I sent this message with an attachment - which exceeded the word quota for a post, so resending without the attachment - Steve may or may not allow the other one to be posted in the future.
My own opinion is that not all thought is rational - specifically not all thinking about design is rational. I am almost done with a book on "Design Thinking" that is premised on this exact issue - designers think differently and business and CS/SE types would benefit from learning how they do what they do and thereby complement their rational thinking with an equally powerful (in the realm of complexity and wicked problems - superior) mode of thought. In the realm of programming, Parnas suggested long ago that there is no 'rational programming process' but that there are benefits in rationalizing one after the fact. I don't know if the list accepts attachments, but I have put Parnas' paper on this email. Nick - deduction, abduction, induction - like mathematics - are only useful tools for the simplest of problems - which are, as von Neumann pointed out, a small subset of reality. davew On Sun, Jan 5, 2014, at 09:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Good question, John, > > It wouldn't surprise me if we could reconstruct artistic work as forms of > deduction, induction, and abduction. I know of at least one article that > tries to do that. But rational reconstruction is like that bubble in > the > kingfisher's head that gives the formula for refraction by the surface of > the water. Lord knows how it is actually done. > > I guess I have no idea what kinds of procedures one would have to do to > settle the matter. I wouldn't trust asking the artist because that would > almost demand a rationalization. I would have to watch a painting > develop. > Nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Kennison > Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 4:49 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" > > Concerning the statement: > > >> My intuition tells me that all thinking is rational - it's just that most > of it is weak or founded on truly crazy premises. > > I think this is one of the issues to be explored. It seems to work for > the > person who believes that every statement in the bible is literally true. > (And maybe has a further belief ambiguities and apparent contradictions > can > be resolved by contacting God through prayer.) My own tendency to believe > what I see seems to require that I don't have hallucinations --or could > distinguish them from true visual perceptions. > > But what about the thinking done by an artist when creating a work of > art. > Is it rational but based on strange axioms, or it is a different type of > thinking which is non-rational And if the former, how does the artist > come > up with the strange hypotheses? > What about intuition, including the intuition that all thinking is > rational > but possibly with crazy hypotheses? > > ________________________________________ > From: Friam [[email protected]] on behalf of Nick Thompson > [[email protected]] > Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 5:02 PM > To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" > > This is the kind of discussion that a Newly Minted Peircean, such as > myself, > should be all over, but I find myself oddly (thankfully?) reticient. My > intuition tells me that all thinking is rational - it's just that most of > it > is weak or founded on truly crazy premises. Among valid inferences, > Peirce > made a distinction between strong inferences (All ravens are black, this > bird is a raven, this bird is black) and weak ones such as "this bird is > a > raven, this bird is black, all ravens are black" (induction) and "this > bird > is black, all ravens are black, this bird is a raven"(abduction). But > he > regarded all three as valid forms of inference. In this spirit, I might > argue that right wing thinking is not irrational, but exceedingly weak. > But we should beware of falling for the syllogism, "This guy is wrong, > all > right-wingers are wrong, this guy is a right winger" which is valid, but > horribly weak. > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Roger > Critchlow > Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 12:20 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" > > > On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:41 AM, glen > <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > [ ... ] > Now, that carries us to how/whether/why humans would use irrational > inference procedures. But I think we would _need_ some evidence that > people > actually use irrational reasoning procedures. I think even so-called > "irrational" things like _emotions_ are, somewhere deep down, rational. > Those emotions are an evolutionarily selected decision-making ability > that > has its own calculus. > > Bob Altemeyer's research on right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personalities > -- > pdf at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ -- finds that high scoring > RWAs > suffer from severe cognitive disabilities which essentially render them > immune to reason. (Note that "right-wing" here is a technical term > meaning > "adherent of the status quo".) > > But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life > under > the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, > exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double > standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and--to > top > it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could > ever > change their minds with evidence or logic. > > There's an article in today's Times, > http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/media/banished-for-questioning-th > e-gospel-of-guns.html, which unintentionally makes the case that the gun > rights lobby is essentially a coalition of right-wing authoritarians and > gun > manufacturers. They cannot tolerate any discussion of the dogma because > they are incapable of reasoning on the subject, only able to distinguish > the > party line from apostasy so they can attack the enemies. > > Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob > reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of explanation > with > the rationality of the explained. > > -- rec -- > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
