Soundness of reason is merely a reference to linguistic convention, and has no significance beyond convention. — sime

What the heck does that mean? And why? :chin:

Take any example of unreasonable behaviour. Once the behaviour is understood, the unreasonableness disappears. Of course, we might not like a person's behaviour even when we understand it. — sime

No, I don't think so. It doesn't disappear, it's just explained. Why would it disappear? And what do you even mean by that? That it would cease to be unreasonable? But why would it?

Guy across the street threw the snow from his driveway into the street because he didn’t want the road treatment chemicals on his lawn. He told the cops he thought the plow would take it away. Although true, the plow would take the snow away, and true, road chemicals don’t belong on lawns, still the unreasonableness of the behavior itself remains.

Understanding doesn’t necessarily alleviate illusory reason, just exposes it for what it is.

Unless you meant something else, maybe?

The road of reason navigates a landscape of values. Different landscapes, different roads. Though it's true some are stuck in ideological potholes, trolls are more interested in bridges, and the logically illiterate never passed their driving tests.

Is it possible that there are some people who try to be reasonable, but are inescapably unreasonable, at least in some respect? — S

This should be a primary fear of anyone seeking out a philosophy forum.

Maybe some of us are so afraid of this, we're unwilling/unable to stand the dissonance when confronted?

Please explain. To be clear, in response to my first question, I would like a reason why not. (I don't doubt what you say is possible). — S

In my opinion, if someone has been:
1) Unreasonable (illogical),
2) Informed of this, and
3) Persistently unreasonable (illogical),

Then, they are not trying to be reasonable (logical).

And in response to my second question, I'd like an elaboration. — S

Sure.
If someone persists in being unreasonable (illogical), they have abandoned reason (logic) in favour of expressing a belief (as I mentioned), another propositional attitude, an emotion, or the application of a heuristic (as others have mentioned), etc., whereupon; further communication (information exchange) using human language argument (informal logic) cannot occur.

I'm more pointing out that we are all probably reasonable from our own perspectives and unreasonable in at least a few other peoples' perspectives. Is it the result of information asymmetry or unreasonable people being unable to realise they are unreasonable? And if it is the latter then those who are unreasonable are here on this thread agreeing with you about how terrible it is that everyone else is so unreasonable.

That's why it is pointless to talk to a group of people about this problem. In my experience, by calling someone unreasonable they are likely to think you are being unreasonable because how can a reasonable person call a reasonable person (like themselves) unreasonable? Alternatively, it's just ad hominem which is also unreasonable.

It is entirely possible that many reasonable people think other reasonable people are unreasonable because of miscommunication, information asymmetry, the difference in opinions being perceived as too stark. That's why I think people should
1. Constantly question whether they are being reasonable or not
2. Constantly question whether the other person is being unreasonable or not
3. If someone is genuinely unreasonable, just avoid them

If someone really is unreasonable, it's not worth trying to reason with them. There's not much you can do and you will lose the argument even if you win.

When and for what reason, though? That's very important. You're suggesting that that indicates that I didn't question myself enough, but there are a multitude of other explanations for that. So why your explanation over others? — S

You asked me for my honest thoughts. I am not going to prove to you that I am right. You can consider what I said or you don't.

Maybe I refused because I thought that people weren't engaging fairly, like I thought about Terrapin, or for the wrong purpose, like I thought about Michael, or maybe I refused out of exasperation of not getting through despite trying, as with Metaphysician Undercover. Those reasons don't strike me as unreasonable. What strikes me as unreasonable is not having any such rules and limits for engaging with people. — S

Cursiously, though, you seem to be the only one who is hell bent on enforcing those kinds of rules in their conversations. Everyone else seems to be able to engage in a discussion without putting up lots of barriers that dictate what can and cannot be said. You seem to be indicating that you think your behavior is somehow necessary self defense. But against what?

Maybe I did think that at times, but they weren't necessarily assumptions as opposed to reasonable beliefs. And I think that I'm often quite careful with my wording. For example, I might say that I suspect such-and-such. A suspicion isn't an assumption or an accusation. It's just an expression of what I have an inkling might be the case. But sure, I don't deny that I'm not always that careful, and I'm less likely to be careful like that if you've become an exasperation for me. — S

What reasons do you have to assume established members like Terrapin or Michael are arguing in bad faith? It doesn't come across as particularly reasonable to me.

You have to be strict with some people, though. Don't you agree? It's very important to stay on topic and on point. That approach isn't guaranteed to work, of course. But I also have to consider the effort that I'm putting in each time. When you put the effort in, you expect results, and if you keep putting in the effort, but you don't get results, then that's when eventually it begins to justify cutting things short or trying to really get them to focus on this one thing that they just keep on seeming to neglect. — S

This sounds awfully self-absorbed. If you're afraid of putting in effort that isn't rewarded, what are you doing here? There is no guarantee that anything you write on an internet forum will be appreciated. Everyone else is dealing with that, too. Noone here is obligated to deliver results to you, and you are not in a position to dictate the rules of discussion.

I don't know if I'm right/wrong but no one wants to be unreasonable. People prefer to be level-headed implying unreasonableness is accidental and not deliberate. In my court that means cut people some slack.

Of course there are always some who simply want to win an exchange with bad arguments. We should remember, in such cases, the ad hominem fallacy - just because someone is being unreasonable doesn't mean his claim is false.

An ''advantage'' of talking to unreasonable people is they provide opportunity for us to sharpen our thinking skills.

Anyway, is anyone that good a philosopher to find others unreasonable and him/herself perfectly rational?

Guy across the street threw the snow from his driveway into the street because he didn’t want the road treatment chemicals on his lawn. He told the cops he thought the plow would take it away. Although true, the plow would take the snow away, and true, road chemicals don’t belong on lawns, still the unreasonableness of the behavior itself remains.

Understanding doesn’t necessarily alleviate illusory reason, just exposes it for what it is.

Unless you meant something else, maybe? — Mww

The contention here seems to be that ordinarily people understand reason as being prescriptive, such that a reasoned argument tells us what we ought to do in a situation, but by that understanding a rational argument involves appealing to emotions and ethical intuitions in a way that transcends mathematical formalism and the conventions of semantics. A difficulty of this view is how to justify a distinction between the coolness of logic and the passion of rhetoric.

The same is also true of logically minded Platonists who identify reason with physically transcendent and convention-transcendent standards of deduction and induction whose perfection the human logician only adheres to on rare occasion. They might say to a failing student who wrote 2+2=5 that he ought to realise that 2+2 necessarily equals 4 because it is a necessary fact, and not merely a preference of the mathematical community. To me, these platonists also identify reason with ethics although they would probably disagree with me, in their failing to pay attention to the role of their own emotions when they insist upon the correctness of a proof they view as being necessarily correct.

On the other hand, naturalistically inclined philosophers identify reason as describing the optimal course of actions an agent has to perform, given assumptions concerning the agent's preferences, their available courses of action and the state of the world. Unless these philosophers are platonists or are happy to reduce reason to emotion, they have no means of supplying reason with a normative dimension, since their understanding of an agent's preferences is in terms of the agent's average behaviour, while their understanding of the agent's reasoning is in terms of what the agent actually does. Hence the naturalist's distinction between an agent's rationality and the agent's preferences is purely a matter of convention.

On logically minded Platonists understanding reason as being prescriptive...agreed.
On people in general ordinarily understanding reason as being prescriptive.....not so much.

I don’t think people ordinarily understand reason, the noun, at all, prescriptive or otherwise, even while using reason, the verb, continuously their entire conscious lives, We see this, as you say, in rational arguments appealing to emotions and ethical intuitions, which are more often specious or illusory at best, and therefore are more often detrimental to sound rationality itself, for emotions seldom conform to rules. Hence, the supervenience of the coolness of logic by the passion of rhetoric.

On the other hand.......there’s always an other hand......throwing accusations of logical fallacies, as a Platonist is apt to do, at a co-conversant doesn’t really help the one not recognizing the prescriptive nature of reason. Pretty hard to inflict a truth on a mind that has regressed to emotion as its fundamental ground.

By naturalistically inclined philosophers, do you mean empiricists? If so, then I concur with the naturalist’s distinction between rationality and preference being purely a matter of convention, or, perhaps, repetitive habit, re: Joe has always done this so he will likely do this again under similar circumstance. Or what's worse, Joe has always thought Bob a dope because of that time in 3rd grade, so Bob is going to be a dope for the rest of his miserable life.

A few random thoughts, and up front, I plead guilty as charged to most of this.

Often, I find there is an absence of epistemic humility on the board. The concept of epistemic humility is an understanding that in many of the questions we discuss on here there are no definitive answers. They are not factual matters. They are reasoned arguments in support of an idea or concept. It is possible that reasonable people, can have reasonable beliefs in opposition. Epistemic humility is an awareness of limits of our knowledge, and an understanding that much of what we think we know is filtered, constructed and interpreted. The ultimate right or wrong of much of what we discuss here is unknowable, yet we are all very fast to assign right to our view and wrong to the other.

This IMO is at the heart of this issue, are we debating to win, or sharing divergent views. And can we have the epistemic humility to stay aware that in most of these discussions there is no factual correct answer.

Is The Philosophy Forum sometimes like a place where unpaid teachers go to bang their head against the wall with difficult students? :lol: — S

Yes, but who's who?

In my opinion, if someone has been:
1) Unreasonable (illogical),
2) Informed of this, and
3) Persistently unreasonable (illogical),

Then, they are not trying to be reasonable (logical). — Galuchat

What if you inform someone, but they don't understand? That way, is it not possible that they could still be trying? Or, with your second premise, do you mean to suggest that they'd understand by virtue of being informed? I wouldn't use the term that way. I think it makes sense to say that I informed him that such-and-such, but he didn't understand.

In my experience, by calling someone unreasonable they are likely to think you are being unreasonable... — Judaka

So? They can think what they want. What matters is whether they're right.

...because how can a reasonable person call a reasonable person (like themselves) unreasonable? — Judaka

That's probably how they would see it from their perspective, yes. So?

Alternatively, it's just ad hominem which is also unreasonable. — Judaka

No, it's not an ad hominem. Believe it or not, I genuinely think that people, sometimes, are unreasonable in certain respects, and that that includes every single one of us. But some people are worse than others, and some people here on this forum are worse than other people here on this forum. I don't need to name names.

It is entirely possible that many reasonable people think other reasonable people are unreasonable because of miscommunication, information asymmetry, the difference in opinions being perceived as too stark. That's why I think people should
1. Constantly question whether they are being reasonable or not
2. Constantly question whether the other person is being unreasonable or not
3. If someone is genuinely unreasonable, just avoid them

If someone really is unreasonable, it's not worth trying to reason with them. There's not much you can do and you will lose the argument even if you win. — Judaka

That sounds sensible. I admit that it may well often be the case that I'm not sensible insomuch as I probably continue to keep trying when I should have just given up already. Some kind of naive optimism? Some kind of masochism?

You asked me for my honest thoughts. I am not going to prove to you that I am right. You can consider what I said or you don't. — Echarmion

All I did was ask you a few questions and express a few thoughts. You don't have to do anything you don't want to. No one has a gun to your head, do they?

Cursiously, though, you seem to be the only one who is hell bent on enforcing those kinds of rules in their conversations. Everyone else seems to be able to engage in a discussion without putting up lots of barriers that dictate what can and cannot be said. You seem to be indicating that you think your behavior is somehow necessary self defense. But against what? — Echarmion

If it seems to you that I'm the only one here who acts like I do (and no, I wouldn't word that in your obviously loaded way of putting it), then I suggest that you observe others more, and give it some more thought.

And isn't it clear what it's in defence of from what I said? I spoke of unfairness, the wrong purpose, and exasperation. One shouldn't make a reasonable effort to protect oneself against these kind of things? :brow:

What reasons do you have to assume established members like Terrapin or Michael are arguing in bad faith? It doesn't come across as particularly reasonable to me. — Echarmion

I just explained, did I not? This response from you doesn't seem to have taken into account that explanation. When I'm most reasonable, I don't assume such things, I express reasonable beliefs or suspicions. When I've become exasperated, I'm less likely to be at my most reasonable, and so I might make such assumptions where I would otherwise be more careful.

This sounds awfully self-absorbed. If you're afraid of putting in effort that isn't rewarded, what are you doing here? There is no guarantee that anything you write on an internet forum will be appreciated. Everyone else is dealing with that, too. Noone here is obligated to deliver results to you, and you are not in a position to dictate the rules of discussion. — Echarmion

I don't think that that's a charitable interpretation of what I said.

As a side note, I like the irony of the situation we're now in, where it seems like you are biased against me, in a discussion which began with you suggesting that I was biased.

Anyway, is anyone that good a philosopher to find others unreasonable and him/herself perfectly rational? — TheMadFool

Have we not met? :wink:

Go and have a little chat with Hume about reason and passion, guys. — unenlightened

I can't. He's dead.

Have we not met? :wink: — S

:lol:

What if you inform someone, but they don't understand? That way, is it not possible that they could still be trying? Or, with your second premise, do you mean to suggest that they'd understand by virtue of being informed? I wouldn't use the term that way. I think it makes sense to say that I informed him that such-and-such, but he didn't understand. — S

I equate understanding with decoding a message, which entails information. In either case (whether one understands and rejects, or doesn't understand, a message) the result is the same: information exchange has ended.

I equate understanding with decoding a message, which entails information. In either case (whether one understands and rejects, or doesn't understand, a message) the result is the same: information exchange has ended. — Galuchat

I don't think that we really disagree here, but I think that what you say could be better worded. It's better put that in cases where one doesn't understand the information, the information has been exchanged, but not... well... understood. I'm struggling to think of a better term than "understood" here. It's a bit like if you upload a video file, and then I download that file, but then the video doesn't play for me. My computer can't process that kind of file at present. You could be talking to me about the video, but I wouldn't be able to fully relate - at least not to the same extent, given that you've watched the video, but I have not, even though we exchanged information.

I don't think that we really disagree here, but I think that what you say could be better worded. It's better put that in cases where one doesn't understand the information, the information has been exchanged, but not... well... understood. — S

We very much disagree. You say there is information exchange; I say, there is not. My wording is consistent with Shannon & Weaver's Mathematical Theory of Communication.

Your unplayable video scenario is an example of physical, not semantic, data encoding and messaging (transmission, conveyance, and reception). It would only be relevant to this discussion if there were some physical (e.g., sensory) cause for a person's inability to understand your posts.

We very much disagree. You say there is information exchange; I say, there is not. — Galuchat

Yes. When I said that we don't "really" disagree, I meant that it was merely a semantic disagreement.

My wording is consistent with Shannon & Weaver's Mathematical Theory of Communication. — Galuchat

Ooh, lar de dar. :lol:

Your unplayable video scenario is an example of physical, not semantic, data encoding and messaging (transmission, conveyance, and reception). It would only be relevant to this discussion if there were some physical (e.g., sensory) cause for a person's inability to understand your posts. — Galuchat

It's called an analogy. Don't be so literal.

What's your problem? The information exchange is evident through the pages of discussion, and the people like you and I who are reading it. I can type up a post containing information about a logical fallacy. Someone else can read and understand it, yet fail to understand that they're committing the fallacy in an argument here that they've made. Or they might not even understand the fallacy, even if they think that they do. Thus, information exchange, yet lack of understanding.

This seems obvious. If your booky wook has lead you to believe otherwise, it's possible that it's mistaken, or, ironically, that you've misunderstood it, thereby proving the very point I'm making. Although those aren't the only possibilities.

Downvotes weren't actually an option, just upvotes. The main issue was that there was a cumulative total on a user's profile and an option on the members list to list members by the total number of votes they received creating a hierarchy of users, and most people didn't want to live in my shadow. — Michael

My suggestion would be to display the name of the people who upvoted so we can determine if any favoritism is skewing the results. In such systems I've witnessed people upvoting illogical statements and claims of others simply because they like the person and agree with their position.

My suggestion would be to display the name of the people who upvoted so we can determine if any favoritism is skewing the results. — Harry Hindu

We should have a committee, lead by me, to determine whether favouritism has skewed the results, who's responsible, and what actions are to be taken in light of our findings.

It won't be corrupt. You have my word.

My suggestion would be to display the name of the people who upvoted so we can determine if any favoritism is skewing the results. — Harry Hindu

We have no control over the software.

We have no control over the software. — Michael

That's just what they want you to think.

Members of this noble forum, if you elect me as your supreme leader, I will implement these proposals and more. You have my word.