Wanting to be consistent is a bit like playing Jenga. The tower eventually collapses, the objective is to, well, prolong the agony (torture?) :grin:

The game ends when any portion of the tower collapses, caused by either the removal of a block or its new placement. The last player to complete a turn before the collapse is the winner. — Wikipedia

According to Joseph Sirgy, people in general function through a combination of the desire to achieve self-consistency, self-esteem, and self-knowledge. These motives can conflict.

For me, inner consistency is not an issue. If I had espoused a wrong idea, and stayed consistent, then I'd be doggone. I appreciate that I can change my mind on issues, when a logical consideration or a rational need necessitates it.

I think consistency can lead to dogma; and the RC church since the age of Enlightenment has been heavily accused of holding values true that are proven to be not true. This is due to their consistency to stick with their faith-driven and scriptures-driven ideals. Same thing can be said of communist ideals. Anyone can attest to that who had lived in a communist country.

I'm consistently inconsistent! :grin:

Psychologist Prescott Lecky posited self-consistency as the primary motivator of human behavior.

“… all of an individual's values are organized into a single system the preservation of whose integrity is essential.The nucleus of the system, around which the rest of the system revolves, is the individual's valuation of himself. The individual sees the world from his own viewpoint, with himself as the center. Any value entering the system which is inconsistent with the individual's valuation of himself cannot be assimilated; it meets with resistance and is likely, unless a general reorganization occurs, to be rejected. This resistance is a natural phenomenon; it is essential for the maintenance of individuality. The various so-called emotional states cannot be treated independently, but must be regarded as different aspects of a single motive, the striving for unity.“

I think that we are all allways consistent, in our actions at least, because we all are subjects of causality.
The consistency you speak of is, i think, an inner consistency. To have an answer to why an individual takes a certain action, say, X and be able to know the circumstances in which that individual might take the same action X.
In short, we try to be consistent because otherwise we might feel as if we dont know ourselves

Edit: What I meant to say can be better. understood by the answer of @Joshs

Consistency is about truth. If you don't care about the truth, and you don't need to, consistency be damned! That's in classical logic though. If you're interested in not just the truth but about how our minds work, you should abandon a zero tolerance attitude towards inconsistency. My best guess is we're prone to holding inconsistent beliefs/ideas for the simple reason that it expands our options and that's always a good thing, no? Oops! Never say always.

Let's do a little thought experiment shall we? If our minds rejected inconsistencies i.e. if it were incapable of cognitive dissonance, how would that impact/affect our lives? If I may be allowed an evolutionary perspective, it makes a lot of sense to confuse your competitor, to be precise it's to your advantage if you can make prey think you're harmless and predators think you're dangerous i.e. sending mixed signals is key to survival. This, I suspect, is the reason why our brains have evolved to tolerate/accept inconsistencies. It keeps us on our toes - once you can't decide whether that brown thing floating towards you is a croc or log, thinking its both is just a baby step away. :grin:

Consistency is about truth. If you don't care about the truth, and you don't need to, consistency be damned! That's in classical logic though. If you're interested in not just the truth but about how our minds work, you should abandon a zero tolerance attitude towards inconsistency. — TheMadFool

I would argue that truth and how our minds work are not separate issues. Rather than consistency being about truth, truth is the way we have of talking about experiences of consistency and inferential compatibility. ‘Truth’ is our idealizing abstraction of valuative normativity.

If our minds rejected inconsistencies i.e. if it were incapable of cognitive dissonance, how would that impact/affect our lives — TheMadFool

I dont think striving for consistency is the result of an arbitrary evolutionary adaptation. There is no
other way for a living system to be. All living forms
are by definition self-organizing, which means that they maintain an ongoing self-consistency of functioning in the face of a changing world.

We dont strive for perfect consistency , which would be nothing other than the unchanging self-identity of a rock. We aim for a relative consistency, for recognizable
patterns in the chaos.

All live forms
are by definition self-organizing, which means that they maintain. an ongoing self-consistency of functioning in the face of a changing world.

Can you elaborate? I dont understand the point you are trying to make. I think you speak of the something like individuality but I am not sure.

:ok:

Thank you for the read. I've been formulating a theory of motivation as of recent, and have come to conclusions related to internal consistency inherently built into the very process of encoding information or memories into the hippocampus.

Furthermore, it seems that eudemonic pursuits such as purposefulness and desire originating in a greater desire for happiness is a primary motivator in most types of rationally guided behavior, primarily through associative memory of moments associated with peak experiences that stand out from the rest.

What do you think about this?

it seems that eudemonic pursuits such as purposefulness and desire originating in a greater desire for happiness is a primary motivator in most types of rationally guided behavior, primarily through associative memory of moments associated with peak experiences that stand out from the rest. — Shawn

If desire for happiness motivates rationality , how is happiness generated? Through sensory reinforcement?

I’m not sure it’s so much a desire for consistency as much as a hatred of inconsistency. Hatred of inconsistency seems to be the one thing I’ve never seen anyone disagree with. People take all sorts of opposing positions but I haven’t seen anyone maintain an internally inconsistent position. Some people hate nazis, some don’t, but everyone hates a hypocrite.

But I don’t often see people re-examining their beliefs purposefully to see if they’re consistent or not.

I think people operate by a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” principle when it comes to their beliefs. People have different standards for “broke”. People whose standard is very easy to meet are called “philosophers”

hatred of inconsistency. — khaled

I wonder how being partly right/correct fits into the notion of consistency/inconsistency. I'm half-right seems far better than completely wrong, the worst-case scenario being not even wrong (vide Wolfgang Pauli).

Consistency comes off as too much to ask, an impossible object (a square circle) - to get everything right is not what we expect of fallible creatures like humans and that's exactly what consistency is, no?

It's not about getting everything right. It's simply revising your position when it's contradictory. Partially correct isn't a contradiction. "I am partially correct and also fully correct and also not correct at all" is.

I dare not say I am an intellectual; but, have been noticing in myself a desire to be consistent with who I read and adopt into my mental landscape of ideas and thoughts. I can give an example with Plato who I hold in high regards, and Wittgenstein who I also think is conducive towards clearer thought. There are clear inconsistencies with both theories of thought in many regards. — Shawn

I would say that in as much as people desire to be understood, they desire to be consistent. Plato, I think it is clear, had a desire to be understood, though he lived in a society full of inconsistencies which he sought to expose. Exposing the inconsistencies of others is a function of not being able to understand others. Wittgenstein, on the other hand received criticism for his early work, so he may have actually given up on the possibility of being understood by the time of his later work, which appear to me as demonstrations of the reality of inconsistency.

There are others, like Peirce, who assign inconsistency to the natural world, assuming the natural world to be fundamentally unintelligible.

It's not about getting everything right. It's simply revising your position when it's contradictory. Partially correct isn't a contradiction. "I am partially correct and also fully correct and also not correct at all" is. — khaled

You missed the point.

A simple but very compelling argument for why we should be cautious of, even dread, consistency:

If we are to be consistent, since we're perfectly at ease killing animals, we shouldn't be kvetching if we treat humans the same way. There really is no way we could defend the killing of animals without also accepting our own - men, women, children, and old folks too - suitability for the abattoir.

I wanted to ask others if they think people or intellectuals in general have a desire to be consistent? — Shawn

I make no significant attempt to be consistent. if I am is it because I accidentally hold consistent positions. I think humans are walking contradictions and life is messy. The people I know who strive to be consistent tend to be fanatics and cranks.

We all try to be consistent. If we didn't then no one would understand anything we say or write. It's usually when some of us find that our observations and logic conflict with our feelings is when we throw consistency out the window for the sake of our feelings.

Isn't that person dependent?

I mean, we may want to be consistent on all areas of knowledge we know a little about but there may be no way of reconciling these areas in a consistent manner. As in, deep down there are say quantum fields and way above that atoms. But then I think that I can't deny that I see that red apple in the corner.

But atoms or fields don't have colour. I'd like consistency, but I can't find it here.

I think that, the more honest a person is, the more willing they are able to change what they think in line with new evidence, or, failing that, good arguments.

Russell did this a lot, and to his merit, acknowledged doing this. And he was an extremely important and productive thinker.

But consistency for the mere sake of it, may not always be attainable.

Consistency is cut from the same cloth as rules and we all know our attitude on that score - rules apply to others and not to ourselves but, get this, we aren't actually breaking the rules! How about that for consistency! There are many ideas/theories/whatnot we would like to apply selectively, no, not for ourselves but for the greater good, but as it turns out, dig a little deeper and inconsistencies abound and that just won't do or will it?

yes.

I'm half-right seems far better than completely wrong — TheMadFool

Being half right also seems better than being half wrong.

So there is that.

Consistency is the condition for maintaining the status quo. Every demand for consistency, in general, or in relation to the self, is a demand to stay frozen in the theoretical ice, a steelcrusted self, or a rusted practice.

Each person's set of preferences is mutually inconsistent. I, for example, like everyone else I suppose, fear the specter of cancer (a death sentence I'm told) but I love meat (ham/beef/chicken/fish/etc.) and I'm a chain-smoker [all carcinogens FYI].

Then there's my paternal uncle. He's lazy but is very paritcular, which requires work. One of them has to go but no, they're both there, together, in him.

Perhaps this is true for everyone, no?

I believe all people have a narrative in their head shaped and governed by how they internalize issues and thoughts. That 'narrative' is governed by some semblance of consistency in my opinion, no?

I have a personal narrative. It certainly is consistent, although It didn't come from my desire of consistency. It's more so just a series of twists to satisfy my conflict of interest.

I have a personal narrative. It didn't come from my desire of consistency though, its rather more just a series of twists to satisfy my conflict of interest. — john27

I have a pretty weak narrative in my head. I don't really have a strong causal narrative in my head for the matter. I think it differs for each person on how they perceive issues in their life. Hitler called it Mein Kampf, and Buddha called it the Noble Eightfold Path.

Consistency alone is inadequate.

Random propositions, even those patently false, devoid of any inferential connection can be consistent (vide infra).

1. 2² = 4 (true)
2. The moon is made of green cheese. (false)
3. I am a zombie. :grin: (false, I hope)

Statements 1, 2, 3 form a consistent set of propositions.

The definition of consistency: given some propositions, it's possible that all of them can be true (in terms of a truth table, there's a line in which all the propositions are true).

It looks like consistency only works, is only useful, when the propositions are logically connected i.e. the truth/falsity of each proposition in a group of propositions imply the truth/falsity of another in the group. That way, unless we've got the logic right, it becomes impossible for the propositions in a given set to be all true i.e. an inconsistency results.

Just saying.