Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Pattern-chaser]

More talk of examples. Have we never seen, perhaps on a philosophy forum, a particular idea being dismissed, accompanied by silly insults, not argument? Have we never heard/read someone saying "this is obviously nonsense", or "no sane person would even consider this"? And have we not seen such comments followed by a summary dismissal of the idea in question? I have. Many times, over the years. And I never understood how such an attitude could be defended. Hence this topic.

[Sy Borg]

P-C, it's just opinions. At our age, we should not care about such things :)

I really don't see the problem. If people are going to claim "obvious nonsense" that "no sane person would consider", then others are going to point that out with varying levels of diplomacy. Faked Moon landing. Flat Earth. Australia does not exist. The election was rigged. Climate change is not real. Evolution is false and the Earth is 6,000 years old. Animals do not experience pain. If you try hard enough, you can achieve anything.

Deceit is a major part of being a clever ape. That's how humans have always survived - tricking, exploiting and out-manoeuvring other species, and each other. Trouble is, the brain is not an easy organ to manage. Like anything complicated, a lot can go wrong.

Sometimes people really do believe crazy things due to indoctrination, disorder or mental illness.

Sometimes these claims are made for attention, to feel important; they are not sincerely believed by the claimants.

Sometimes it's simply lies used to achieve gain. Thoroughly sane, albeit predatory.

Sometimes it's "logic" based on false or very incomplete data regarding initial conditions (such data is never truly complete, though).

Sometimes they don't believe what they claim - yet. Many claims are made that are effectively affirmations, which is basically an attempt at self-hypnosis. These ones can get pretty annoying :D

It is easy to be lost in the world of human opinion, being pushed and pulled in all manner of directions, which I suppose is why some people cling to dogma. Not a bad strategy, aside from the cognitive dissonances and personal distortions needed to hold the mask in place. So how do we hold firm in the face of relentless rhetorical pressure?

Our own logic, flawed and limited as it may be.

I broadly agree with science and think it's an essential tool in making sense of everything. If you don't respect and get confused by the non-intuitive weirdness of chemistry and biochemistry, you will go up a lot of blind alleys. Chemistry is a great reminder of how our ape senses can fool us.

Consider the making of a "carbon sugar snake". Mix together white powder A with white powder B and pour clear fluid C on it. Put that stuff on a mound of sand and ignite. This creates a long, black snakelike residue that oozes out of the fire. Whaaaat??? If you know the chem, it makes sense but to a child or an animal the "sugar snake" would seem be like magic, to almost be alive. Some people who know zero science basically see the whole world like that - entirely governed by mysterious magical powers, which is both incredibly cool and terrifying.

When I was young, I found the reason and logic of science profoundly calming. I greatly feared ghosts and possessing spirits and suchlike until I learned more about how nature actually works. I expect other types of personalities prefer the thrills and danger of superstition.

So you end up with, 'How is a human supposed to live this brief window of sentience?' and the answer always has to be NFI, it just happens, regardless of our rather uncertain certainties. I say this, so covered in re hived that it looks like I have red skin with some white blotches. This is apparently the response of my immune system after having a possible virus but, seriously, no one's sure what's happening with my body. It's all too complicated. With due respect to human doctors, bring on the AI, I say. Biology s too complex for humans to understand without a tool like (future?) AI that can do most of the heavy lifting.

In the meantime, we all just take our best guesses.

[Pattern-chaser]

P-C, it's just opinions. At our age, we should not care about such things

I really don't see the problem.

I don't see a 'problem' either. But I have seen people who seem capable of serious and considered thought, saying such stuff. This topic is me, asking them to explain the reasons — logical reasons — why they think and act as they do. To me, their actions are incomprehensible. I sought/seek only to understand. So I suppose the 'problem', if there is one, is mine...?



P.S. Is there an age where we stop caring about opinions, our own, or other people's?

[Sy Borg]

P-C, it's just opinions. At our age, we should not care about such things :)

I really don't see the problem.

I don't see a 'problem' either. But I have seen people who seem capable of serious and considered thought, saying such stuff. This topic is me, asking them to explain the reasons — logical reasons — why they think and act as they do. To me, their actions are incomprehensible. I sought/seek only to understand. So I suppose the 'problem', if there is one, is mine...? 🤔



P.S. Is there an age where we stop caring about opinions, our own, or other people's? 🤔🤔🤔

Often it's impatience. People encounter the same old arguments, over and over, and these voices can tend to blend into each other. So, in the first five instances of an old chestnut in debates, eg. it's impossible to be moral without religion, there may be civil discussion. The next ten instances may start being a little less patient. In the end, some rather impatient words may come out ... and this breaking will serve as "evidence" that "x people" are bad. Ay ay ay. And the band plays on.

Of course, I am speaking entirely theoretically and I naturally would never dream of behaving as described above. Like the Duke of Porkies, I'm too honourable for such things.

If nothing else, by the time you're about to snuff it, you will have bigger fish to fry than worrying about any opinion, including your own. I suppose an aspect of philosophy is to kill off that little egoistic bit of oneself so that one may enjoy the benefits of dear-death detachment without almost dying.

[Pattern-chaser]

P.S. Is there an age where we stop caring about opinions, our own, or other people's?

Often it's impatience. People encounter the same old arguments, over and over, and these voices can tend to blend into each other. So, in the first five instances of an old chestnut in debates, eg. it's impossible to be moral without religion, there may be civil discussion. The next ten instances may start being a little less patient. In the end, some rather impatient words may come out ... and this breaking will serve as "evidence" that "x people" are bad. Ay ay ay. And the band plays on.

Of course, I am speaking entirely theoretically and I naturally would never dream of behaving as described above. Like the Duke of Porkies, I'm too honourable for such things.

If nothing else, by the time you're about to snuff it, you will have bigger fish to fry than worrying about any opinion, including your own. I suppose an aspect of philosophy is to kill off that little egoistic bit of oneself so that one may enjoy the benefits of dear-death detachment without almost dying.

So ignore the opinions of others, and maybe your own too, because, in the end, we're all heading for death? Well, it's a functional philosophy, I'll give you that... This is perhaps a fitting end to a topic about logic and reason?

[Lara John]

A problem with logic could refer to a situation where the reasoning or decision-making process used doesn't align with the principles of logical thinking, leading to confusion, errors, or incorrect conclusions.

[Good_Egg]

Deceit is a major part of being a clever ape.

We're not just clever apes, we're social apes.

Where I've witnessed the premature dismissal of ideas, it's been Not Invented Here syndrome.

Tell a group of Catholics that some idea is a Protestant notion and watch it not get serious consideration on merit...

[Pattern-chaser]

Where I've witnessed the premature dismissal of ideas, it's been Not Invented Here syndrome.

Tell a group of Catholics that some idea is a Protestant notion and watch it not get serious consideration on merit...

Nice observation. Thank you. I hadn't thought of looking at it in that way. Humans, eh?

[Sy Borg]

Deceit is a major part of being a clever ape.

We're not just clever apes, we're social apes.

Which is why our deceit is not confined to other species. We are famously good at deceiving each other, even ourselves.

Where I've witnessed the premature dismissal of ideas, it's been Not Invented Here syndrome.

Tell a group of Catholics that some idea is a Protestant notion and watch it not get serious consideration on merit...

Yep, plenty of tribalism. One's local religion is almost always the only religion that gets everything right.

[Pattern-chaser]

We are famously good at deceiving each other, even ourselves.

...especially ourselves?

[Sy Borg]

We are famously good at deceiving each other, even ourselves.

...especially ourselves?

Whatever, we simians are crafty, with a seemingly bottomless bag of tricks. This creates a tragedy of the commons situation. As with Prisoners' Dilemma, if everyone cooperated, more of us would be theoretically be better off.

[Pattern-chaser]

If we communicated with honesty, more of us would be theoretically better off too. But only autists seem capable of this apparently-impossible feat.

Ifs and shoulds will take us to many places, but they aren't real world places.

We have to work with what we've got. And yet, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. No-one ever said that life is simple. [Did they?]

[Sy Borg]

If we communicated with honesty, more of us would be theoretically better off too. But only autists seem capable of this apparently-impossible feat.

... which is why we are so often eaten alive in the real world. Autists are far from the only people capable of honesty, but we tend to have less choice than most. Our "truth" tends to blurt out, whether it's strategically sensible or not.

[Gee]

I've posted this in the Scientific part of the forum because it concerns reason and logic, which are core values for science. Oh, and by "logic", I mean to refer here to the discipline that allows us to confirm the validity of the form/structure of a logical argument. [Not formal logic, or Boolean logic, or...]

There are many ideas that we subject to serious and considered thought. Some can be easily dismissed. For example, the idea that the Earth is flat — we have loads of solid evidence that it cannot be so, so it is correct to discard it as a possibility. The bit I want to focus on, here, is that we dismissed flat-Earth justifiably. I.e. we had a clear and conclusive reason to reject it — justification.

It is my contention that argument according to reason and logic requires justification for any and every step we take. I hope this is not too contentious a claim?

If an idea we are considering cannot be dismissed, as we did for the flat-Earth theory, then we must consider it to be a possibility. We don't have to believe it or accept it, but only consider it possible, if we have no justification for dismissing it.

We now get to my problem "with logic". There are some philosophers, and others too, of course, who will casually dismiss an idea that doesn't conform to their views and beliefs, but which cannot be disproved, and thereby dismissed. These are people who will require detailed and in-depth support — justification — for any idea that is to be tentatively accepted. And yet they will dismiss a different idea without a second thought, and without justification.

So, is it permissible to dismiss possibilities without justification? If you think so, what is the logical justification for doing so?

Thank you for reading. Thank you even more for responding.

For the record, I like logic; but I have often dismissed an idea that was presented to me as being reasonable and logical. I require a great deal more than someone's assurance that an idea is reasonable and logical. If you want to know why I would dismiss this out of hand, then consider the following:

A man has been invited to his next-door-neighbor's house for dinner, so he will (a) walk or (b) fly to his neighbor's house. Well, this is not a difficult question. It is obvious that the answer is (a) and he will walk as we do not fly to our neighbor's house, unless we are a bat or a bird. Logic and reason will dictate this very simple answer.

But what if the man is a forest ranger, who lives on a lake and owns a sea plane, and his next-door-neighbor lives two miles away on the other side of the lake? Well that changes things. This additional information would change my very simple answer. Why?

Because logic is an internal examination of the facts. It either validates or invalidates what we already have/know. It does not give us new information. I suspect this is why Heidegger called it a "school room tool" that is used to check a student's theory. So what happens when we add 'reason' to logic? Well, when we reason something out, we are looking for new answers, angles, information, ideas, so we are trying to add to our knowledge. So when we put the two together, what we are doing is making a guess based on our experiences, beliefs, whatever, and then creating logical steps that validate our beliefs. In short, we are rationalizing. We are using an internal logical argument to justify a belief, which in turn is now a linear rationalization which validates new facts/truths.

I read this whole thread and only once did I read the word, rationalized, which was at the bottom of page 3 in Sculptor's post. Although you got some good informative answers from other posters, I was surprised that no one else recognized rationalization, which is what "reason and logic" means nine out of ten times. I think we have lost some of our critical thinking skills. If you are interested, you can go to Wiki and look up rationalizing. There is a wealth of information about how we use rationalization to fool ourselves. It has been years since I studied it, but I still remember feeling less than brilliant.

Gee

[Pattern-chaser]

I've posted this in the Scientific part of the forum because it concerns reason and logic, which are core values for science. Oh, and by "logic", I mean to refer here to the discipline that allows us to confirm the validity of the form/structure of a logical argument. [Not formal logic, or Boolean logic, or...]

There are many ideas that we subject to serious and considered thought. Some can be easily dismissed. For example, the idea that the Earth is flat — we have loads of solid evidence that it cannot be so, so it is correct to discard it as a possibility. The bit I want to focus on, here, is that we dismissed flat-Earth justifiably. I.e. we had a clear and conclusive reason to reject it — justification.

It is my contention that argument according to reason and logic requires justification for any and every step we take. I hope this is not too contentious a claim?

If an idea we are considering cannot be dismissed, as we did for the flat-Earth theory, then we must consider it to be a possibility. We don't have to believe it or accept it, but only consider it possible, if we have no justification for dismissing it.

We now get to my problem "with logic". There are some philosophers, and others too, of course, who will casually dismiss an idea that doesn't conform to their views and beliefs, but which cannot be disproved, and thereby dismissed. These are people who will require detailed and in-depth support — justification — for any idea that is to be tentatively accepted. And yet they will dismiss a different idea without a second thought, and without justification.

So, is it permissible to dismiss possibilities without justification? If you think so, what is the logical justification for doing so?

Thank you for reading. Thank you even more for responding.

For the record, I like logic; but I have often dismissed an idea that was presented to me as being reasonable and logical. I require a great deal more than someone's assurance that an idea is reasonable and logical. If you want to know why I would dismiss this out of hand, then consider the following:

A man has been invited to his next-door-neighbor's house for dinner, so he will (a) walk or (b) fly to his neighbor's house. Well, this is not a difficult question. It is obvious that the answer is (a) and he will walk as we do not fly to our neighbor's house, unless we are a bat or a bird. Logic and reason will dictate this very simple answer.

But what if the man is a forest ranger, who lives on a lake and owns a sea plane, and his next-door-neighbor lives two miles away on the other side of the lake? Well that changes things. This additional information would change my very simple answer. Why?

Because logic is an internal examination of the facts. It either validates or invalidates what we already have/know. It does not give us new information. I suspect this is why Heidegger called it a "school room tool" that is used to check a student's theory. So what happens when we add 'reason' to logic? Well, when we reason something out, we are looking for new answers, angles, information, ideas, so we are trying to add to our knowledge. So when we put the two together, what we are doing is making a guess based on our experiences, beliefs, whatever, and then creating logical steps that validate our beliefs. In short, we are rationalizing. We are using an internal logical argument to justify a belief, which in turn is now a linear rationalization which validates new facts/truths.

I read this whole thread and only once did I read the word, rationalized, which was at the bottom of page 3 in Sculptor's post. Although you got some good informative answers from other posters, I was surprised that no one else recognized rationalization, which is what "reason and logic" means nine out of ten times. I think we have lost some of our critical thinking skills. If you are interested, you can go to Wiki and look up rationalizing. There is a wealth of information about how we use rationalization to fool ourselves. It has been years since I studied it, but I still remember feeling less than brilliant.

Gee

Thanks for that! I especially take your points about rationalisation. But I think the word, and the idea, has been lacking in this topic, at my request. I was focussing only on the 'logic' of requiring more and better reason to accept an idea than is required to reject it. The same process of logic and reason applies in both cases.

We examine what evidence there is, and we come to a conclusion: 1. We accept the idea, maybe tentatively; 2. we place the idea back onto the 'maybe' pile, as there is insufficient reason to reach a conclusion; 3. we reject the idea, and place it on the 'discarded' pile. But the examination, and any accompanying analysis (etc), are the same in all cases.

So what is the logical reason that allows us to take step 3 with much less reason than taking step 1? I don't think there is one. And yet I have seen, on philosophy forums and elsewhere, posters saying things like "this is obvious rubbish"; "this problem is not worthy of our attention"; "no sane person would believe such rot"; and so on.

Oddly enough, when I posted this topic, none of them have come forward to offer a justification for their conduct. No mention of Heidegger and Carnap, or the extreme sciencist view that only problems that can be dealt with by science and the scientific method are worthy of consideration. Nothing.

Oh well...