Hi, John
Your first example, getting advice from a Ouija board because one believes it to be Infallible illustrates the basic problem of the triumphant declaration of our friam colleagues that right-wingers are irrational. I think that Peirce believed that all thought was rational because rationality was built into the nervous system. Induction, deduction, and abduction is just what nervous systems DO! We call it conditioning. And at the very minimum, one can tell a story make any behavior, however aberrant to appear rational. I am not sure how to judge the rationality of behavior. Doesn't rationality really apply to propositions I suppose that "I should punch the wall" might be said to be rational if it follows from, Punching walls cures itchy knuckles, my knuckles are itching, therefore I should punch the wall." To call the rightwing irrational is to way-underestimate the problem we have as a nation. If the problem were rationality, we could give everybody a short course in practical logic, and our national nightmare would be over. But the different parties are reasoning from vastly different facts and values, and we have no mechanism come to an agreement on which facts are true and which values we want to live by. My son called my attention to an excellent aphorism, something like: Conservatives get upset when somebody gets something they earned; Liberals get upset when somebody doesn't get something they did earn. Wouldn't be wonderful if one of the right wingers on the list would agree to explore the foundations of this value difference. But I don't think that is going to happen. For years, I have wanted somebody to create a website .. Call it PurpleAmerica.com. It would have two subsites, "Argue.with.a.Liberal.com and argue.with.a.conservative.com. It would be like a dating service, but once two arguers were "mated" the site would guide them through the argument by asking questions, such as, "Please state all the says in which you and your fell-arguer AGREE. And when you had typed in your answer, the website would send it to the other guy with the instruction, "Are these premises you share with your fellow-arguer? " Etc. In my wildest dream, the whole thing would be automated, but to start, I thought I would pretend that it was automated, and provide the questions myself .Like the Turk, I would lurk inside the machine. The reason you are not ALL pig-rich with google ad money is that you did not take me up on this suggestion. By the way, did you understand why I closed my argument with the words, "Who's that going over my bridge?" Apparently nobody did. Ach! This younger generation. Nick 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: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 4:59 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" Okay, here's my dilemma in a slightly different form. Suppose a person acts entirely on the basis of messages received from a Ouija board. This certainly appears to be irrational. But it could be said to be based on a premise that the Ouija board is infallible. If we accept this, then I doubt that there is any such thing as an irrational action. Or, if I get angry and punch the wall, leaving an awful hole in the wall and a painful bruise on my hand, was I acting rationally on a fleetingly held premise, that the wall needed punching? What can we do to rescue the term "irrational" ? I had thought that Glen's approach was going far beyond what irrationality really is, but now it looks like the best one out there. --John ________________________________________ From: Friam [[email protected]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 11:03 PM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" IS THERE A LOGICIAN IN THE HOUSE? John kennison asked: AT any rate, my question would be: Is there a sense in which the [below] type of thinking (based on the premises Nick assumed) is irrational. [see below] Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [ <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Kennison Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 3:51 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" Nick, There are several perfectly rational ways in which someone might decide to oppose gay marriage. I indicated one way, based on the premise that homosexuality is perverse. You indicated another way. A third possibility is that the speaker really believes the stated reason that gay marriage would threaten traditional marriage. Your example of a possible reconstruction of the reasoning is interesting because, if correct, it would appear to be highly irrational as the opposition to gay marriage seems to be based on homophobia. Watching men neck in public makes me uncomfortable Married people are allowed to neck in public. Anything that makes me uncomfortable should be banned Therefore Gay marriage should be banned. My dilemma (which I imagine you intended) is that I would like to say that the above thought process is a good example of irrational thinking but, strangely enough, it has the appearance, and structure, of a logical argument. I think I would wonder how the supposed speaker would acquire the belief or premise that "anything that makes me feel uncomfortable should be banned". I doubt that right-wingers would feel that you are defending them well if you said that this is a typical right wing rationale. AT any rate, my question would be: Is there a sense in which the above type of thinking (based on the premises Nick assumed) is irrational. ________________________________________ From: Friam [[email protected]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 1:57 PM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" At last. Ok, so to claim that this is irrational, we have to know the chain of premises and conclusions that leads to this conclusion. As you rightly point out, we can supply premises that make the reasoning look crazy or we can supply premises that make it look reasonable. But isn't it bad reasoning to claim that reasoning is bad without having done that? I assume that the reasoning behind bans on gay marriage goes something like this: Watching men neck in public makes me uncomfortable Married people are allowed to neck in public. Anything that makes me uncomfortable should be banned Therefore Gay marriage should be banned. Perfectly RATIONAL N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [ <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Kennison Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 10:35 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" I think one example might be "I oppose gay marriage because it would undermine my own (straight) marriage". One could interpret the reason given as a false premise (you could always do that whenever someone gives a reason for a belief) but here it looks more like a rationalization. Of course I can't be certain, but I suspect that the real reason is the false premise that homosexuality is a pervasion and a different premise is substituted because it was felt to be more effective politically. ________________________________________ From: Friam [[email protected]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 12:53 AM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" Speaking of shoddy reasoning, I wish somebody would give an example of shoddy reasoning by a Right Winger that was NOT an example of reasoning from false premises. n Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [ <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 9:28 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" Glen sed, responding to what REC sed about what Bob Altemeyer sed: >> Bob Altemeyer's research on right-wing authoritarian (RWA) >> personalities >> -- pdf at <http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/> http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ >> < <http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/> http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/> -- 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. > Excellent! I do have a strong sympathy for this description, though I don't fully defer it to "Right Wing" only... after a year in Berkeley, a bastion of Left Wing thinking, I can say that both wings can fumble their way to an extremism. For example, try to get anything done that requires either city council or citizen referendum, and you will get a *real* taste of "Authoritarianism". In Berkeley (to their credit) there was an annual celebration/parade entitled "How Berkeley can you be?" which allowed the populace to lampoon themselves (or actually, one another) in a semi-self-aware way that I could only hope for the far Right. I have to admit that I can't even imagine what that would look like. > This helps refine "reasoning about reasoning" in the way that > worries me. The idea being that a "brain in a vat" might still be > rational in some technical/strict sense of the word. But that's not > what normal people mean when they _use_ the word "rational." What > normal people mean is a combination of the ability to "think well" and > be open to multiple options. It seems like the "openness" is the > fulcrum of the concept. I think that people who I find familiar, comfortable, easy to converse with do roughly hold that connotation of the term. And I'm thankful for that. That said, I present that *most* people (normal or not) mean "rational thought" to be thought and descriptions of said thought which is familiar and aligned with their own thinking. In that sense, I feel most people conflate "rational thought" with the colloquial "common sense". > One of the aspects that worries me most is the _surety_ with which > most people go about their daily thinking. But I find this in lots of > people who would normally be considered quite rational. To me, it > doesn't much matter how intelligent one is, or how many facts they may > claim to have at their fingertips. What matters is the confidence > with which they hold their own beliefs. The more confident you are, > the _less_ rational you are. And I go about my daily activities with as much of this form of _irrationality_ (confidence?) as possible. Not because I think it is more defensible or will lead to a better outcome in the moment, than a more open and thought through ("well thought") set of responses, but because A) I can be hyper self-conscious which can lead to overthinking and getting "stuck" and B) because I am aware that my _best self_, my _best problem solver_ is my self (body/brain/sensorium + extended phenotype (technology mostly) ) when it is highly trained as roughly a "learning classifier system"... which requires lots of variation and testing. My best self _satisfices_ for the immediate problem (good enough for GubMent work) while _optimizing_ against the long haul. I know that by being _confident_ in my actions, I reduce the noise in the _execution_ of my intent and leave room for natural selection (making and recognizing mistakes?) to do it's work. I think this particular aspect of any extremist is what makes up for their propensity for trying to conjure, enforce and often even *follow* rules. In their (often misplaced) confidence... they have the opportunity to make mistakes that a more _thoughtful_ and _open_ (_rational_?) person might be. Otherwise they would be more regular winners of the Darwin Award than they seem to be. >> 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. I like this statement (REC)... this is one of my biggest battles with my strongest "liberal" friends... that the idea that their _righteousness_ when forming their lynch mob makes up for the _wrongness_ of lynching in the first place. My _conservative_ friends of course, don't bother with either question... they know they are right, whether they are truly _righteous_ or not, and they have no doubt that a lynch mob is the first/best solution for anything and everything (stand your ground, hawk up mutherf*kker, etc.) as long as they lead it. > I don't know what you mean, here, which probably means you're right > about my conflation. ;-) The use of "reason" to mean _cause_ seems > like an abuse of the word. So, I read what you write as "Just because > there is cause to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable." > And, I fully agree with that rewriting. But I don't know that's what > you meant. I don't know what anyone means... but when I read your rewriting, I want to rewrite it one unit of base-26 hamming distance away "Just because there is *a* cause to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable." Or in greater divergence lexicographically, "Just because, your lynch mob was formed in response to one of your "causes", doesn't make the fact of lynching reasonable." I probably just caused a fork in the discussion which only you (Glen) and I can fully enjoy... but... I think this is all a very important if subtle point we are working over here. - Steve PS... 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