I will just point out that a photon being a wave and a particle is not logically equivalent to a photon both being and not being a particle, because it being a wave does not logically rule out its also being a particle. — Janus
As Albert Einstein wrote:[1]
It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality
I can imagine arguing that contradictions get weeded out because they're inherently useless, being necessarily false, but I doubt even that's right. We often have good reason to believe both sides of a story, so we keep our options open, and for a while they live side by side. So what? — Srap Tasmaner
TMK, a particle is localized thing with volume, density, and mass. Whereas a wave function is not. So a wave function is not a particle. And hence the term "wave-particle duality". Am I missing out on something? — javra
In short, I don't agree with Einstein's assessment because if it is true that light really is both a wave and a particle, then the difficulty is not that that is a contradiction, but that due to our lack of some relevant understanding it is merely the case that it might appear to be a contradiction. — Janus
Remember, these are models of the quantum realm, models that have a very high degree of predictive value, but models just the same. In Einstein's quote, he doesn't say that reality is contradictory but that we have contradictory pictures of reality. This makes a world of difference in what is affirmed by him. — javra
My impression is that we are talking about entirely different things. — Janus
All I'm addressing is, if you want to engage in such debates, then your argument better not contradict itself, or it won't be taken seriously or be of any use to anyone. — Janus
All I'm addressing is, if you want to engage in such debates, then your argument better not contradict itself, or it won't be taken seriously or be of any use to anyone. — Janus
Maybe. I think Isaac would agree with that -- rules of the game we play here. — Srap Tasmaner
the accused party universally denies that they have done so, and then there's a back and forth about whether what they said really is a contradiction or not. — Srap Tasmaner
So the claim is just not true on it's face. People do take contradictory arguments seriously and many find them useful - presumably. — Isaac
If it's to give us better belief sets (where 'better' here could be any measure for now), then we're putting the cart before the horse in our argumentation methodology, we should be saying "look how successful my belief sets are - that proves they cannot be self-contradictory", forget logic - point and counter-point should be various successes and failures in our personal lives!
But we don't. We think it the other way round, we think that one ought hold a belief set which adheres to these argumentative rules regardless of whether it's useful or not. As if there were some nobility to doing so. Perhaps we'll be rewarded by God...? — Isaac
This all seems fine on a cursory reading. — Janus
Is this roughly where you are? — Srap Tasmaner
I tend to frame the effect of reason in terms effects on our priors, so reasoning is still post hoc, but has an effect. Basically, if the process of reasoning (which is effectively predictive modeling of our own thinking process), flags up a part of the process that doesn't fit the narrative, it'll send suppressive constraints down to that part to filter out the 'crazy' answers that don't fit. — Isaac
What I'm convinced doesn't happen (contrary to Kahneman, I think - long time since I've read him) is any cognitive hacking in real time. I can see how it might cash out like that on a human scale (one decision at a time), but at a deeper neurological scale, my commitments to an active inference model of cognition don't allow for such an intervention. We only get to improve for next time. — Isaac
What I'm convinced doesn't happen (contrary to Kahneman, I think - long time since I've read him) is any cognitive hacking in real time — Isaac
I don't recall getting such an impression from Kahneman — wonderer1
Basically, if the process of reasoning (which is effectively predictive modeling of our own thinking process), flags up a part of the process that doesn't fit the narrative, it'll send suppressive constraints down to that part to filter out the 'crazy' answers that don't fit. — Isaac
Corrective rather than constructive, and the consistency being enforced is that of the narrative your current model is organized around, rather than "the way the world really is" or something. — Srap Tasmaner
Corrective rather than constructive, and the consistency being enforced is that of the narrative your current model is organized around, rather than "the way the world really is" or something. — Srap Tasmaner
there can be sudden epiphanies, where a new paradigm 'snaps into focus' — wonderer1
Some of that seems almost obviously true — Srap Tasmaner
unless the consistency I enforce (with that narrative) is also handmade and idiosyncratic, logic is still universal.
We don't have to go straight there. One of the things Joshs talks about is paradigm or culture as the constraints on what counts as evidence. You could see something like that operating at the layer we were describing here as the corrective constraints. — Srap Tasmaner
we're striving to conform to rules we ourselves have made and can take a hand in remaking and revising. All that's needed is a mechanism for generalizing and some motivation to undertake such a project. (And I swear to god this sounds almost like the old empiricist theory of generalizing from experience.) — Srap Tasmaner
I think the category 'logic' may be just too broad and in cognitive psychology terms isn't a 'natural kind' at all, but rather two (or three) completely separate processes, which involve both sensory data, and interoceptive modelling. — Isaac
it is often a matter of a 'picture' rather than a narrative — wonderer1
filtered out — Isaac
suppressive feedback — Isaac
In any case all of this is kind of a red herring given the subject of discussion was concerning self-contradictory argumentation. — Janus
I like this less abstract approach of considering what sorts of cognitive departments an organism might develop and then looking at what those could conceivably do and what that would look like. — Srap Tasmaner
I did not hallucinate the objects moving, there is no interruption of the visual stream, which still shows the lawnmower in the same place, but it "feels" like I'm seeing it move. It's like hypothetical movement does fire the extra "what this means" pathway but stays off the main "what I'm seeing pathway", almost like the reverse of Capgras delusion. — Srap Tasmaner
Basically, all the stuff telling you that the visual pathway you stimulated by imagining the moving lawnmower was you doing it, not the outside world. — Isaac
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