Eh, it's not like I wasn't enjoying myself. I wouldn't engage if I wasn't -- so no need to apologize.

The 3rd answer is best because the normal distribution is the most common distribution. — Devans99

You've got it bass-ackwards. Which distribution just depends upon the phenomena under consideration. It's not like all phenomena are linked together, and a distribution is picked because most phenomena follow such-and-such a distribution. That's just goofy. Besides you still haven't spelled out what your graph is measuring, so I don't know if it even matters all that much.

Assuming the survey is correct then 70% of dogs are nice. That's it

The best thing you can say about what you do not know is that you do not know. So if the survey was not done well, if there is a subset of dogs to which the survey does not apply, then the best thing you can say is that you do not know if they are nice or not -- it would be premature of you to say "Well, it is the best guess that half are one way and half are another way"

If you have to make an assumption you're basically admitting the point -- that the number you're assigning is arbitrary. Just because you believe 50/50 is the statistically most likely distribution that does not mean that it is -- thus far all you have for that belief is the assertion of the belief.

But your starting with 50% is entirely arbitrary. You just like the number 50%, so you decided to start there. It seemed like a good number to you.

If the survey is correct, then 70% of dogs are nice. 85% of dogs are not nice just because you tacked on an arbitrary 50% to some unknown quantity. The 30% who are unknown could all be mean. There is literally no reason to assume 50% of the unknown quantity are one of two values. They are simply unknown, and if you were to choose a random dog then, given the evidence that you have, you'd be making a good bet by saying the dog is nice.

Some questions that don’t have evidence baked in:

‘Is there a creator god?’
‘Is the dog nice?’
‘Is the frog fat?’

So questions can be about existence or boolean valued properties only. All of these types of questions are statistically best answered 50% / 50%. — Devans99

I'd say that it depends on the domain under consideration, and so evidence is a part of such things.

"Is the dog nice?" -- the weight given yes or no would depend upon the percentage of nice dogs there are. So, like the ball example, if we just chose some random dog from the set there would be a percentage assignable based upon what so far has been observed.

But if you just mean to restrict questions to boolean values, 0 or 1, then OK.

If mathematical objects are allowed then it could be demonstrated that there are more "No" answers, as well -- 2 + 2 = 4, but it does not equal any other number. The "ball" you'd be picking out is the predicate, some number, and only one such number exists for which the answer to the question "Is 2+2=x?" is yes.

If not, then you'll have to further restrict what you mean by the relevant domain. Because at this point your domain is any question for which there is a yes or no answer, and which there can only be two possible outcomes for the object under consideration.

I do not know what you mean by evidence being built into a question. The primary difference I see is that you're asking about existence, whereas I had questions about properties. But I have evidence that the desk exists. I see it right here. So I don't see how existence is somehow different, or how a creator is somehow different from questions about properties of things. The more questions we ask, the more "no" answers we will have.

So I'll ask again -- what is this graph that you propose? What is on the x-axis, and what is on the y-axis? And what would a normal distribution look like for questions of the sort that can only be answered in two ways?

Thinking a little more deeply about it -- what is the graph you propose?

I would put it like this. The x-axis is the number of yes/no questions asked. So we don't have to worry about infinity, we can look at the tendency. The Y axis is percent of questions whose answer is no. We have the ability to generate all kinds of no questions -- like "Is the desk brown?" Now supposing that the desk is indeed brown, we can say yes. But then we can also ask "Is the desk green? Is the desk gray? Is the desk blue?" and so on, for all the colors that it is not. We can ask "Is the desk three feet tall?" -- and, again, supposing that it is, we can also ask "Is the desk four feet tall? Is the desk two feet tall?" and so on.

So an exponential distribution even makes sense in the case of yes/no questions -- there are surely more "no" answers than "yes" answers. And the more questions we ask, because we can also ask different questions that are about the same object, and there are more no's for any given object, the more no questions there are.

But we have omitted no evidence at all yet so we don’t know what the distribution is but we can still pick the statistically most likely distribution which is normal. — Devans99

I'm not sure how your first statement links to your second one. And picking a distribution you can do -- but it's pretty arbitrary. What's to stop me from saying that the statistically most likely distribution is exponential? Especially given that you've said we know nothing about the external world?

Why not?

- We will be more correct in a statistical sense if we pick the midpoint of normal distribution - 50% — Devans99

That is only the case for phenomena which follow a normal distribution, though. To pick the normal distribution is an arbitrary assumption. There are plenty of pheneomena for which this assumption doesn't hold -- non-normal distributions. And in the case of Yes/No questions, without a method of counting, we simply do not know what kind of distribution holds.

- You can. A little bit of common sense and statistics tells us, on average, the answer to yes/no questions (for which nothing else is known) is 50% yes, 50% no. — Devans99

I'd say that common sense, in this case, is misleading. How many yes/no questions are there? I don't think there is any reasonable way to count. Language is often characterized as a system of expression which uses finite resources to express infinite possible sentences. That's because we simply do not know how many sentences there may possibly be -- it basically looks like infinite to us. So there is no way of knowing if 50% of yes/no questions are yes or no. We simply lack the ability to count. Just because there are two answers that does not mean that both answers are weighted the same. Take a look at the colored ball set-ups for probability. If we have 5 red balls and 20 blue balls in the same bag, then the probability of drawing a red ball is 20 percent. There are only two possible outcomes, but the outcomes have different probabilities because of how many of each there are.

In the case of God there really is only a probability of either 0 or 1, because existence does not admit of degrees. At least not without some fairly strange notions about reality that are clearly not going to be shared by everyone.

I might modify this a bit though and say there is no non-arbitrary way to assign a probability. Clearly you can just pick a number.

Proposition 1 - There was a creator god

Assume 50% probability true to start with — Devans99

Why?

If I know nothing about the proposition, then I cannot assign a probability value to it.

Big Bang is evidence for creator at 60% probability so combining probabilities:

Again, why? Where is this 60% number coming from? Why not 30%? Or 0%? Or 100%? Or 75%?

Fine tuning is evidence for the creator 75% probability so:

Annnndd... same question.

Prime mover is evidence for the creator 25% probability so:

Yup.

To double check, I’ve done the inverse proposition below:

The thing is, you're just pulling numbers from your intuitive feeling for them. There is no reason to accept your probabilities. For some proposition 1 has a 0% probability of being true, and for some it has a 100% probability of being true. And, in the end, you have to have some kind of knowledge of the world to reliably assign a probability -- so in the case of a evenly weighted coin we know that we will get heads 50% of the time, over the course of infinitely many coin-flips, because we know things about the coin. Same goes for card games or pulling different colored balls out of bags.

But we know nothing about God, so we cannot assign a probability to his existence or not aside from our intuitive feelings on the matter, which diverge wildly because of extra-probabilistic reasons.

Is a researcher conducting a psychological experiment on other people acting ethically? That was the actual question behind this side discussion. And after all is said the answer does not become any more obvious than it was at the beginning of the discussion. If I feel that a psychological experiment is ethically acceptable, then pointing out that this experiment involves manipulation and deception won't change my mind. Without even appealing to counter-examples, like I did before, I could just turn the argument around and say that, since clearly this experiment is ethically acceptable, then some manipulation and deception can be ethically acceptable. — SophistiCat

I think at that point we'd have to ask -- what makes it ethically acceptable?

Deception and manipulation are ethically accept in certain circumstances. The ax murderer is deterred from murder because of our manipulation, and that is more than acceptable but even good. I'd say that putting on your best face at work is a more everyday example of manipulation that is acceptable, because work is tied to survival. Protecting yourself and your loved ones from those who want to exploit them would be another ethically acceptable justification for manipulation, at least if our deceptions are directed at the people intending harm.

I don't know if I buy that science is a justification. Science doesn't lead to progress. It leads to knowledge. And knowledge is value-neutral -- it can be used for good or ill.

And then there is the question of whether or not said science does lead to knowledge. Here it seems that these stories at least challenge that, though under the auspices of accepting psychology as a scientific discipline. It's one of those things where if you're a scientist you'll say that we are perfecting knowledge and we can expect errors along the way, and if you are not you'll take it as evidence that the enterprise cannot deliver on its promise.

Maybe it's better to put that aside though and just ask -- what fruits are born from said research? Do the circumstances we find our practitioners of science in justify manipulation, in a similar way to other cases of manipulation that we find ethically acceptable?

Would you say that your response here is fundamentally an appeal to the irrational to justify being rational? I don’t mean that in any derogatory way. I like how you put it. But it appears to be that for something to be ‘appealing’,as you put it, is a response to the emotional experience of something feeling appealing. This isn’t something that is itself reasoned. But rather it comes across as intuitive. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

I don't think that feelings are irrational, tout court. If your life is in danger it makes sense that you
fear. If your loved one is in the hospital it makes sense that you worry. If you achieve something you care about then it makes sense that you feel accomplished.

So, no, I don't think that this is irrational. It's just consistent -- these are a couple of reasons why we provide reasons. And I'd say that my response describes how rationality works, too. One, it is nice to hear why someone believes as they do -- else I'll just stick to the beliefs I happen to have, since there is no moving from one belief to another by some means which allows different persons to consider them. And two, we move our beliefs because some justification is persuasive -- which itself only makes sense to me in terms of aesthetics.

Because it is appealing -- both in the sense that it allows us to make appeals, and also in the sense that it is aesthetically satisfying.

Deceptive and manipulative behavior isn't always a sin, and when it is, it isn't necessarily a big deal - that's my point. We do it all the time, even unconsciously, and often for good reasons: when we try to look our best, when we try to be persuasive, when we are being tactful, when we try to make someone feel good (or bad), when we avoid giving "too much information." And then there are different degrees and modes of candidness that are appropriate to different relationships: with your spouse, with your child, with a friend, with a colleague, with a shop clerk, with a police officer, etc. Someone who is absolutely candid with everyone at all times would be rightly considered a sociopath. — SophistiCat

Would you say that we engage in authentic relationships with people all the time, too?

It seems that way to me.

Authenticity is not deceptive or manipulative, I agree there. But I'm uncertain about some of your examples. Acting tactfully or trying to make someone feel good or bad are quite possibly authentic expressions or actions. It's a matter of whether or not you are tactful or want to make someone feel good or bad.

Persuasion might be done authentically, even. It just depends on whether you believe what you are saying -- so telling someone what persuaded you isn't deceitful, while thinking up anything to change someone's belief to match what you want it to be regardless of whether you find it persuasive isn't.

Looking your best, I agree, is not part of an authentic relationship. We treat those we love worse than those we are strangers to because we don't have to put on a show for them.



How big of a deal it is... well, I sort of feel that a life with less deception is a happier life. So I don't know if I'd cast these things as sins, though they certainly can be in some cases. It's more that by engaging others in a strictly deceptive manner you cut yourself off -- you are only hurting yourself, because you can no longer trust people and be with them. To dovetail a bit of what @unenlightened is saying above, they become objects which, likewise, are manipulating you too, which destroys all hopes of any kind of relationship with people.


EDIT:

(I know someone who says that he despises movies and theater, because he values truth and honesty. I think he is a douche.) — SophistiCat

I wanted to hone in on this a bit but wasn't sure how to at first.

There is a difference between authenticity, and valueing truth and honesty and following through in some respect because of that value. Active valuation of this sort ties into one's identity, a lot of the time. But being authentic is anything but an identity -- at least of the sort we are attached to, express in words and decide actions from. Authenticity is tied to feeling.

Now, I don't know this someone. Perhaps he is an authentic douche. :D But there is a difference between simple candidness, the active valuation of truth/honesty, and an authentic relationship -- one seems to be caught up in pure self-expression, whereas the other includes someone else and is felt prior to any expression.



How does any of that relate to the OP? Well, it's a bit tangential. I just felt it was important to say, and hoped that maybe it related after the fact. Maybe with a bit more work it will.

I don't think you have to resort to hermitude. (is that a word?) to avoid playing games. It's just a matter of having an authentic relationship with someone. Not that this is possible for everyone, but surely we do have authentic relationships with people too.

I have to admit that I feel skeptical about psychological science. I tend to think of humanity as primarily historical in character, without defining features which transcend our historical epoch. So it is possible to say that this group of people in this time period have these tendencies, but it is not possible to say that humanity, as a whole, shares such and such features. To do so is just to generalize from a particular historical moment to some kind of human nature. Interesting features can be revealed, but the experimental setup is just another instance of history.

Hrm! That's the first I've heard of this. I certainly had gone over the experiment in our intro psych class. Thanks for sharing.

Well, I'll admit that I am inclined to say that individuals are given. I have a general suspicion of there being an explanation, a why, the stapler is this stapler and not that stapler (or table, or building, or sky).

Or, if there be an explanation, I suppose what I'm generally suspicious of is that we know that we have this explanation, rather than that explanation, as the best explanation. There is a point at which explanation ceases to have justification.

Also, I'm more inclined to say "given" in the sense that we agree to such-and-such. I'm not super-committed to a notion of a discursive mind being somehow defined by an other-worldly mind which thinks things into existence, ala full blown Kantianism. It just seems that individuals are agreed upon or not, and we can try to show what we mean by an individual, but we cannot explain them in the same way that we can explain, say, the origin of species.

Gotcha.

I know that it sounds outlandish -- but I think that there is something worthwhile in acting in developing practical reason.

There is something important learned in thinking through a character or role -- you have to develop motivations which may not be your own, you have to think from the perspective of a total other while being able to relate to that other just enough to make it come to life, and you have to do more than just think through said relation -- you have to embody this other person, and in a sense -- if only temporarily and within the confines of an art -- become them. By playing tragic roles, comedic roles, and things in-between (even two dimensional roles, at times) you get a feel for the human being in practice without the total effects on your actual life.

While there is more to consider in play acting than just these considerations (such as making an entertaining play, or standing in a way that you can be seen), there is something about others that comes to light in taking on them as if they were yourself, and not just in fantasy but in a way that it is at least believable in a play acting setting.

I also don't want to overemphasize the art in terms of practical reason. We can get lost in fantasy. But such is also the case even when dealing with real problems in our life. I think acting just helps in being able to step outside yourself, just a little bit, and even come to understand yourself a little better as you make comparisons, distinctions, and relations to something that is not ourself.

Must teleology be bound to pre-destination? Or do you just mean teleology in the sense of cause-and-effect?

I think I would put it that disinterest can apply to art as it does to reason.

While I think that Kant is closer to Hume than traditional readings tend to render him, I will say that he doesn't allow for many motivations inside of his account of practical reason. He also is primarily interested in practical reason in its moral sense, and I don't think that's quite right. Insofar as we are deliberating about action then I'd say that practical reason is being applied or appealed to. But a lot of our actions are not strictly moral, especially in a deontological sense. Plus it seems to me that we can be motivated by more than respect even within moral deliberation, and especially in ethical deliberation.

Disinterest, as I see it, would apply in cases where advice is being given by some trusted person. So a priest, a counselor, a friend, a mentor, or something along those lines.

But then we can also use reason to our own benefit. While there is something good to be said about not being caught up by certain passions, we are passionate beings. And reasoning about our own well-being is anything but disinterested, even in the specific Kantian sense.

I definitely feel like picking through a problem has a similar feel to struggling with some work of art. There is a kind of leap in coming to a novel solution, one that involves the imagination at work -- and also in working out the implications of said leap.

I think trying to frame it in terms of how is better just because I agree that it is very hard to be clear on what is involved. But I think it's a little easier to say how -- like the elements and principles of visual art. They don't really specify what art is, they're just general guidelines for how to think about art in order to make art. And true mastery of an art often involves the intentional breaking of those guidelines. But that only comes with thousands of hours of practice.

So maybe the conditions I listed are a bit too clinical -- as seen from the outside, based upon examples of practical reasoning, rather than ways of thinking through a practical problem.

Well, sure. I think there are advantages here too. But you're asking something more personal. Something I would want to know more about you in the flesh before I said anything. There is something to knowing one another together roughly in the same area that changes everything.

I think so too -- but I think there is something to a physical relationship as well. And what you are asking after I would be more comfortable having a physical relationship with you. (as awful as that sounds -- I know the implications -- I just mean meeting you for a beer vs. reading you words here)

There had to be a topic somewhere that @Hanover and I agreed upon. :D

Without knowing you in the flesh it's just hard to say. We all can edit our text here and choose what we say. There's not enough information to give good advice.

That being said I will say that if you are content then there's nothing to address. @Baden said it best to me.

I agree, more or less. I'm not so certain about Hume, but whatever. Presentation matters. Aesthetics are a part of theoretical concerns, explanations, and explorations. And there are times when aesthetics can override the purported theoretical concerns -- the aim at truth.

As far as I'm concerned that means that people who are interested in theory should pay attention to aesthetics. It matters. Sometimes more than mere true statements.

There is simply enduring and coping. Again, troubling. — schopenhauer1

I don't view this as troubling. For one it does seem there are people who do not feel this way. All the better for them.

But for those of us who view life as full of suffering, I don't see that as a troubling conclusion.

It's just the way it is.

We would need to care about suffering in order for us to believe that it were important.

But if life is absurd then we need not be attached to such notions. We can grow from enduring, to coping, to non-attachment, to joy. Where once we were a Donkey attached to the notion of life, and then we were a lion rebelling with declarations of the absurd, we can become a baby -- innocent and creative.

On philosophy:

Philosophy pushes the boundaries of sense. With new philosophy new concepts or ways of thinking are explored. If it were always bound by teleology then philosophy would almost just be the engineering of the mind, trying to make better inferences, clearer explications, or more certain truths.

Simultaneously if philosophy were not bound to reason then it begins to look too much like other activities -- like writing poetry or prose, politics, proselytizing, self expression, or simply writing a journal. It loses what has been an enduring quality of philosophical writing -- appeals that, in principle, are evaluable on the basis that they are made rationally or for reason to consider.

Or, in the case of medical philosophies, reason was being put to use in the service of said medical desires or needs.


So I'm tempted to call philosophy proper the art of reasoning, where the teleological structure of reason is temporarily suspended and concepts are created out of the principles of reasoning itself. So we can follow an argument or make an argument or some such, just as a painter can paint a representation of a street or a person. It's still art to do so. But the suspension of goals or representation (for reason and painting, respectively) creates a kind of play with the principles themselves -- hence the art of reason, or the art of painting. There's even a play in just putting the principles to use, in setting up a picture just so, or coming up with a story or example that fits just right to some general principle or argument being made.

but the key thing I'm trying to resolve here is the claim that reason is teleologically structured, philosophy is entirely useless (but valuable), and philosophy is inextricable from reason.

Actually that does set off my thinking a bit -- thinking of reasoning as an art. Exactly like learning to make art -- Doesn't reasoning sort of work in the same way? To be susceptible to a justification one would have to care about reasoning, and to care about it one would have to be able to do it. We can all doodle a stick-man, but we cannot all paint a landscape. We are all quite able to remain rooted in our upbringing, and cling to beliefs. We can supply reasons for our beliefs. But we are not all able to think through our beliefs, find inconsistencies, let go of beliefs, and entertain new thoughts without commitment while building arguments that would support said beliefs.

(There's something of the imagination at work in this.)

For a justification to work we would have to have some kind of familiarity with the art of reasoning, to trust that reasoning can help, to be able to sort good reasons from bad ones, and have some sort of practice in making judgments of this sort.

I'm not sure what you intend with your quotes. I'm just noting that.

I view reasoning as an activity that humans can do. So rather than looking at it as a tool, it's really more of a power -- we don't use reason like we use a hammer. We use reason like we use seeing -- it can be put to multiple functions, some of which aren't exactly bound to desire in an ends-means relationship. Rather, we are motivated to do something -- reasoning comes out of or flows forth from emotion or motivation. It is something of an art, really. It can be taught and developed, as one develops one's ability to paint or act.

So the when, from my perspective at least, comes about when reason ceases to be the best art to practice. Sometimes we should be poets, and sometimes we should be reasoners. But when is it best to reason? And when does it get in the way?

A quick summation of necessary conditions thus far:


Emotional attachment or motivation (know-why)

Shared beliefs or commitments to which appeals can be made or made from.

The belief that a speaker is someone who is worth listening to.

The explanation must satisfy both the spoken-to and the speaker.

Experience in the area under consideration (like riding a bike -- you wouldin't listen to the Mary of bike-riding, studious though she is, you would be more likely to listen to the person who has ridden a bike quite often)

If the steps are accepted, what *matters* to the person appealed to has to be found and invoked, otherwise the superficially rational argument falls on stony ground. (As someone who has spent many hours as a Green candidate or advocate failing to persuade voters of the merits of my case, I believe I have some experience of this stony ground) — mcdoodle

Heh. That strikes a chord with me. I've experienced the stony ground before, too.

This kind of reminds me of the parable of the sower.

We have to find at least a mutually-common premiss to get anywhere. This zone is where many rational-seeming people trying to appeal to what they regard as practical reason get stuck. They get frustrated or angry that others don't get their argument. They are apt to think others are being 'irrational' when it may be that they are coming at it from different presuppositions.

Phronetic explanations seem to need to satisfy both explainer and the explained-to.

That's a good point. One of the things in the back of my mind while reading your reply was the thought of organizing. There's a school of organizing which treats the organizer as a kind of enlightened individual who knows what people want better than they do. What's more is that, doing enough organizing, sometimes it's even true that you know what people want more than what they do given certain practical circumstances that the people you organize are usually unaware of.

So you can easily convince yourself of your enlightened cred.

But this sort of relationship usually omits the organizer from being satisfied by some explanation. The organizer acts in a professional capacity to serve the people explicitly and only. And explanations no longer really act like appeals at that stage -- they are what people want to hear, and they move them to the best outcome given the circumstances, but there is a hard asymmetry between the organizer and the organized. Similar to the patient and the analyst, actually. (not sure about doctor, though. Maybe at one point, but the medical field seems to have incorporated patient input into their practice, from my cursory glance)

That is, there are no explanations or appeals, they are tools to move people thus and so.

But having that double requirement sort of gives a golden mean between two points -- on the one hand, the problem of rational people that you highlight. And then on the other hand, the problem of assymetric knowledge or status. Both, in a sense, are a deficiency in being able to listen, just from different reasons -- one is too wrapped up in their own reasoning, and the other is too wrapped up in an "objective" theoretical construct of the Other's reasoning. But the mean would have us listen to an Other, and find common ground in order to build what could reasonably count as rational phronetic explanations or reasons.

I'm interested in medical diagnosis in this context. Doctors/nurses need a conclusion as much as a patient does. Sometimes then a the invocation of a so-called 'syndrome', or some other way of just summarising symptoms, masquerades as a diagnosis when in honesty it falls short. To name symptoms well is an important step, but it isn't a diagnosis that can lead to a prognosis. It is however somehow satisfying in lieu of the meaningful.

Taking the medical "analogy" to the next step, eh? :D

That's cool. Maybe I should delve more deeply into that area.

In my mind I'm sort of trying to work out what it would be to make an appeal as equals, though clearly there are always going to be asymmetries of some sort too just through natural ability.

Just to use language, though, as an example, is an example of rule-following. Our carers teach us over and over again until we get it. Then we become so habituated to it that we forget we once learnt to follow rules to do all this saying and hearing. We are rule-following animals. The authoritarians use this fact about us to inculcate their ways into us. But left to myself I learn, say, a route to a place, and then I take that same route over and over, sometimes in defiance of people who tell me about rationally better routes: I know my route, I trust it, I'm safe along it. — mcdoodle

I think you have the better way of putting it. Good point with language-learning, something which is certainly prior to authoritarian structures.

I think this notion of safety and trust is close to habit. So we might change our route if we care about something more than our familiar and safe and trustworthy patterns have thus far proven comfortable -- perhaps there's a new shop along another route, or we find the standard route becoming congested with traffic. In a sense this is perfectly rational -- I have in mind, if someone were to tell you a shorter way of getting somewhere, that while if you cared about saving time then it would make sense to try it, but given that you care about familiarity you're being more rational by following the same route than by adhering to some other standard that falls outside of your care.

I only meant the steps in some sort of process of inference. — mcdoodle

Got it.

I do think that in say bike-riding we learn a series of steps, until by repetition we don't even think about the steps, we 'just do it'. So knowing-how is built up from knowing-why. Our reasoning is built into things we have learnt to do automatically, like making tea or feeding the cat. It's hidden in familiar acts.

Reason is "baked in", so to speak. There's a series of events or lessons or steps that are reflected upon, but then through repetition the awareness of those steps sinks into the body and stops being something
reflected upon.

This is interesting too -- rather than looking at reason as a series of rules or norms for thinking, this seems to cast reasoning as whatever takes place in the process of learning, and the motivation (know-why) for such learning to take place.

Glad to hear from you @mcdoodle

I am interested in this question. One interesting factor to me is the relation between ancient and modern. Aristotle considers an ethical education to involve inculcating the right 'habits'. Wittgenstein worries and worries over what it is to 'follow a rule'. It feels to me that 'habits' and 'rule-following' are similar if not identical phenomena. We arrive at rules/habits - we reflect on them, reason about them, perhaps try to change them - we have a new set of rules/habits. (Ari considers this ethical, though in a broader sense than the modern; Witt is unclear) — mcdoodle

I agree that the relation between the ancient and the modern is really interesting. And, as my thinking goes anyway, I have a tendency to synthesize between the two. For one it seems to me futile to propose ancient ethical philosophy as a serious contender if we take it to the letter -- those were different times.

For two, we have to be able to speak to people. And modern thought on ethics is necessary to proceed in this manner.

I had never thought about the relationship between Witti's rule-following and Aristotle's habits. I think you're on to something there. Especially through habituation -- we don't come to question a habit without some kind of force. And with rule-following we simply follow the rule as a necessary part of playing the game -- to question the rule is similar to questioning a habit. (though with Witti we get no guidance on the ethical either).

This is one approach towards practical reason or phronesis. It seems there is some process behind such analysis as encapsulated in the Aristotelian syllogism: there will be a series of steps from an initial set of presuppositions that make sense to us. We will have reasons-for. (Looked at in two ways: the post hoc reasoning, and the actual why-one-did-it) — mcdoodle

I'd be interested in hearing more about this series of steps. I can kind of see it with respect to the syllogism, and it certainly fits Aristotle's patterns of thought, but I'm wondering how you relate that back to habituation and rule-following. Like, there's a series of habits which build good character and develops phronesis?

The next and wierdest question is: How does a being make a decision? How is all this reasoning related to decision-making? Much writing on the subject just assumes some sort of relation. Yet much of the time it's like riding a bike: we practice over and over until we do an action without having to analyse how we're doing it. Even with intellectually complex decisions, how we act can boil down to such shortcuts, rules. — mcdoodle

Definitely. For now I think it might help to just look at how we might change our decisions rather than trying to find a base for making any decision. At least our acts are always in play, and we can see that we do, in fact, change course -- and sometimes that change of course is because of reason. "Because" not in a causal sense here. The causal mechanism, I think, is a purely theoretic way of coming to understanding human action. So we get Freud's unconscious, and a dollop of post-hoc rationalizations after the fact. But in what way is that even useful to thinking through a decision, or deliberating on the right way to become, or making a decision in the face of an event that calls into question a previous habit?

None. It would almost be laughable if someone were to tell me that they did something because they had to resolve some unconscious drive. It would be like they stepped outside of themselves and pictured themselves as a sort of machine, realizing they only had one lever and pulled it. Like, who thinks like that? And, if so, how does it actually help in thinking through our actions?

I think you're right to say that it's like riding a bike, and that there are certainly "short cuts" involved -- I don't think that syllogistic reasoning or reflective reasoning plays the primary role in our daily actions. I think habit has a lot to say here (though, side note: I am interested in habit, too. What lies under the hood of habit? And what does the explanation of habit actually explain?). Only that it plays some role some of the time (and, possibly, could even be made to play more of a role, though I don't know if that's even desirable)

I've been reading about the tragic fire in a high-rise block, Grenfell Tower in London. Quite apart from the longer-term issues of how the building was refurbished, the decision-making on the night of the fire is a lesson in how we employ practical reasoning. Many people died by obeying fire officers' advice to stay in their flats, even turning back when they were escaping when so advised, turning back against their own self-wisdom to their deaths. The fire officers themselves were following their superiors' orders and their training. Deference to authority, and fidelity to rules for which the particular situation was inappropriate, got in the way of practical reasoning from first principles. We are highly intelligent animals but we are rule-followers, and the rule-following is part of what we think of as our intelligence. — mcdoodle

Sometimes I think the rule-following bit is a bit more a convenience of the world we live in and a product of our educational systems. It's easier to govern large swathes of people who are accustomed to hierarchy and authority.

That's a terribly sad story, though. Instead of trusting what was right in front of their face they trusted the words of authority. That's kind of crazy.

I have this image that comes to me when I deal with this issue. I don't intend this to be taken literally. It's just my way of thinking about it. It's an amoeba flowing around and moving away from something harmful or toward food based on chemical signals. There is an obviously very simple mechanism which tells the amoeba what to do. I see our nervous system as analogous to that. The whole thing is just a mechanism to tell us what to do next. Over billions of years, the mechanism has gotten a lot more complicated, but it's goal is still the same, to keep us alive by directing our behavior. Thought and consciousness are just manifestations of that mechanism. Knowledge and reason are just processes within that manifestation. Truth is just a possible feature of that process.

For me, looking at things through the lens of truth is misleading. To believe in truth you have to believe in the existence of objective reality, which I think is questionable. Actually, it's not a belief in truth or objective reality I reject, it's the belief that a view of reality including those concepts is somehow privileged over other ways of seeing things. — T Clark

I might have a broader notion of theoretical reasoning here that I'm not making clear -- because everything you say here, from my perspective, is purely theoretical. Concerns about objective reality, whether reason is rooted in our biological capacities, a world cast as a mechanism, and ways of perceiving reality that may be just as good as those concerned with spelling out the truth of things in a correspondent fashion where the word and world resonate with one another --- all of these are theoretical uses of reason. I say that in contrast to a practical reason which would actually tell me what is worth valuing, or give me some kind of consideration on how to act appropriately, or would orient persons to develop their characters in a good way.

In preserving notions of theoretical thought I don't mean to denigrate other ways of seeing things -- in fact I'd say that theoretical thought, broadly construed, would admit of a multitude of ways of seeing things. "Ways of seeing" seems to me to be a subset of theoretical thinking since we use such ways to perceive, believe, and think about the world.

I'd just say that it is true that there are other ways of seeing things. ;)

Although, hey! I did just identify a contradiction in my thinking. Generally I think of philosophy as thoroughly useless, but here I am saying that philosophy is bound up with reason -- while characterizing reason as teleological. Hrm. Gotta think through that one.

Sure, me calling it political truth is probably a misnomer, but it's a purposeful one. I have written in a number of discussions that, to me, truth is really only a tool to help us achieve the real goal of philosophy, which is to figure out what we should do next. — T Clark

I want to preserve this notion of theoretical thought. It makes more sense of much of philosophy -- rather than casting Plato's theory of the Forms in terms of a tool, it makes sense to say that Plato believed Truth to be a form which we could reach for. He seemed to also believe that knowing truth was enough to make good people -- in a way he collapses practical concerns into theoretical concerns. What the pragmatist does is the opposite -- truth is a tool to be put towards human ends, and nothing more. But this misses the meaning of truth, and also makes the practical concerns of life difficult to understand. (are we saying what we are saying about philosophy because it is a tool being used towards some end? Or are we implicitly assuming a theoretical notion of truth in setting things out thus and so?)

But with some kind of theoretical notion of truth as being somehow related to knowledge -- without a theory, it does seem we have a pre-theoretic understanding of truth, despite the problems with all theories of truth (including deflationary ones) -- it's easy to be able to say that what we are doing here, in producing knowledge, we can also use these abilities in the pursuit of other goals. One of which is the good life.

I don't want to commit myself to the notion that my normative claim on philosophy is the real goal of philosophy. Rather I think of it is a commitment on my part to what I think is interesting in philosophy for myself and possibly others like me. But it's wholly possible for someone to abandon that precept and engage in philosophy in a purely theoretical manner. In fact, many philosophers do exactly that. If they didn't share my precept, there would be no appeal I could make to them though. And while I think practical concerns are primary, in the sense that I want to intentionally make ethics my first philosophy, I can't deny that there are those with a thirst for truth and knowledge instead.

Perhaps I should note that I don't think of reason as some cold set of rules of inference or Spock-like mentality, too. Reason is wholly motivated towards goals -- it is teleologically structured, and in human beings at least, this means motivation and emotion is part and parcel to reasoning. "Disinterested" takes on a new meaning here -- instead of being some pure archon of truth, a disinterested person is one who is motivated in the appropriate way given their profession or goal. It becomes a project of character building through education to create disinterested individuals who, though we are all motivated by emotion and goals, comes to what we consider to be generally agreeable and reasonable conclusions.

I thought you and I were talking about the same thing. In what way is what you call "practical truth" different from what I call "political truth." I'm not talking about politics as in creating, enforcing, and judging laws, I'm talking about making group decisions about what to do next. — T Clark

I just wouldn't call it truth. I'd say that we're aiming at proper action, rather than true actions. So there is what is true, and then there is what is good (unqualified, but not simpliciter -- just meaning I know that "good" can mean multiple things).

So theoretical reason is the use of reasoning in the pursuit of the goal of truth or knowledge. Whereas practical reason is the use of reason in the pursuit of the goal of the good or proper conduct (be it collective or otherwise).