beyond that to contribute to this particular conversation.
Seems to support what I said, not what you said. Bravery comes in degrees, not on or off / true or false. Some are braver than others. Tell me, Pantagruel, what room does the word "braver" have in your example? You seem to say that the word would be meaningless if you were to apply dialectic logic to bravery. So it seems that either you have the wrong idea about dialectic logic or the wrong idea about bravery, and how and when to apply dialectic logic (it doesn't seem to work for bravery), and it is reflected by your example
What I find interesting is that there can only be truth degrees, but no degrees of falsity? So dialectic logic is a way for everyone to be right? How convenient. How religious.
Au contraire. It was a perfectly valid choice of a dialectical problem. It was never intended to be conclusive, only illustrative (as I have repeatedly pointed out, yet you inexplicably refuse to acknowledge).
"Dialectical thinking refers to the ability to view issues from multiple perspectives and to arrive at the most economical and reasonable reconciliation of seemingly contradictory information"
Dialectical Thinking
Certainly your counter-argument was applicable, and amplified the issue. In doing so, you thereby participated in the process of dialectical reasoning, and gave a strong argument yourself for the use of many-valued (versus dyadic) logic.
Having read the Critique of Dialectical Reason a couple of months ago. I feel I have a pretty solid grasp of the basics.
:lol: What did you attempt to illustrate if not the conclusive nature of dialectic logic? Or are you saying that your illustration is just scribbles and isn't about anything?
Quoting Pantagruel
Which supports what I said here:
Quoting Harry Hindu
See how it says "reasonable reconciliation of seemingly contradictory information".
What does it mean by "reasonable" if not "logical" in the classical sense?
What does "seemingly contradictory" mean if not that it appears contradictory but actually isn't once you reconcile the differences using reason (classical logic)? So it seems to me that classical logic is necessary for dialectic logic to work.
Quoting Pantagruel
This doesn't fit with what you just quoted. You and I have opposing views, that have yet to be reasonably reconciled. So we haven't yet engaged in any dialectic logic because you don't want to reasonably reconcile our opposing views. You just want to go off-topic and say that I don't understand, or that I'm not grasping it, as if dialectic logic has this nature that I'm not grasping and that my view of it is false, not some degree of truth of it. You keep contradicting yourself with every post.
Again, you fundamentally misconstrue.
Dialectic presupposes disagreement.
It says reasonable precisely because reason does not reduce to mere logic. Otherwise it would have said logical.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/reasonable
Synonyms & Antonyms of reasonable
1) according to the rules of logic
his answer is perfectly reasonable
Seems to me that it could have said logical and still meant reasonable.
This says that logic is reasonable, not that reason is logical.
If it is logical that if A then B, then it is reasonable to believe B given A.
On the other hand, it is reasonable to believe that particles can exist simultaneously in two different places because scientific experiments have established this as a fact. However this paradoxical result is not logical. In fact, it arguably contradicts all the rules of logic.
Then it presupposes a truth - that disagreements exist.
Quoting Pantagruel
Then your quibble is with the scribbles, and not what the scribbles are about?
Quoting Pantagruel
Which is to say that it contradicts other reasons that we have for believing that particles can exist simultaneously in two different places. Science says one thing, our senses say another. So, how do we reasonably reconcile these opposing viewpoints to the point where our opposing viewpoints aren't actually in opposition, but were seemingly in opposition prior to any reasonable reconciliation?
Quoting Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
So, is the "reasonable reconciliation" in your Quoting Pantagruel
arrived at via correct or incorrect reasoning?
Yes, that is the challenge to which dialectic aspires.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Hmmm. Can you arrive at correct conclusions from incorrect premises? Insofar as the conclusion is viewed as a synthesis of its premises it is not possible to do so. This was Aldous Huxley's construal of the ends-means relationship. One cannot achieve a goal through methods that contradict the goal because the means are constitutive of the end.
However some people do hold true beliefs without being aware of the foundations of those beliefs. Also, it seems quite possible to think completely reasonably, and yet arrive a spurious beliefs. If significant information is missing. The history of science testifies to this.
You don't seem to understand what synonym means. If you look up the synonym of logical then you will get reasonable as an entry.
Quoting Pantagruel
Which is to say that you didn't have all the relevant reasons to support your conclusion. What seems logical and reasonable actually wasnt - the difference between inductive and deductive logic. One is based on the laws of logic, the other on observation over time.
When reasonable reconciliation fails, is that a failure of the dialectic method, or the failure of one of the participants to fully grasp what is being said and talked about? If the former, then dialectic logic fails to aspire to do what you claim it does. If the latter, then you are advocating that the conclusion fits more with the law of non-contradiction, not some kind of multi-value logic.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting fdrake
Quoting Pantagruel
Quoting Pantagruel
Looking at this, it seems to me that we've simply been talking past each other this whole time.
You and fdrake agreed that some form of logic is required, but which kind of logic was the question.
My point has basically been that any kind of logic you choose always resolves down to the law of non-contradiction being a necessary component of determining truth because in asking the question the OP is asking, it presumes that there is something that is best to believe and best not to believe, regarding some subject matter. I took "best to believe" to be the "useful to believe", and the truer the map, the more useful the map.
Maybe it should be up to creativesoul to clarify what he meant by "best to believe regarding some subject matter".
Quoting TheMadFool
Part of being logical is limiting the amount of assumptions to a bare minimum - like things cannot exist and not exist at the same time. There comes a point in where we need to really think about what we say because we've reached a point in the evolution of our language-use where words are being convoluted and loaded with with meanings that contradict how words are used in other instances, which just makes words useless if they can mean their opposites in the same context.
The whole point of condoning the idea that truth can be found in contradictions is to make it easier on the emotional control center of the brain. It is a means of deluding ourselves into thinking that what we believe is true, even when others think the opposite.
I think that you have hit on a key idea here. Words are indeed polysemous, and in the very lively sense you allude to here. But it isn't necessarily in the "same context" as it is I think in "overlapping contexts". Whatever our current state of accord might be, the foundational experiences that circumscribe your life-world are necessarily different than mine.
If you find it possible to think about something that both exists and doesn't exist at the same time, or a married bachelor, in your mind that doesn't simply take the form of the scribbles or the sounds in saying it, then the very concept of "thinking" would be different for both of us because I can't think of something that both exists and doesn't exist at the same time, or a married bachelor, except thinking about the words themselves, which are just scribbles or sounds without referring to any conceivable thing.
A contradiction can be a thought of as a complete absence of any overlap.
Looking.
Logic can help us determine how well grounded the opinion is by asking for the reasoning behind the opinion. So, in that way, logic can help us to determine which opinion is more reliable. Not alone though.
Feeling safe is not being safe, by the way...
One can be told the 'right' sorts of things to believe and feel that they are safe, and yet not be.
Where truth is whatever we say it is, because we said so...
What about the things that exist in their entirety prior to our naming them? What role do they play in this circle?
Not involving the concept of thinking, but how to communicate the concept of thinking to others. In asking for definitions we are asking where each of our boundaries for such a thing as thinking are - where we might be overlapping and where we aren't, and why, and we are forced to do so via language - symbolism - because we aren't telepathic.
When we find that we have no overlap (a contradiction), we have reached the point where we have to ask ourselves if we are actually talking about the same thing - that our scribbles refer to the same bounded concept in each of our minds. In teasing out each other's usage we can discover conceptual failures of the thing we are talking about. The incorrect usage of words could be the result of not being aware of all the grammatical rules of a language, or it could be a manifestation of the deeper problem of how you see the world.
Think about learning a second language. You have the concepts down, but how to communicate them using new rules is something else.
If telling me that someone is brave and not-brave at the same time isn't an error in word usage, then it must be a conceptual error of what it means to be brave. The boundary of how you define bravery needs to be compared to mine to understand what aspects of reality (how people behave in stressful situations) we are really talking about when using words, like "bravery" - where the boundaries of our concepts that the scribble, "bravery" refers to.
It still stands that people behave in certain ways in stressful situations (fight or flight). It's simply the boundaries we each have established for defining where "bravery" begins and ends among those behaviors. For you, how much flight is too much to then say that the person is no longer brave? What if running allowed you to be brave another day? Bravery presumes the truth that people either run or fight for what they want. How much of each entails "bravery" is for each of us may be subjective, but if we are going to start giving out awards for bravery, then it needs to be defined as awards are not given to the not-brave.
If you claim that logic can't do it alone, then you must have a reason to say such a thing - a time when logic didn't provide the best thing to believe and the best thing to believe wasn't something subjective, as logic isn't meant for determining what is subjectively best to believe - what makes you feel good as logic entails understanding that your feelings should have no bearing one determining what is true, and therefore useful.
Quoting creativesoul
So something else other than an exchange of subjective opinions is required for determining if a state of true safety exists.
You're establishing a pattern of arguing with your own imagination... strawmen abound.
Do you mind explaining a bit more?
I've offered at least three already. Address those.
Quoting creativesoul
You're not being very helpful. Your behavior indicates that you really aren't interested in what you put out in your OP. You seem to be showing that, at least for you, there is no method for Quoting creativesoul
I said "Logic". You disagree and claim that something else is needed, yet you can't even name the thing that is needed, or what logic is missing. The funny thing is that you keep using logic to make your case, and no other method.
Under review...
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting Harry Hindu
The above are explicitly stated reasons that existed in time prior to your statement above. In your defense, I did not let you know about it at the time. Perhaps you missed that?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting creativesoul
I said the above as a result of those paragraphs immediately preceding it... You invoked all sorts of loaded language that I had not used. I suggest copy my words and then give it a bit... think about them as they are written. Do not add to them, for they are very carefully chosen. Trust me.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Harry Hindu
A re read would be most helpful.
That is not because one was using logic. It's because they already knew 'X' and thus could not believe a statement to the contrary. That's the human condition grounding the 'LNC'.
Logic is not always needed and is never adequate for determining/establishing which conflicting statement is true, if any are.
Some logic is still being used despite the fact that it's little more than an accounting malpractice of certain thought and belief. For example, here's a famous, or perhaps infamous one...
If one follows the logic of Gettier, one will arrive at saying that Smith has belief that he does not have. Smith does not believe that Jones will get the job. Jones getting the job does not make Smith's belief true. It makes it false, for Smith believed that Smith, himself, would get the job.
The so-called 'rules of logical entailment' permit changing the referent of "the man with ten coins in his pocket" from Smith to Jones. In doing so that changes Smith's own belief about who will get the job from himself to Jones. It changes the truth conditions(and meaning) of Smith's belief. The problem of course, is that while Smith believes the statement, that belief includes a rigid designator for "the man with ten coins in his pocket". That phrase - in Smith's own belief - refers to himself, and no other individual.
However, in order to agree with Gettier - regarding Case I - the reader has to also agree that if Jones got the job, Smith's belief would somehoe be true. Clearly, Smith's belief could only be true if he, himself, got the job, because that is what he believed would happen.
What happens in that case is that Gettier loses sight of what Smith's belief is by virtue of talking about it as though it were equivalent to the statement/proposition. It's not. That's a sleight of hand, because...
The statement/proposition has truth conditions aside from, and/or greater than Smith's belief. Smith's belief does not.
The statement, when held in isolation, when looked at as though it is somehow separate from Smith's belief, is true regardless of who the man is, so long as he has ten coins in his pocket.
However, and this is key...
Smith's belief statement would have been true if, and only if, he got the job, because he was the man with ten coins in his pocket that he believed would. He did not. Smith's belief was false.
So...
Logic alone is inadequate for establishing whether or not any particular statement is true. True statements are more reliable than false ones. Determining which opinion is best requires seeking out true ones whenever we can. Logic alone cannot do that.
Perhaps you forgot your OP:
Quoting creativesoul
If you have a problem with logic "presupposing some truth", then why did you presuppose that there are two opposing opinions and that there is a best one to believe?
It seems to me that logic doesn't presuppose some truth, you do, and logic is simply used to determine if another truth (the conclusion) can follow from your presupposed truth (the premise).
Name a method of seeking what is best to believe that doesn't presuppose that there is something best to believe - a truth. What else could you have meant by what is "best to believe"?
The fact is that there are other methods that others claim to use to decide what is best to believe and that you seem at a loss of naming. They are faith, revelation, authority and popularity to name a few, but as you might already know, these are logical fallacies.
Quoting creativesoul
How did you come to know X, and in knowing X, are you not saying X is a truth, in which case you used logic to know X?
It does it for me, but if someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?
I didn't realise you suffered from internal conflict.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Well I don't think logic can create values. It might be that you have found for yourself a limitation of logic, unless you have an answer to your own question.
But what I was asking, was about the conflict between you and everyone else commenting. And I can see of course that that conflict has not at all been resolved. So I wonder if it is to some extent an externalisation of that internal conflict that you claim is resolved by logic?
You're mistaken. I have shown that fdrake and Pantragruel agreed with me that logic is indeed necessary. It is only creativesoul that seems to have a problem with this. However I have shown that although creativesoul claims that they disagree, they keep attempting to use logic to make their case. So, while they disagree with their words, they agree with their actions.
Quoting unenlightened
You're confusing logic with delusions.
Kindly do not misrepresent my position. I consider that a reportable offence.
Logic is one constituent of reason. Reason most emphatically does NOT reduce to logic. Reason also functions through analogy, intuition, synthesis, etc.
Frankly, this seems to me to be trivially true and trivially evident; I can't imagine why anyone would have trouble with this.
No Harry. As you see, I am not mistaken. @Pantagruel, @creativesoul and myself, (and @fdrake can speak for himself), but three of us are fairly clear in our continued disagreement with you. You cannot "show" that people agree with you and call that a resolution, you have to allow their autonomy and persuade them to agree.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Well I hope,Harry, that you have some fairly clear evidence of my making that confusion, because otherwise it would be a rather cheap rhetorical (not logical) ad hom. But again, it rather looks as though it is you that has the delusion that you have been persuasive when you have not.
I think you might begin to see a pattern for yourself in these interchanges that treats the other's view as pathological whenever it differs from yours, or else as secretly agreeing even when they avowedly disagree. I have always found you to be a frustrating person to try and dialogue with, but here, I feel I am finally getting an insight into what is going on for you. You seem to have a great intolerance for ambiguity and disagreement that comes over to me, and I think to others, as a rather bullying arrogance that probably masks a deal of insecurity.
Yet I made the same statement here and you didn't say anything of the sort.
It's only after unenlightened started his bandwagon that you decided to jump on.
As I have shown, our disagreement has never been about whether logic is or isn't useful for determining the question the OP is asking - if there is a best method for determining what opposing opinion is best to believe. It has been on the nature of dialectic logic.
Quoting Pantagruel
As has been shown by me, you, fdrake and others, there are various forms of logic just as there are various forms of reason. It would be my bet that each form of logic maps onto each form of reasoning that you want to provide as an example.
I also showed that logical and reasonable are synonyms of each other. Do I seriously need to provide you with the definition of "synonym" as well?
Quoting unenlightened
Pantagruel has been so inconsistent and intellectually dishonest since their initial interaction with me, I seriously don't know what they think or believe.
Creativesoul's issue is that "logic presupposes truth". If that is a problem then there is a problem with their OP, as it presupposes some truth.
When asked to clarify what they meant by "best to believe" creativesoul responded with:
Quoting creativesoul
So, what methodology helps to determine what opinions are true. That would be logic.
The fact that fdrake's post is the long drawn out version of simply saying "Logic" and both creativesoul and Baden gave high marks for the post, then it seems that they all agree as well. The high marks might be for the detailed complexity of their post, or it might be a sign of favoritism being that my post, though much shorter, said the same thing and now is when they want to disagree that logic is necessary. In doing so, they just disagreed with fdrake and contradicted themselves.
As for you, you can keep posting because all it does is help my case and hurt yours. Every time you use logic to show how logic isn't useful, you defeat your own argument and strengthen mine. The fact that we disagree has more to do with your inability to remove your politically partisan glasses. You argue for the sake of arguing. You sound like my 13 year old son sometimes.
Yes, I saw how you cherry-picked the definition you used also. I surveyed a number of other definitions available online that did NOT offer that simplistic equivocation.
Do you seriously think I have made an argument against logic? I'd like you to quote me on that or withdraw the claim. If the question is "what do elephants eat?" and unenlightened says 'well they don't eat logic.' that does not amount to a rejection of logic. Again, you don't have an argument of your own, but only the negation of a ridiculous straw man.
I notice you have not attempted to substantiate your previous claim that am confusing logic with delusions, but here you are with another invention. It's rather sad, and a waste of time, because we cannot possibly resolve anything while you are arguing against your own fantasy.
Again and more strongly than ever, the impression is that you are not engaging with what anyone here is saying, but using our posts to conduct an internal argument of your own, presumably against some non-rational aspect of yourself that you find difficult to reconcile yourself to.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I see now, it is a cry for help. But alas "Reason is and ought only to to be the slave of the passions." Hume's insight would be a liberation for you if you let it.
Actually, I just grew tired of what was obviously a one-sided discussion. @unenlightened obviously has more patience than me.
:smile:
As has been already mentioned... we first have to agree on what it is that we're talking about. It seems clear to me that there are different senses of the same term being used by different individuals. Namely, the terms "logic" and "truth".
Of course, that alone sorely needs correcting.
When faced with competing valid explanations for what's happened and/or is happening, it is always best to err on the side of the one with the fewest unprovable premisses, the most falsifiable/verifiable claims, and the fewest entities necessary in order for it to have the explanatory power that it does - whatever that may be, and/or amount to.
The fewer the terms necessary for adequate explanation the better. The fewer falsehood, the better. Etc.
That's what's best to believe at all times regarding any and all competing explanations for the same events.
I have no such problem. Logic does presuppose truth. That's not a problem unless we forget to 'keep it in mind', so to speak.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You do realize that those are not mutually exclusive options, right? Logic does. I do. You do, as well.
No problem.
That's the way it is.
Quoting Harry Hindu
"A truth"???
:confused:
I do not talk like that. Have not. Would not, unless I was intentionally and deliberately temporarily adopting another's use/sense of the term "truth".
On my view truth IS correspondence with/to what's happened and/or is happening. So, no...
I'm not using the term "truth" as a means for referring to some true thought, belief, and/or statement thereof that is best to believe. I use the term "opinion" or "statement" to pick out opinions that consist of statements. They are true(or not) if and only if they correspond to what's happened and/or is happening.
Which is the best(out of the group) is the question, and more importantly, is there a universally applicable and reliable method for determining which competing explanation(conflicting statements) is true, if any are...
I'm puzzled by the lack of understanding regarding some stuff talked about heretofore. For example...
It's by definition alone that seeking "what's best to believe" when faced with competing explanations of the same events presupposes a remarkable and significant difference between the explanations.
How else could they be competing? Or better... conflicting, because that's the terminology invoked in the OP.
You act as if there's something wrong with presupposing that not all explanations are on equal footing; are well-grounded; are true; etc.
They are not.
That's a factual statement Jack, and the presupposition is a true belief!
:wink:
I know... right?
I have made serious allegations about some logic(paraconsistent, I think is what they call it?), and yet Harry has neglected those altogether. Weird.
It does not follow that I reject logic wholesale, or that I find no value whatsoever in logic and our use of it.
I've spelled out - as clearly and simply as I know how - the limits of logic that I'm aware of(or at least that I think I'm aware of).
The conflicts that matter most are the moral/ethical ones...
What ought we do given the way things are.
First...
Spell out the way things are. Second, discuss what we ought do as a means to effect/affect the change(s) we would like to take place. In politics, such talk of morality and/or being moral/ethical is shunned. There is a collective aversion to the word and/or topic itself. It's an immediate emotional reaction akin to watching the observable effects of someone who says that something is making their skin crawl...
Eeeeww!!!
Such a shame.
In simple terms...
The elected officials' job is to act in ways that increase the quality of everyday American lives whenever it is possible to do so. It is not in the best interest of everyday Americans to be forced to choose between the health of themselves and/or their loved ones and/or economic survival - collapse - during a pandemic that was caused by circumstances completely beyond their own control...
Push 'em out there... make em work. Some will suffer more than others. People will die. The cure cannot be worse than the disease.
Covid19 is not the only disease eating American politics and life from the inside out. It's certainly not the worst. The worst is making the 'novel corona virus' even more deadly than it needs to be.
Ok...
Hi ho, hi ho, it's back to work I go....
Insert Mr. Green here...
I want that emoji back!!!
Mead's concept of the social mind adds an interesting dimension; my summary is in the thread How did consciousness evolve?
I'd like to flag up the assumption built into your recipe, that I think is exposed in the conflict we have been having, that is always a central concern of my own philosophy - identification.
This 'we' - a lot of the time it can be taken for granted, 'we' agree already who 'we' are.
We are rational, honest and good. We are ready to subsume our personal interests to the collective interest. We cooperate. We are Americans.
_______________________________________________________
I am logical. (identification)
Therefore I have the best possible and only possible equipment for reaching the truth.
Therefore, if you disagree with me, you are illogical, dishonest, or deluded.
Therefore I have already resolved any conflict.
________________________________________________________
You cannot argue with a virus. And you cannot argue with the illogical, the dishonest, or the deluded.
To resolve a conflict with corona, or with Hitler, or whatever we are calling the unreasonable enemy this week, I.S. or Daish, or terrorism, or the Republican Party, you just have to completely destroy them.
Only 'we' can resolve a conflict, because only 'we' have the common ground. So the very first step must be one of generosity, of inclusivity, the admission that the other is not other, and has a point.
So here's the fundamental difficulty. I, as a rational honest and good person, am perfectly willing to admit you also to that status, and then we can talk things over and see where we differ and where we agree and so on. All those practical things that @fdrake listed come into play, sources can be compared etc. But if you are not prepared to admit me to that status as well, then we will be talking at cross purposes at best. Without the equality and mutuality of equality. 'we' does not exist. There is not a common language in which common sense can be expressed and prevail, for all that it may appear that there is.
You mean like how you cherry-picked your source on dialectic logic and how you cherry-picked this one small part of my post to respond to while ignoring the rest?
Quoting Pantagruel
Yet your patience was renewed once unenlightened started bandwagoning.
I grew tired of trying to reason with you long ago, so the discussion became more of a way of showing reasonable readers just how hypocritical you are.
Quoting unenlightened
If you don't have a problem with logic being the answer to the question as posed in the OP and then clarified as referring to what is true, then you have just made it more apparent what your actual problem is.
You have a political beef with me, which was actually apparent in when you inserted yourself into the discussion I was having with Pantagruel. You claim that I was being authoritarian, but you know I'm a libertarian. There was nothing authoritative about it. It's an internet post on a philosophy form that can be ignored or argued against. I don't know where you get such ideas other than you just can't stand me because of our political differences so you just want to assemble a bandwagon of hypocrites to pick a fight in a thread that has nothing to do with politics.
Quoting creativesoul
Wow! Thanks, creativesoul. So this means that you like my one-worded reply better than fdrake's post that contains so many entities and presumed truths and all that stuff you just said?
Quoting creativesoul
What I was referring to is this:
Quoting creativesoul
So you want to know which method is useful for determining which of two opposing opinions is true. My answer was simply "Logic", which seems to be in line with the type of answer you are looking as described in your previous statement above. It is only when I pointed out your hypocrisy that the shit hit the fan in this thread.
Quoting creativesoul
Think of logic as the rules of a computer program. The rules are applied to input to provide output. The input (premise) is supplied by the user of the program, not the program. The conclusion is the output. If you have a faulty program (faulty logic) then the output will be incorrect.
We write programs to solve problems. Given the right program you can solve your problem.
Quoting creativesoul
Without empiricism how would you be aware of happiness and suffering? Logic is necessary make the distinction between the two. Empiricism is necessary to find the causes of suffering and happiness. Logic is necessary to plan paths to avoid suffering and maximize happiness using what you found using your senses. Empiricism and logic are the only means of determining what is true in ethics and outside of ethics. The imperfections lie in our deep, fundamental premises that we start with, the very first input that produces erroneous output that we then use as input for other programs to solve other problems.
So it seems to me that it comes down to what is ethics and morality. Can you solve that problem with the very thing that you are questioning the nature of? Does the same problem apply to logic?
Fucking hell Harry! Your logic is a fucking joke. You are totally irrational. You make shit up left and right and you cannot follow the simplest argument because you don't even read properly. As I just said, because you have no charity, there is no talking to you at all. There is nothing between us to be resolved, because you are inventing my position and defeating it and I literally have nothing to say in the matter. That is the extent of your authoritarian arrogance. Not only is there no common ground between us and no common language, we are not even on the same planet; you are off in a little world of your own where you are very clever and everyone else is a bit slow. Enjoy.
You get to disagree. But you actually have not disagreed. If you want to disagree, say something different. A question and a random insult is not disagreeing, merely disagreeable. But anyone else can see very easily that it is substantially true because it actually quotes you traducing my argument in order to pretend that I am being political (and you of course are being logical). It's hilarious in fact.
It's not a fact that you brought terms like "authoritarian" and "Trump" into a discussion that wasn't about either? Did I not show how my initial post in this thread wasn't authoritarian if someone could have just ignored it? You claim to see what others will see, but I don't see it.
Be well Harry. I'm not interested in continuing with you.
The program you're using is faulty.
I would settle for "Address the actual words of someone... anyone".
You're right. That's an assumption, and probably not a safe assumption. Best to get open public agreement prior to anything else...
Especially here in America at this time.
OK. This intrigued me as it seems like a thread common to many disputes. Can you be more specific about the practices which constitute 'admitting one to the status of an equal'? I'm particularly interested in how you avoid simply enjoying your own echo chamber (by declaring all opposition as simply not treating you as an equal); also in how you treat those who are not your equals - you wouldn't expect to be treated as an equal contributor to a discussion about all topics regardless of your expertise on the matter, so what approach delimits such interactions (again without simply declaring opposition to be non-expert)?
Say we have common agreements about some set of ideas {x} and we can thus discuss the disagreement about the nature of subset {xi, xii}. What's to stop us from simply declaring that we can only have a reasonable discussion with those who agree with us about set {xi} ("those who believe in set {xii} are simply not worth arguing with " ). So we limit our discussion to those who agree about set {xi}, and we happily engage in our disagreement about sub-subset {xia, xib}. Until we decide that those who agree with set {xib} are simply beyond the pale and cannot be reasonably engaged in discussion...
Well you treat me as an equal by quoting what I say, and asking me for expansion, justification an so on. I treat you as an equal, hopefully, by taking your comments seriously too. Are you part of my echo chamber? I don't think so, and I don't think any of the other contributors to the thread are either. We treat each other as equals by admitting our fallibility. I could be wrong about this... you might know more than me... let's try and find out.
So we are always in an echo chamber to the degree that we are speaking the same language, and we are both humans of the 21st century. So here we are discussing conflict resolution, and my first suggestion is that we need the common ground at least of a general agreement of the topic at hand. Not that we cannot discuss other things in other threads, but here we are discussing conflict resolution.
Hopefully we can have that much agreement so that we can then disagree about how to resolve conflicts.
Because I am a generalist, most topics here have a contributor who has more expertise than me, but where I think I can sometimes make a serious contribution is at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, and particularly matters of identity. But if I have some expertise, I still treat others as equals by laying things out clearly, and giving explanations and references as appropriate, and by being willing to reconsider in the light of the discussion.
Quoting Isaac
Well there's nothing to stop us. But if someone does that habitually, they are probably not going to get on very well in a forum like this. This is a good game, that i like to play, to put my ideas out there and see how they stand up in public. Sometimes I have to go quiet and reconsider. But It is not even a problem. Serious philosophers of mathematics do not want the likes of me dragging their discussions down to a schoolboy level all the time, and should tell me to butt out whenever they want.
Nobody has to debate with another, but if you debate, then debate as equals until you have had enough. Equally entitled to speak, to argue to contribute, not equally knowledgeable or equally right. One can treat a 3-year-old as an equal, it's a matter of respect of the individual, mainly.
In the beginning of this thread, I asked if there was a universally applicable method for knowing which competing explanation is best when we are faced with a set thereof.
fdrake posted a very relevant list things to do pertaining to the OP. Particularly, that post was chock full of common and good advice for helping an audience decide between conflicting opinions. I want to revisit that post and the other one when the right time comes. I've been a bit distracted, and it deserves more attention than I currently have to offer it.
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I would go waaaay out on a limb here(insert sarcastic tone) and say that many, if not most, of us would agree that logic is part and parcel to any reasonable methodology for establishing which explanation is best(if there is one that is, for they may very well be on equal footing, depending of course upon the events being explained). Logic is the means we have to follow another's argument. Choosing between conflicting statements sometimes requires understanding a rather nuanced opinion. Logic is of irrevocable importance here as well.
However, logic is inherently unreliable - incapable is better - when used in an attempt to discriminate between true and false statements of belief(which is precisely what all conflicting opinions amount to). Carefully considering which conflicting opinion is best, includes being able to know which is true, if any of them are. All else being equal, a true statement is more valuable, if for no other reason than our already knowing that true beliefs are the most reliable means available to us for successfully navigating the world.
I mean, logic is extremely reliable when used for certain purposes. It's capable of helping us to achieve understanding of another's position - at times. In can help us to understand nuanced arguments. It has all sorts of uses and benefits. It's use can also be a detriment at other times.
One thing is certain:Being able to reliably discriminate between mutually exclusive statements in order to determine which - if either - are true is not one of things that logic can do. The capability to discriminate between true and false statements is always needed for establishing which conflicting statement is best. Logic is inherently inadequate for that part of the task at hand.
:meh:
I'm going to take it a step further in line with the OP.
Identify the mutually exclusive statements of opinion and you will be talking about the problem(the conflicting opinions). That is step one.
Conflict resolution begins by identifying the conflict.
Sure... some will die, and some will suffer horribly. Many will suffer more than others. Acknowledgement alone is not enough though, especially coming from a world leader. When those who are the least secure, the least privileged, the least fortunate, the least lucky... when those people suffer far more than need be, and it is at 'the hands' of those who have the most, then we have a BIG problem.
The suffering is not all the same. Some will suffer financially and get by just fine. This pandemic may may a mere bump in the road to many... perhaps most. For others however, this pandemic could become the sure path to unnecessary financial and physiological(personal health) ruin. Such is the case when we're in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and far too much economic concern dominates the discussion table and we lose sight of what must be done before we make people go back to work and/or everyday normal life.
Who cares? We find the money for all sorts of things that are far less important than this. Pressed, it's simple. Figure out what it will take to do this and then take that amount from those who've benefitted the most from the global economy, or take away their ability to ever use it - and the consumers(ahem... victims) - again.
Choose to save the people.
It's certainly showing what many find most disconcerting and/or troubling about the pandemic and it's effects/effects.
Yes, but all parties here have arguably done all those things (except admitting fallibility - I don't see much of that from either party). I'm not supporting Harry's position here (I disagree with it quite strongly in fact) what I'm interested in is that way in which generalities about rules of engagement seem to massively underdetermine. Everyone agrees with them, and yet think their interlocutors are the ones not adhering to the rules, it's always the other party being unreasonable. So 'the rules' do not, in fact, manage to specify anything useful, they're still nebulous enough for everyone to consider themselves to have met the required standard and if we could magically enforce them (by means of self-reporting) it would make virtually no difference at all to the progress of most disputes.
Quoting unenlightened
This may just have been a rhetorical device on your part, but it's so rare to hear this kind of attitude and it's one close to my heart so I wanted to acknowledge it with a "hear, hear!"
I wrote a long convoluted answer to you, and then realised that what you say is simply not true. Anyone can be self-critical, and most people are to some extent. some people are more fair-minded than others. If you think it is always the other chap, then you are part of the problem, but by flagging up the danger you illustrate how it can be overcome.
So you're not going to either "[ask] me for expansion, justification an so on", nor "[admit] [y]our fallibility", nor "treat others as equals by laying things out clearly, and giving explanations and references as appropriate", nor "[be] willing to reconsider in the light of the discussion".
Just going to tell me I'm wrong in a single sentence. We're three exchanges in to our disagreement and already you're either breaking your own rules or you've decided that I'm so outside of the pale that I'm not worth engaging with in the spirit of resolving conflict.
I disagree that most people are self critical (effectively so), Whilst I agree that some people are more fair-minded than others, I disagree with the implication that our judgement of this property is sufficiently objective not to just create our own echo chamber. I disagree that simply flagging up the danger is sufficient to illustrate how it can be overcome.
So how do we proceed to resolve those disagreements if you're already at the stage where potentially mutually-respectful in-depth answers are already being discarded in favour of unsupported declarations of what is and is not the case?
I'm not clear on which part you disagree with, perhaps we could start there. All I'm saying is that if everyone agrees with 'the rules' and yet there are still invoked as evidence of unreasonableness then 'the rules' must underdetermine. Are you disagreeing with the fact that most people agree with the rules, or are you disagreeing with the fact that they are regularly invoked as evidence of unreasonableness?
Quoting Isaac
Sorry, I didn't realise we had a conflict going; I thought we were discussing. I'll lay it out in a bit more detail. There is a deal of literature one this stuff - 'cognitive bias'.
What I understand you to be saying is that everyone agrees the rules of engagement, and everyone always thinks they obey them and the other chap is at fault. I agree that the rules are widely agreed, and I agree that there is a widespread tendency to think it is the other chap that has a problem. But not always. The fact that thou and I have acknowledged the tendency is part of our resistance to it.
Quoting Isaac
This is not a disagreement you have with me, because I agree with you. Flagging up the danger is not sufficient, but it is a sign of awareness of the problem, and the first step. There are no guarantees.
Quoting Isaac
We cannot, in such a case. The whole thrust of my argument is that conflicts cannot always be resolved, and it at least takes a willingness to engage and attempt to be fair-minded in the knowledge that it does not come naturally.
But my style in the previous post was predicated on an assumption of agreement that I now see was mistaken. When we are in our echo-chamber, we can pass over what we agree without comment, and focus on where there seems to be a lack of clarity, or disagreement. I like to converse with naivety. You ask a question, and I do not look for a trap, but try to answer. But now you are moving towards at least an accusation of hypocrisy, so perhaps it is time to ask you, if you disagree with my proposals, to bring forth your better ones.
If we resolve our conflicts, have we produced an echo chamber?
Possibly, but if we were resisting it would others not notice this? Yet others accuse us of being the ones who are not abiding by the rules. So the other possibility arises that we are instead using our acknowledgement of this tendency to cut short disagreement simply to preserve our own beliefs. That's what I'm suggesting is a more universally applicable explanation for the phenomena.
Quoting unenlightened
See above. It depends heavily whether flagging up the danger is used as a tool to preserve one's own world view, or as tool for self-improvement. As you say, there are no guarantees. I think we only perhaps disagree as to scale not in any absolute sense. I see 'the rules' being far more often used as ready means of dismissing uncomfortable arguments than as the intellectual hygiene @fdrake rightly advises.
I should clarify, I'm talking about conflicting beliefs here, not necessarily the verbal progress of arguments. Prefacing every proposition with "I might be wrong but..." is just a obsequious nod if one never turns out to be.
Quoting unenlightened
I agree with the first half, but my argument is essentially that the second half underdetermines. No-one thinks they've not not been willing to engage, no one thinks they're not fair-minded, and no one thinks this doesn't result from hard work on their part. But if we are to dismiss people from our discursive environment on the grounds of rule-breaking behaviour, some of them must be wrong about that. Is their wrongness something we can stand on (like the fact that the earth is round), or their wrongness just another disagreement we have, in which case identifying it hasn't helped us resolve the conflict at all.
Quoting unenlightened
Fair enough. I think appeals to vague concepts such as 'fair-mindedness' and 'honest engagement' cause more problems than they solve by distracting from the actual point of dispute to dispute about those terms. They should be avoided. I do think, however, that some of the rules can be very useful - have you supplied support for empirical claims, have you taken care to review alternative hypotheses, have you at least attempted to supply an argument for your position, have you asked for clarification before dismissing other's arguments.
These are all demonstrable in written or otherwise recorded discussions.
By and large though, I think most disputes are settled by demonstration, not by debate. Debate is largely a pass time, not a resolution method.
Now you're having the same problem I had, and many others have had with unenlightened.
Quoting Isaac
Oh wait, you did the same thing you are accusing of unenlightened is doing.
The common thread is that those that have disagreed with me have ended up contradicting themselves (their own rules).
According to your statements in other threads on other topics, I don't need to show anything except express that is how I feel.
I feel logical. You say that I am illogical. That it offensive to me. Maybe I'm a logical person inside an illogical body. You need to address me as I wish, and I wish to be addressed as, "Logical".
Happens in arguments all the time. We get hung up on flaws in our opponent's position and for some reason heuristically treat that as confirmation of our own. Critique for its own sake is always valuable, critique to bolster what remains unarticulated can sometimes be stifling or dangerous.
(11) Do not hang back and simply ask questions; if you position yourself always as the critic and the cynic, you can bolster your own beliefs simply by rejecting all others - and it is much easier to show a flaw or falsify than to get a good picture of something or confirm. Do not let the asymmetry in difficulty between justification and falsification be a reason your beliefs never change; all doubt is done within a motivating context - a frame - which can, itself, be more or less occlusive or productive to generating well justified beliefs regarding the matter at hand.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting unenlightened
There's a certain amount of vulnerability involved in discussions that actually change how people think. I mean, we have them with our partners (or, ideally, should be able to); I've realised I've been an arse for reasons that were hitherto that moment beyond my comprehension due to a strong emotional reaction or castigation a lot. A performative demonstration of the effects of my commitments or lack of care. I've had that a lot when seriously studying something; like, reading a book, taking notes, finding secondary literature; but a lot less in debates and discussions.
I think there's quite a lot of value in hearing "you're not playing by my rules", or such frustrations, as an invitation; in the same way we'd (I'd?) treat a partner's anger. That requires rather a lot of emotional and cognitive work to do so though, and even then isn't always worth the effort.
You could be right, but I think differently. We haven't resolved that conflict, so neither of us has demonstrated our method successfully.
Yes, I realise that. I'm sorry it offends, and I wish it did not. I don't suppose you want to hear anything much from me, but I wonder if you think that feelings are logical? If I feel attractive, I might have good evidence in the way the girls swoon around me, or I might just be flattering myself. When someone calls me ugly, I'm offended because I feel attractive.
I know I have all sorts of feelings and very easily take offence, and I know that these feelings have a major effect on the way I respond. I think everyone is sensitive like that, everyone is not entirely logical, but also emotional. I think philosophers and scientists forget this at their peril.
You have suggested strongly that one cannot argue against logic except by employing logic. So I accept this, and suggest back to you that you never need to defend logic, since it can never be attacked.
That sounds logical. :up:
I have had discussions that have changed the way I think less than I would like, but more than once, and more than once someone has told me that a discussion has changed their thinking. So I know that communication is possible, and I know it is difficult, and uncertain.
Vulnerability is exactly the right idea, I think. One discovers that one was wrong, that one was not good, or logical or clever, or honest or whatever virtue one had awarded oneself by way of identity, and one is wounded. A good friend, or a good lover, is not afraid to wound one the way a surgeon does, and a good friend can be trusted to do so when necessary. We fight; we are wounded; and if our egos are well pruned, they will bear more fruit.
I've made over 2,000 comments and not started a single thread. I think number 11 is my Achilles heel.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, the problem, I think, is no matter what the mode of the discussion, the underlying subject matter is still some conflicting belief about the world and such beliefs are updated reluctantly (to say the least) so there's some lag between the mode of communication (discursive, emotional, logical, persuasive...) and the effect those methods should have. In that time you kind of know you're wrong, but are still looking around for ways to avoid that pain. That's essentially what I mean by suggesting we avoid many of the more vague 'rules of engagement'. They're simply too tempting at that fragile stage. Also your interlocutor knows you should know you're wrong ("that should have worked!") and are sometimes frustrated at the delay. I certainly learnt that one with my children, don't push for the admission of wrongness... just wait.
Quoting fdrake
I think I understand what you're saying here, that, like a partner's anger, we can interpret the expression as "I'm not having that kind of discussion" like realising that when your partner is having a discussion about your not having done the dishes, it is not appropriate to ask for supporting evidence (learnt that one the hard way).
When someone keeps contradicting themselves when asked to clarify their beliefs, how are we suppose to know whether we are disagreeing or agreeing on anything?
It seems like the first step would be to clarify each of our beliefs in such a way that the other side can determine whether we are actually agreeing or disagreeing.
All I require is apt sense, reinforced by knowledge.
I can then apply that, as a judge, or not apply that, as a silent witness.
2+2=4, ledgibly, but this can be argued against only by people with an apt sense of the matter.
I'm sure the idea that 2+2=4 is false (by some sense), exists.
I can tell if most people are wrong but I'm very wise..
There is judgement mixed in with debating, person 1 and person 2 resolve through person 3 (apt judge) or person X (apt sense).
Yes indeed. One of my very early suggestions was that to resolve a conflict we have to establish the conflict.
Quoting unenlightened
And again, later on.
Quoting unenlightened
This is why I talk about wooly concepts like trust and respect. I cannot find a better way to express that necessary intention to find out what the other chap is saying, rather than to prove him wrong or contradictory regardless.
If we discuss combatively, but also cooperatively, then no one loses because we are all on the side of truth and understanding. To be deprived of one's error is a privilege even if at times it is a painful and laborious process. And if we are not on all on the side of truth and understanding, then there is zero point in our talking at all. But now I am actually somewhat frightened, because I have been persuaded back to this discussion, and find myself saying the same things again and at least half expecting another four pages of the same back again.
The thing about the interlocutor knowing they're wrong; I think that applies mostly when two people have implicitly accepted the same background rules for the discussion (or part of the discussion). If two people involved in the discussion disagree on what the matter they're discussing is, or what's especially significant about it (cognitively/factually or emotionally), in my experience I and my hypothetical interlocutors find that place of mutual understanding, even if the disagreement persists, much harder to reach.
But I think what you're saying's otherwise very true. To check if we're on the same page, I think a paradigmatic instance of it that we see on the internet a lot is those one line fisking posts that just say the name of a fallacy. It's little more than gainsaying with Latin spices.
Quoting unenlightened
Which I think is consonant with what un's saying above.
Quoting Isaac
I actually had a similar conversation with an ex!
I guess maybe the intersection of all these things is the problem: what strategies can be used to ensure that people cultivate being responsive to their interlocutors? Maybe it's a question of intellectual sensitivity; how can I make my thought formation process sensitive and relevant to yours, and vice versa?
I'm compelled to make a better attempt at building a bridge of mutual understanding.
Please know that my participation here is all about one thing... Attempting to figure out if it is actually possible to acquire knowledge of how to best discriminate between competing/conflicting opinions.
Given that the thread is about conflict resolution, and you and I have not been communicating our thoughts as clearly and concisely as I think we are both capable of doing, I'm making this deliberate atttempt because we may not be as far apart as it may seem. As Banno tends to say, and rightly so, we agree on far more than we disagree.
I'm thinking of this post as an attempt at a fresh start built upon pre-existing agreement(s). Let's bring some into view. That seems as good a path as any. So...
Here's a good list of proposed agreements to form a basis for better discussion.
1 Some conflicts get resolved.
2 Sometimes the audience members are uncertain which side to believe(assuming two different opinions/narratives/explanations for the same events).
Do we agree that the two statements above report upon two remarkably different situations, consisting of remarkably different things?
:smile:
P.S.
The irony of my misspelling the word "attempt" during an attempt...
:nerd:
Yes, I think this is the case too, but (stop me if I'm getting too psychoanalytical) there's an advantage there - in terms of game theory - to a person wishing to avoid cognitive dissonance but with low confidence in their belief. If they clearly present the nature of the disagreement and the terms of the argument (the mode it will take) then if they eventually have to admit they were wrong, they know the other person will know that earlier than they themselves would feel comfortable changing their belief. Muddy the waters regarding terms of the discussion and you buy yourself time to change a belief if necessary without it being clear to all that you're wrong.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, I hate that, like we're playing 'name that fallacy'. The other is 'you obviously haven't read...' as if merely reading a text imparts automatic agreement.
Quoting fdrake
This is key, and it's worth emphasising that it's far from natural so it will take work. We've created a game here 'having a discussion' which is made up out of a set of tools 'using language' which were - according to popular theory - not even created for the job.
I think your initial posts covered a lot of good ground that is measurable and can act in a self-regulatory way, for those who actually care in the first place. But I think principles like charitable interpretation, honest representation and a collective agreement about the goal are also really important, it's just that they're too open to abuse (anyone can claim 'foul' on such broad concepts for nefarious advantage, like tripping in the box to get a free kick), and I'm including inadvertent abuse to avoid the pain of cognitive dissonance here, so I'm talking about self-regulation, not regulation of others. So I think any solution will involve pinning down ways of more clearly defining these nebulous concepts.
To that end, I quite like this;
Quoting unenlightened
This we can recognise. How much of one's interaction is composed of questions? How many times the word 'wrong' has been used? How frequent a reference to what is 'true'? These could act as useful triggers, I think.
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting unenlightened
Exactly. The common ground is logic. If you refuse to use it, then there is no point in us having a discussion as I would never be able to understand your position to assert that I either agree or disagree.
Accusing people of being authoritarian simply for making assertions, which we all do on this forum, is an ad hom, hypocritical, and isn't a good way to start things off when attempting to find some common ground.
That is the point here, that with you, creativesoul and Pantagruel, I haven't been able to make heads or tails of your arguments because they end up contradicting something else you said before. So, as it stands right now, I can't tell you whether any of us agree or disagree on anything we've "discussed".
Quoting creativesoul
Well, maybe Banno can explain how we know that we are talking about the same thing, and not talking past each other, when we disagree.
Quoting creativesoul
The fresh start would be in addressing how we can disagree or agree on anything if what was said before contradicts what is said now?
If you can't be consistent in your explanations of your own beliefs, then it seems that you are unable to identify your actual beliefs.
Quoting creativesoul
Sure. But in (2) how do we know that the two different opinions are about the same thing?
I don't think I want to go round again, even if you do.
You might think it a game, but I don't consider making logical fallacies a game. If you consider a philosophical discussion a game, then that is probably a good indicator that we aren't going to find any common ground.
If it makes you hate less, then use the term category error, as virtually any logical fallacy is a category error.
If you read the reply, the first word was, "Exactly.", as in "I agree".
We both agreed that in order to determine whether or not we actually agree or disagree, we'd have to establish an understanding of each other's position. We would ask each other questions about each other's beliefs to see how it fits in with the rest of what we know (integration). If those questions receive contradictory answers to what they asserted before, then how can one come to understand such a belief?
So we do agree on some things. It is only when I say a particular five-letter word, "logic", that your panties get all tied into a knot.
Logic is a field of philosophy that sets the rules for correct thinking in all the other fields of philosophy. Why would you not want to integrate the conclusions from all fields into a consistent whole?
The interesting thing to note here is that when we agreed, we were both being logical. Neither of us contradicted ourselves in understanding the distinction between agreeing and disagreeing, or that what were both talking about was the same thing - the process of determining whether or not an agreement or disagreement is taking place.
Harry, will you do me a favour?
Stop quoting me. It disturbs my peace of mind.
I'm going to go ahead answer this question myself since no one has been able to answer it without contradicting themselves.
The answer is that in disagreeing we aren't talking about the same thing - ever. We may use the same scribbles or sounds to refer to something, but it's not the same thing in each of our heads when we disagree. The implication here is that one is right and the other is wrong, or that we are both wrong and still not talking about the same thing in each other's mind.
Now the question is, how do we determine which is right and which is wrong, or if they are both wrong and there is some other option that is "best to believe"? Which statement is closest to a 1 to 1 correspondence with the actual state of affairs of what is best to believe? My answer, and several other answers in different forms but were all referring to the same thing, was "logic".
At least that is what I thought, because I thought that what fdrake and I were referring to was the same thing - logic, and I was confused when I received a contradictory response from creativesoul. They would have never contradicted themselves if they simply let my assertion stand without any rebuttal.
Quoting unenlightened
So these two threads of the discussion strike me as two sides of the same thing. I don't know what they're two sides of, but I'm very convinced they're the same thing.
Side (1): Setting out one's claims defeasibly; paying attention to what would make you wrong, not just what makes you right. Writing so that the link between your claims and your motivation for having them is clear.
Side (2): Putting one's beliefs and identity at risk when arguing. Being not just open to, but enthusiastically pursuing, sites of tension in one's beliefs and identity as revealed in communication with the other.
It strikes me that writing in manner (1) requires willingness to engage in manner (2).
It also strikes me that it's easier to cultivate side (1) habits than side (2) habits. I base that on there being some general principles which can be written down, and some heuristics, like:
Being able to state what it would take for me to be wrong.
Being able to describe the connections between my claims in a somewhat neutral manner; why does x follow from y, and in what way does it follow?
Being able to describe the motivating context for my engagement.
that are relatively easy to understand in the context of side (1).
But, that "being able to describe the motivating context for my engagement" looks to me to be bleeding into side (2), often when I post on here I'm bringing baggage; intellectual and emotional; to the discussion. The things that motivate me to respond aren't just intellectual; they're aesthetic and emotional. Like when I correct someone who's doing mathematics really badly but being obstinate about their correctness; it strikes me as wrong cognitively, but also it's somehow a violation of my identity.
I speculate that there are motivational/emotional analogues of hinge propositions; statements and motivating contexts which are archetypical of my identity, and my attachment to those statements is very strong and very hard to revise. A hinge proposition is (roughly) an epistemic device that must be believed in order to have a discussion, but phrased as a statement; like "There is a world outside my mind". It is not something which can be doubted without doing considerable violence to how one makes sense of the world.
It seems to me that there are analogues to that regarding my identity insofar as it intersects with intellectual commitments; there are things I must believe to make sense of the world in the way I do. Someone who appears not to operate under those assumptions will simultaneously be judged by me to be wrong intellectually, but I'll condemn the belief to distance myself from it to save myself doing emotional work or to otherwise preserve my belief structure as it is.
That condemning might occur when a core belief; something strongly connected in my network of beliefs; is being challenged. Challenged in the manner that if I were to accept it, I wouldn't just have to change my mind or admit that I believed something falsely, I would also have to change how I think and thus what I believe about myself.
Is that consonant with what you're both saying?
You do realize that you quoted me and referred to my statements first, which warrants a reply with the specific statements quoted. So, you're saying that you can quote me but I can't quote you?
In doing 2) you are necessarily doing 1). If you question your own beliefs before exposing them to external criticism, then you are essentially putting your identity at risk, as you would be in the process of questioning what you actually believe is the right thing to believe.
I questioning the other's beliefs, I was asking the same questions they should have asked themselves before presenting them to me. If their answers contradict what they said before, then it stands that they would have a contradictory identity.
No. I'm saying that I am upset by our conversation, and I am asking you to please stop. I cannot oblige you to.
Thank you. I will do likewise.
That certainly overlaps with what I'm saying. There are two aspects to conflict resolution which interest me, one is the actual methods which can be used to resolve conflict (or get to a satisfactory understanding that the conflict cannot be resolved), the other is the psychology of being in conflict and of undertaking some attempt to explore it (I don't say 'resolve it' here because I think many of the activities people undertake within conflict have nothing to do with resolving them).
The two aspects link together for me when considering the abuse of the methods determined in the first aspect to satisfy tangential or occult objectives arising from the second aspect. We cannot derive useful methods of conflict resolution without acknowledging the extent to which our choices can be thus abused.
I like
Quoting fdrake
I think that really captures one of the most important issues within the second aspect I mentioned above. At some point during a disagreement (even a trivial hobbyist discussion) you might stumble across a contrary position to a belief which forms a central node of your Quinean Web of Beliefs. We feel compelled to quash it.
As you know I tend to see things through a computational lens, so that's how this is going to be phrased. I think we're bound, to a certain extent, to take cognitively efficient paths to modelling and re-modelling. When faced with the potential for a fundamental aspect of our thinking to require adjustment, it's simply more efficient to attempt to quash it (and only change if we absolutely fail to do so) than it is to explore it. The number of threads which would need to be hypothetically cut to really 'see' where the other person is coming from is simply too much work, we often just don't have the bandwidth.
I think people underestimate the consequences of the fact that all our concepts, beliefs etc are actually processes. It's not that we hold a concept that 'A leads to B' somewhere in our mind and so on perceiving A we apply the concept to some other cortex and make B. The having of the concept 'A leads to B' just is the fact that perceiving A makes B. This is very efficient, but makes it quite hard to really see how others might see some issue if the matter is quite fundamental.
Elsewhere, I have claimed that community is made by communication, and communication is a movement of truth. But I'm not sure if I am understanding you or @Isaac. I wonder if it will help if I describe an ideal:
The end point to be ensvisaged, would be for us to reach the state of agreement that might be called 'being of one mind', about whatever our topic is. So if there is an action that follows, we cooperate to act. And this agreement cannot be a victory for one or a defeat for another, because they are not in agreement.
I happen to have mentioned this ideal, because it just seemed to come up for examination, but it is not my possession, and it does not possess me. Perhaps it will inform some state of mind that some people might share at some point, or maybe not. But if I am still counting how many of my ideas reach the final draft, compared to how many of yours, then we are not really resolving a conflict or properly communicating. So from this perspective, Game Theory is the structure of non-communication. It is that to which solitary silence is preferable.
I'm not sure if you perhaps had this distinction in mind anyway, but this ideal surely only applies to quite a narrow (albeit important) range of differences. I couldn't care less if, after a discussion (disagreement) about the place of music in human culture, we remained entirely at odds. My goal in having such a discussion would be to try and understand why you think what you do. My method might be to poke at your beliefs with a stick to see what happens. I might even find myself disbelieving your own answers, if I've good cause, but reaching agreement wouldn't be a goal.
If we're discussing how best to help the homeless, however, I really want us to agree. I want either for you to adopt my methods or for me to find out from you that my methods were flawed and so arrive at better ones.
The purpose of entering into the conflict makes a huge difference to what constitutes a satisfactory outcome. Which I think is where much of the disingenuity we experience lies. Topics which really shouldn't have any need for unanimous agreement at any point, that should be quite satisfying without ever reaching that place, end up being approached as if they were the kind where agreement mattered.
I speculate this happens, in part, as @fdrake says. A discussion about something which should be innocuous stumbles upon something fundamental to one's character and all of a sudden entertaining an alternative perspective becomes hard work, dangerous even.
Of course it also happens for far more mundane reasons. Mostly to do with dishonesty about the purpose of the discussion. One party hiding the fact that they really wanted to play the role of teacher, or that they're deliberately trying to lead to some more important disagreement (usually about God).
Absent of either of these cases discussions about unimportant matters should be like cricket, we can just walk away at the end and say "good game".
Quoting Isaac
We might not agree about what is and isn't important. I'm not clear what the distinction is for another.
__________________________________________________________
Quoting Isaac
Ok, I'll adopt your methods.
_____________________________________________________________
I put it to you that this would not be at all a satisfactory discussion. You see the way I wish you would have put it is that you don't care whose method, all you care about is to find the best method. Because then you want to hear my method, and you want me to hear yours, and you want to hear what I think about your method and what I think about what you think about my method. That's a discussion.
Perfect!
Do we agree that there are some conflicts involving people who will not change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with?
:smile:
Spot on. No need to openly admit fallibility in a discussion where everyone already knows it, and shows that much as well... with comments precisely like you've wished for above.
Really good stuff in there!
I wanted to have a bit of discussion about some concern(s) that you've repeatedly expressed, but I'd like to take them one at a time.
Ok?
First up...
You seem to believe that because I use logic as a means to deny that logic is capable of discriminating between true and false statements, that that is somehow a problem for my denying that logic alone is enough to reliably determine and/or establish which competing/conflicting opinion is true.
I'm not sure what problem you think that that amounts to.
Could you explain how it is a problem that I use logic while denying it's ability to discriminate between true and false statements?
What happened to charitable interpretation? There are (at least) two methods in a conflict about how to help the homeless (my example). Your method and my method. If it is a conflict between me and you, then one of those methods can be identified with the label 'yours' and the other with the label 'mine'. It's just a linguistic device used in a single sentence. I could have called them method 'A' and method 'B', but I didn't, I chose the more conventional 'yours' and 'mine'. The post before you said you didn't understand my position, next post apparently you understand it so well that on the basis of a single sentence you find yourself so convinced you understand it that you're faced with no more charitable alternative than to conclude I'm an egotist so obsessed with my own thoughts that I don't even want to hear those of my interlocutors.
I let it go the first time you went on about honest enquiry and then simply declared everything I'd said to be untrue without even so much a sentence to explain why. Now you've spent another few posts writing about "concepts like trust and respect." and then accuse me of not even wanting to hear my interlocutor's arguments on the basis of a single ambiguous choice of expression. Where's the ""[asking] me for expansion, justification an so on" - again. Where's the "did you mean...?", or even the more charitable "I'm sure you didn't mean..."
These are not rhetorical questions, I seriously want to know what was going on in your head when you read that one sentence "I want either for you to adopt my methods or for me to find out from you that my methods were flawed and so arrive at better ones" and despite all our talk about respect, trust and charitable interpretation, you decide you're left with no choice but to presume it means I've no interest in hearing anyone else's opinion?
All premisses are statements/propositions/claims/assertions/expressions of thought and belief. Henceforth, I'll just use the term "statements".
All logic consists(in part) of statements.
All thought and belief presupposes correspondence with/to fact/reality by virtue of consisting entirely of correlations.
All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content.
So...
Logic presupposes truth.
When we use logic, we presuppose truth by virtue of treating premisses as if they are true, because that's precisely how one follows an argument. That's of the utmost importance here, because judiciously discriminating between conflicting opinions is an exercise of discriminating between mutually exclusive statements as well as identifying the thought and belief that they are grounded upon, and doing that requires knowing the rules of correct inference(logic).
Fast forward to a pair of conflicting opinions about what's happened and/or is happening. When and if the pair of opinions can be adequately simplified to a pair of mutually exclusive statements, much becomes clear, even if only by virtue of coincidence. I think this is close to focusing upon "hinge propositions" or "core belief", in the sense that drake used earlier.
While that could be what someone means when saying precisely what Un said... I can assure you that that's not an accurate report of Un's thought and belief on the matter. Those are certainly NOT the words he chose to use. That's only one of many different things that can be derived from those same words. I suggest you imagine a few other possibilities.
:brow:
Academics are certainly not immune.
Some guys poke and prod others and/or their beliefs in a deliberate intentional I'm-just-being-a-dick fashion, which is devaluing another. It's best for everyone to see that those guys are just dicks. The world is chock full of 'em.
Common sense...
Such people have no business wielding tremendous power over anyone they care so little about...
Good.
But he used the contingent "I wish you would have..." along with the conditional "Because then you want to hear my method, and you want me to hear yours, and you want to hear what I think about your method and what I think about what you think about my method.". If I've missed some rhetorical use of the contingent/conditional paring that doesn't imply that in the absence of the condition, that upon which it is conditional does not occur, then I will be glad to be shown ways in which this new device is employed and what it means.
Additionally, if he's not implying that I've no desire to hear another's method, or hear what they think about mine, then I'm not sure what the conditional is trying to say. If that's the state of affairs as things stand, then what does the 'If...Because then...' do?
If I say "I wish you had said X because if you had then it would have meant Y", I can only think of either one of two cases. Either Y is currently not the case and only would become the case contingent on my saying X, or Y is contingent on X but not exclusively so, Y may be the case anyway - in which case the statement seems to have no purpose, as Y may or may not be the case regardless of my saying X.
Many people have been encouraged to feel hostile and angry about the economic shutdown and other consequence of covid19 such as the social distancing measures. So, there is a conflict between what the foremost experts in the field of infectious disease demand must be done in order to stop the novel corona virus, and the feelings that much of the American public have. Those negative, angry, and hostile feelings are the result of correlations drawn between the way they've come to terms with what's happened and what's happening(which includes not only the virus stuff, but also their own terrible feelings of uncertainty/discontent).
The idea of being mad about being forced to follow social distancing guidelines was encouraged and perpetuated. That was and is a horrible public disservice. It remains in place, and is as active as ever. Growing, in fact.
A diversion.
The focus has changed from Trump's undeniable incompetence and other real problems regarding the pandemic that are not Trump's fault, to a broad-based sense of fear that one's liberty and freedom have been taken away by virtue of being required to do what it takes to stop the spread of covid19.
I'm not saying that your interpretation would be mistaken regardless of who used those terms. I'm saying it is mistaken because not everyone uses them like that.
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Had you said what was suggested, I too would have been a bit more convinced that who proposed the method did not matter, and that you were - in fact - interested in considering another method. It also would indicate that you were open to the idea that your own method could be improved, or that you were not all that certain that you have the best method. All of this is assuming the sincerity of the speaker. That's reading charitably.
Of course, in another vein of thought...
If one is certain that they have the best method, they will use it when it's appropriate to do so. Method is about attaining a goal, achieving something of worth, pursuing an end, etc.
The method here, as it pertains to the OP, is how to go about deciding which of two differing opinions is best. I think hearing them out(at least until they are found sorely lacking) is crucial in any such comparative analysis.
Don't you?
In that... Un not only hit the nail squarely on the head, he drove it home...
Yeah. I can see that. However, it could also be the case that the reader/listener was looking for some confirmation that you were willing to do those things, but were uncertain based upon what you did say...
:smile:
I seem to be very good at upsetting people with my proposals in this thread, including myself. This is not surprising to me. I wrote:
Quoting unenlightened
And when you replied in terms that I was at pains to rule out, it would not be charitable to assume you understood and agreed. This is my first duty as I see it; to make as clear as I can that every difficulty in discussion has its root in identification of the participants with their views. And whenever I point out that this is what is happening in the very discussion we are having, I get another demonstration of the truth of it from myself or someone else.
So let me try and piss everyone off at once with a proper pontification:
The only pain that can be felt in a discussion is that of a bruised ego, and there is no place for ego in a discussion.
I gathered that from your first post, what I was asking was what these other ways of using conditionals are, I can't really think of any.
Quoting creativesoul
Indeed, but charitable interpretation does not require that one use the language most likely to convince the listener of their positive intent. It is a duty on the reader to assume positive intent unless convinced otherwise, not a duty on the writer to do all in their power to prove positive intent.
Quoting creativesoul
Possible (although a strange way of going about it - what's wrong with "did you mean...? "), but my point is rather that there is no prior cause to even question this, why would anyone not simply presume such willingness of their interlocutors until overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary?
I think you and I have very different ideas of what 'charitable' means. To me it refers to seeking the most agreeable interpretation of someone's expressions. As such, the most charitable interpretation would be that I did agree with you unless my choice of words indicated overwhelmingly to the contrary. Simply labelling the two ideas under discussion 'mine' and 'yours', is not, by any stretch, overwhelming evidence that I disagree with your notion that "this agreement cannot be a victory for one or a defeat for another, because they are not in agreement." I can't even see how it could be interpreted that way, but am open to the possibility. What is absolutely beyond the pale is the idea that my choice of identifier provides overwhelming evidence that I disagree with your notion about victory and defeat in conflict resolution.
Yes. It means something very different to me. So I would never assume within the limits of ambiguity, that you said whatever is most agreeable to me, but rather I make the interpretation that maximises your clarity and consistency. Thus wiki:
OK, so in what way did you think my choice of identifiers ('yours' and 'mine') meant that the clearest and most consistent interpretation of my view is that I don't care to listen to other people's opinions, or that discussions must result in victory or defeat. What else had I said to that effect that led you to the conclusion that this was the most 'consistent' interpretation?
Quoting unenlightened
The wiki here uses the terms 'most rational', 'best' and 'strongest'. I don't see how that supports your emphasis on 'clarity and consistency', perhaps you could explain the link.
Well you are responding to me, so I tend to assume that you haven't (in the context of my talking about how victory and defeat are not resolutions,) accidentally immediately brought in those terms that personalise the positions. but to be sure, because it might have been just from habit, I said well I "wish" you had put it this way instead because, bla bla. At which point I think if you hadn't been quite so primed for me to be being contemptuous, you might well have said something like 'yeah that's petty much what I meant'.
But now, I'm feeling again like we're going to go round and round in a circle, whereby my attempts at explaining my thinking simply serve to reinforce the insult you already perceive.
I'll just mention that I wrote my own explanation of how I meant 'charity', and added the wiki definition as an afterthought, and I leave it to you to pick over which of us has the more conventionally correct interpretation. That my agreement with you that we were using the word differently has now become an attack on you means to me that I need just to stop saying anything at this point. This will be my last post on this thread.
And you...
...when you are the reader?
:brow:
But throughout our recent disagreement about the meaning of 'charitable interpretation' you have consistently referered to the alternatives under consideration as 'yours' and 'mine', what 'I' and 'you' think. This seems an entirely normal and unimportant way of identifying two positions, completely devoid of significance. I'm still not understanding the thought process and that bothers me because some (obviously quite strong) false supposition has been made about my position and its a position which, as was discussed earlier, forms a core part of my world view. I can correct the supposition easily, as you say, I could have said "yeah that's petty much what I meant", but correcting the false supposition is only half the solution. What I really need to correct is the background which led to such a (seemingly) skewed interpretation of what was at best extremely ambiguous pointers as to what I might be thinking.
Yeah, same applies, obviously.
No. Not perfect, because I asked you a question regarding your statement that you avoided.
So when someone keeps asking you questions that you answer, yet they won't answer the questions you posed to them, is that not a great example of someone who will not change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with.
Quoting creativesoul
Sure. So which method is useful for determining which party is the on that is unwilling to change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with?
When someone continually contradicts themselves and avoids questions, or when the questions get tough they abandon the discussion, or just ignore the questions while asking their own, or continually attack the person rather than what they say (ad homs), then I think those are great examples of someone that doesn't want to change their mind regardless of what they are presented with. Think of how religious people cling to their religion. You, unenlightened and Pantagruel have exhibited characteristics of the religious that cling to their religion.
Quoting creativesoul
Do you know what a contradiction is? Do you know what a self-defeating argument is?
The problem is that you continually avoid the questions I ask and then later on act as if I never asked the question.
If logic is missing something, then what is it? What other methods are there? You haven't been able to provide any. I did and they were all logical fallacies.
Quoting creativesoul
"I think everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think."
-Steve Jobs
That last claim is false.
Logic presupposes truth, thus - all by itself - it is missing the ability to discriminate between true and false statements. I have provided an example showing how to discriminate between true and false statements without using logic... by looking.
One can actually do that here and now as well...
Look for yourself. I have already answered these questions several times over, and provided a method for discriminating between true and false statements(looking). Using logic will not provide a means of verifying/falsifying(discriminating between) these claims. Looking will.
I'm not denying that logic is needed, because it's needed to be able to know how well grounded an opinion is(by following the argument/reasoning), but it is not enough all by itself. I'm denying that it's all that's needed(that it's enough all by itself) because one also needs to be able to discriminate between true and false statements.
Do you understand that much?
Yes and yes. I do.
Would you care to explain how you think that that applies here?
I'm not using logic to discriminate between true and false claims while denying that it is capable of doing so. That is what would need to be happening in order for my argument to be self-defeating and/or self-contradictory. That's not happening though.
So, explain how it is a problem as you see it.
Not always.
No. You did not. My statement was...
Quoting creativesoul
See there where it says two different explanations for the same events?
You asked a question about how we know that the two are talking about the same things, which is another matter altogether, and one that is completely beside the point that there are situations when they are.
We agree on that. Hence, perfect...
There are any number of different reasons that an interlocutor does not answer a question. For my part, I wanted to build upon our agreements first. Then see where we disagree. So, no...
It is not always a great example of someone who will not change their mind, regardless of what they are presented with.
Logic won't help you here either. You have to look for/at real life examples/situations to the contrary. When you find one, and acknowledge that fact, you then ought know that not all unanswered questions are indicative of unshakable certainty in the one not answering(someone who will not change their mind no matter what they are presented with).
You just found one.
Could be. Sure. But...
I've not contradicted myself. There have been no tough questions that I've avoided because they are tough. I've certainly not continually attacked you...
I'm left wondering how you've arrived at such belief about me based upon our interaction here...
Got some evidence? My words perhaps?
Now...
HERE is where you employ logic as a means to show me how you've arrived at your conclusions about me based upon my claims here.
Show my claims. Explain - using logic - how they led you to your conclusions about me.
:roll:
So...
Can we set out this criterion for ourselves regarding what counts as sufficient/adequate reason to believe?
I disagree.
Perhaps. Sure. Helps the audience connect.
(2a) An institution that relies on sourced arguments that terminate in interpretations of data is a more reliable truth teller than otherwise.
That's not true at all. A person who carefully arrives at whatever belief they hold strongly will be able to satisfy the above criterion, regardless of whether or not their belief is true.
Quoting fdrake
Well having widespread agreement is crucial. However, we must not forget that convention is not always right.
This rings true.
Regarding sources which do research being more reliable truth tellers:
Three factors:
A source which expends effort to find out what is true can be trusted to form opinions based on things which are more likely to be true.
A source which expends effort to find out what is true is less likely to form opinions based on falsehoods.
A source which researches a claim is more likely to put it in an appropriate context for its interpretation, and is thus less likely to give undue significance to irrelevant detail.
That there are well trusted sources, newspapers even, which do not care to do basic fact checking or contextualising claims is an indictment on discourse.
Quoting creativesoul
It depends on how the source behaves. If a source carefully constructs their output to fit an established agenda, it is not a reliable teller of truths insofar as they relate to the agenda. If a source carefully researches a topic before publishing anything on it, they will report well contextualised truths more readily and fail to report falsehoods (unless explicitly highlighting them) more readily for the above reasons.
Widespread agreement forms the basis upon which we make appeals to distinguish true claims from false ones.
I'm still standing in awe of the tremendous amount of complex clarity regarding those first two posts. Even the bits like 2 and it's caveats retain value for me despite my objections regarding their standing as always being reliable. I've voiced my concerns briefly, and they remain. Although, by and large, even those parts are indeed useful and reliable means that one can take to help ensure that they've made the right choice between conflicting opinions.
The priming stuff is on point and can be observed on a daily basis from nearly all sides of media, to one degree or another. Powerful...
I am happy to see that you and I agree(for the most part anyway?) regarding the crucial importance of forming, having, and/or holding true belief. I note also that we agree for the most part regarding the limits of logic's role in this method to determine what's best to believe. Logic alone cannot discriminate, or "distinguish" in your terms, between true and false statements/claims.
A bit on "truth-telling"...
There's an underlying element of 'truth seeking' for it's own sake that I find is crucial when considering whether or not an individual is a reliable "truth teller"... without some hidden agenda. I'm guessing we are in agreement here as well, based upon the following word choice of yours...
Quoting fdrake
However, one can still seek to find out what is true with the intent to not disclose this to the public. Here, we can see that seeking what's true for it's own sake does not guarantee an honest speaker and/or a sincere speech act. It does not guarantee that the "truth be told". Truth telling is about more than just knowing, and/or seeking what's true. In involves the personal character and/or motivations of the speaker as well. It is worth mention here that I am adopting the sense of "truth" that you've been using rather than arguing against it.
Anthony Fauci comes immediately to mind regarding the information being broadcast to the American public about what counts as being ready to "open the economy back up" in as safe as possible a manner. That guy checks all the boxes of being a trustworthy truth-teller for all the right reasons... a focus upon public health during the outbreak of a highly infectious disease. One who has done it already.
Interestingly enough, in recent weeks there seems to be a concerted effort to either discredit Fauci or steer people away from agreeing with - or even hearing - his advice regarding safe conditions for reopening the economy. The priming effect/affect you so aptly brought my attention to is on display during such discourse. It's similar to poisoning the well in the cases where an attempt to discredit is made, but it's just the beginning of a case of plain 'ole changing the focus most of the time.
Of all your suggested disciplines, the effort to step out of one's habitual frame of reference and into another conflicting, unsettling, even hostile frame of reference is the great challenge of the seeker of truth and wisdom. We use our "truths" to navigate the world and don't abandon or even modify them readily. There is however a tipping point in thinking where the model just will not continue to accommodate the incoming new data. In an extreme case, it's like an addict admitting that his efforts to control his addiction have been based on false premises, and it's either die or make changes. We hold to our falsehoods that strongly, and sometimes only a crisis is sufficient to break through our defenses. But what a wonderful world it might be if all people were to apply your listed guidelines for critical thinking.
You're not alone here in this take... that's for sure!