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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 15, 2018 - 06:54am PT
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Ed: there is a reason that physicists and philosophers use words the way they do, it provides an improved precision and accuracy of thought with which to discuss some difficult ideas. one can certainly choose not to address those difficulties, and the somewhat strained language seems so much like "semantics" which is uttered to dismiss the importance of what a word means.in this day and age, one would think the meaning of words all the more important, given that there seems to be a general idea that they aren't really.
This to me said that you thought that technical terms have rather strict meanings.
BTW, "semantics" means "meaning." A disagreement about semantics is not about words but about meaning.
I think you have totally misunderstood me, why would I ask someone to define what they mean when they use a word like "cause," "causal," "causality" if their meanings were "specific, almost incontrovertible (literal)"?
I don’t know, Ed. That’s why I asked the question.
(I won’t bother anyone then with what Saussure, Pierce, Barthes, and Derrida had to say about the definitiveness of talking and writing.)
Ed: A thought experiment is an experiment, albeit hypothetical, but in the thought experiment YOU set all the conditions with intention.
This might open a door to an understanding that what one’s reality is, is but the result of thoughts (or no thoughts). Thoughts / conceptualizations pinch down reality, while no thoughts opens it up.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2018 - 08:40am PT
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BTW, "semantics" means "meaning."
ironic, the dismissive phrase "it's just semantics..."
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2018 - 08:42am PT
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Thoughts / conceptualizations pinch down reality, while no thoughts opens it up.
how do you support this contention?
of course you cannot, by construction.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 15, 2018 - 11:10am PT
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Ed: "This is my response to don Largo's complaint about "Type A Physicalists" who are chained to the idea of a linear causal relationship."
And quite appropriate. JL's LCR doesn't exist except in very brief increments, if that. Note that A => B => C where C may be true, but A is false, etc. Trying to establish a lengthy LCR chain is like trying to wind one's way through an ancestral tree: which path to take?
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jul 15, 2018 - 12:14pm PT
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Jan's injection of "magisterium" into the thread got me to thinking. The term, I think, was most famously invoked by Stephen J. Gould, a famous evolutionary biologist, with respect to the magisterium of science vs. the magisterium of religion. He famously stated that they were independent systems of thought in which one could hold a belief in one independent of the other. I've read a bit about the subject, and firmly come down on the side of Richard Dawkins and others, that the argument just does not hold up. You really do have to decide because they are, indeed, mutually incompatible.
So, Jan, let's say that some particular small population of people hold beliefs that there is an association between having freckled people in the population with having dirty water and, consequently, water-related illness. The powers-that-be notice this association and come up with a solution of killing the freckled people. It "seems" to work, at least for a while. Do you believe that this is an equally-valid understanding of the issue as what science has to say? That these are just competing stories that explain how things actually work?
Another example -- the placebo effect. I would imagine that most primitive cultures would not have accounted for this. Sure they (the priests and other holders of knowledge) were right most of the time because of it. But where they were wrong, we now know why. Is this belief sans the placebo effect on the same level as our current, scientific explanation? Are these just competing understandings within different magisteriums?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Jul 15, 2018 - 12:48pm PT
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eeyonkee-
I've argued many times on this thread that the problem with the science types here arguing as they do, is that they assume that the average person is rational and bases their life on pure reason. Most people compartmentalize and when it comes to their most basic emotions like love, fear of death, and how to figure out rules for life, separating mothers from children because the mothers broke the law etc.,reason is not what they use. It's all well and good if it works for you personally 100% of the time, but most people are not wired that way. You might not even be, if you could look deeply enough into your own unconscious.
Now for your second question, this is an example of using an improbably extreme argument that's not likely to take place in real life. We've discussed the subject on this thread before. People are allowed to show their disgust with the more bloody and intolerant passages of the Bible for example, but if anyone mentions the atrocities of science like the medical experiments done by the Nazis and Japanese, suddenly indignation reigns and we are told that argument is unfair, you can't label all scientists by the outliers, though religious ideas and people, are fair game.
But supposing such a situation did arise. Who do you think would be more effective at saving the freckled people? The scientists with their rational arguments or a charismatic leader who could inspire people to be more compassionate because that represents their better selves and the teachings of the religious leaders they revere, and also happens to be the scientific approach? Have purely scientific explanations convinced the anti vaccine folks for example?
Of course science supplies the superior answer when dealing with material facts of the physical world but science and rationality are not so useful to humans in their everyday emotional lives, hence the separate magisteriums.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2018 - 01:06pm PT
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...they assume that the average person is rational and bases their life on pure reason.
I am not so sure this is my assumption, nor do I believe that I conduct my life in this manner, knowing full well that there are all sorts of ways we're wired that has nothing to do with "rational" behavior.
On the other hand, viewing human behavior as having a "physical" origin provides a very different perspective on human behavior then the "classical" perspective.
Mental illness is an example of human behavior which is treated very differently between a "scientific" perspective and a "cultural" perspective. American society still hasn't caught up with this, and the discussions up thread on "free will" and its implications shows. This is an extreme, perhaps, but American attitudes on non-European people in America is another example of cultural bias with no rational basis.
If science teaches anything, it is how to confront challenges to one's beliefs based on evidence and overcome our biases.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 15, 2018 - 01:49pm PT
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they assume that the average person is rational and bases their life on pure reason
Please re-examine this assumption.
Most 'science types' I know go on a case-by-case basis. They are well aware that a large majority of people will take no interest at all in the questions the science type has devoted their energy to, and will probably misunderstand most attempts to explain what took them (the science type) a lot of study to understand.
Many science types see the average person as someone they have no reason to explain their work to.
If a science type does try to explain an aspect of science to an average person, they will usually not make assumptions beforehand about the rationality or use of pure reason by that average person, but will try to find out as the explanation proceeds how well or poorly the understanding is progressing.
Most science types I know have a very good understanding of the way the average person, and the average science type, has emotions and irrational beliefs.
I believe your characterization of the science type is a caricature and stereotype.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 15, 2018 - 01:53pm PT
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Most modern materialistic scientists have lots of irrational beliefs ......
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Jul 15, 2018 - 02:49pm PT
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I was responding to eeyonkee's statement in particular but it applies to others (not all certainly) on this thread. The problem is coming up with a vocabulary that is not ad hominem and also not a stereotype. I probably should have used words like many or some.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 15, 2018 - 04:01pm PT
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Jan: ...this is an example of using an improbably extreme argument that's not likely to take place in real life
The killing of people with albinism is driven by myth and international inaction
Jan: ...if you could look deeply enough into your own unconscious.
The whole conversation might take a more productive turn if this were explored in any depth. What does this say about mind...?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 15, 2018 - 07:22pm PT
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Jan: " . . . is that they assume that the average person is rational and bases their life on pure reason."
Don't think I've known anyone like that. Maybe someone autistic or Asperger's.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 15, 2018 - 08:03pm PT
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The problem is coming up with a vocabulary that is not ad hominem and also not a stereotype.
How about:
"If the average person was rational and based their lives on pure reason, there might be more agreement that humans are changing the Earth's climate."
Or maybe we wouldn't kill so many of each other.
I don't think the problem is with vocabulary or stereotype, where we all could do better, but with human nature being suited more to life in a small village in Nepal and not so well suited for the problems we have got ourselves into on larger scales.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jul 15, 2018 - 08:19pm PT
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Most modern materialistic scientists have lots of irrational beliefs ......
Could be a whole ' nother thread
How do they acquire them?
Do they have more than Jane & John Doe?
Can they be dissuaded from them more easily than non-materialists?
If we own up to the true extent of these uncertainties and do the requisite math, the Oxford study finds that there’s at least a 53 percent chance that we’re alone in the Milky Way and at least a 40 percent chance that we’re alone in the visible universe. Homo sapiens could be the smartest thing going
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 16, 2018 - 07:40am PT
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Ed: how do you support this contention?
Just my experience, Ed. Closed-mindedness on issues tends to narrow thinking. There is plenty of research behaviorally on the subject.
Jan: . . . assume that the average person is rational and bases their life on pure reason.
It’s not much of an assumption. Kahnemann & Tversky, Northcraft, other behavioral accountants I can’t remember, and many cognitive science publications support this claim. K&T got famous showing it. Furthermore, the calculation and comparison of costs and benefits of one choice versus another choice is highly problematical. Being rational is almost mythological, which is something that can be seen in this very conversation—if you know the literature and the things to look for. “Rational” is not equivalent to “reasonable” (as concepts). Rationality tends to incur metrics and calculations. Reasoning relies upon all sorts of techniques of argumentation. If one looks at their own mind, they might see that the beliefs in practicing rationality are ill-founded, or uncertain at best.
A great many decisions in our lives rely upon the determination of factors that are we think are important to us, gathering the data to fill-in the values for those factors, weighting or ordering them by prioritization, calculating final results for each alternative, and then a final choice among alternatives against pre-established decision criteria. In most instances, the process is just not possible . . . leading to what Nobel laureate Herbert Simon called, “satisfycing” (basically jumping to conclusions after a limited survey). Decision theorists have models called “elimination by aspect,” which describe complex decisions made by making determinations of which alternative is the least offensive (which is how personnel hiring decisions are generally made). In addition, cognitive scientists have provided evidence to support notions of “hot cognition,” where decisions are made so rapidly that they cannot be calculative (often occurring before situations fully register for rationality). Hot cognition refers to decisions made by reference to somatic markers, emotions, and instinct—all of which seem to be heuristic mechanisms that lead to increased survival / reproduction rates of our species. (I take it that evolutionary mechanisms must be best because it agrees with the theory of evolution, right?)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 16, 2018 - 08:57am PT
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MikeL, you are supporting a different assertion, your original assertion is not supported by research, recall:
Thoughts / conceptualizations pinch down reality, while no thoughts opens it up.
by its very construction it cannot be supported by "thought/conceptualization" which is what research reports. You changed to:
Closed-mindedness on issues tends to narrow thinking.
which I agree, but I do not agree that no-mindedness leads to a better description of reality. Open-mindedness, is something altogether different than what you are proposing.
I also fail to see how, after you have advocated for the idea that all research is fraught with bias, that any of the ideas you have mentioned have any more validity than what agrees with "your experience." While your experience is indeed "your's" it has no priority over "mine" (in that mine is mine), what does your opinion have to do with reality?
Further, you make the rather odd appeal to the authority of the Nobel committee, as if the committee has some way of validating the research. You remember that the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was created in 1968 through an endowment from the Swedish National Bank.
It would seem that a direct appeal to the results of Kahnemann and Simon could rest on their work, rather than on the recognition of that work by the Nobel Committee.
Interestingly, the prize is awarded to "European" men (one European woman has been recognized). Maybe the committee is engaged through '“satisfycing” (basically jumping to conclusions after a limited survey),' are they the victims of their own limited view of economics? or just closed minded?
I know that anyone who supports evolution is "closed minded" in your perspective. However, in spite of your general criticism of it (largely based on it being an "orthodox" view), you haven't actually provided anything specific, nor have you provided any alternatives.
Perhaps you could read Nash (another winner of the Economics Nobel) regarding an objective analysis of games and its application to evolutionary behavior.
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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Jul 16, 2018 - 09:46am PT
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A rational life based on pure reason sounds boring and unsatisfying, Mr. Spock. If you look at the life history of many of the great intellectuals of logic (Godel, for example) they were all nuts.
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okay, whatever
climber
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Jul 16, 2018 - 10:38am PT
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https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/ Donald Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming" series of books are familiar to anyone who's ever done any extensive software development. And the Bell Labs guys from the 1960's and 1970's... Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan, et al... set a very high standard for logic (applied, of course, more than mathematically formal) in developing the C language and original UNIX operating system. And there was Niklaus Wirth, at ETH Zurich, who also wrote a lot about software logic, in his meticulous Swiss way, in addition to being the creator of the Pascal programing language, and later Modula-2. The meta-logic of Godel's proof of his inconsistency theorem (which asserts that NO logical or mathematical system beyond the most trivial can ever be PROVED to be logically consistent) is quite abstract, in a way that takes a lot of work to understand. It is a different sort of thing entirely, and he was indeed an odd duck, who never really did much that's known to the public after he got his sinecure at IAS Princeton. And despite Godel's theorem and proof thereof, we seem to be able to do a great many useful things with mathematics, and algorithmically on computing machinery.
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okay, whatever
climber
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Jul 16, 2018 - 11:11am PT
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And John Nash, the subject of Sylvia Nasar's book "A Beautiful Mind", and a movie made based on said book, was of course made into a poster child of how thinking deeply in the abstract, too consistently and for too long, can drive you nuts. No doubt the truth of his mental illness was a bit more complicated than that, but I think we all know how we can get wrapped up in thinking too much, sometimes... and need to go out and climb or whatever to clear our heads.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 16, 2018 - 11:26am PT
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Godel's proof of his inconsistency theorem (that NO logical or mathematical system beyond the most trivial can ever be PROVED to be logically consistent)"
It's a bit more complicated than that. The Peano axioms are consistent when looked at from another vantage point. But nice post.
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