Jean-Marc Perreault wrote:Claiming some simple way to solve some difficult problem is a lot more welcome than showing that the claim, appealing as its conclusion may be, is bogus. One sees a similar, more general phenomenon (the correlation version is but a special case) in which people do not reject appealing conclusions just because they have been presented with a logical argument showing them to be false or vaccuous. Indeed, I would suggest that most people don't listen to and evaluate *arguments* (logical, mathematical, empirical, etc.) much at all. Instead they much more often select *conclusions* that they like or dislike on prior grounds (usually personal, emotional, historical, etc.) and they then aim to acquire the arguments in favor of their chosen side (confirmation bias), mostly ignoring arguments for the other side.Another interesting observation is about how quickly people become "tired" to hear about how correlation cannot/should not be taken as causation. I am usually quick to point it out to friends and relatives, but it seems that it is having a lesser effect as time goes by. I wonder why they are becoming less sensitive to the argument, rather than more sophisticated to it (which is the end purpose, after all...). This may seem wildly irrational (and it is) but I think that misses the phenomenon that is really at work, which is *rhetorical* rather than *epistemological*. The aim is to acquire the turns of phrase most likely to be able to *persuade* others (rightly or wrongly) and to defend oneself against verbal attack, rather than to *identify* truth in the first place. Most people think they already *know* the truth (or will automatically recognize it when they see it, à la something like St. Augustine's "inner sense"). Given that, what they (think they) need is a tool for getting other people to accept the(ir) "truth," not one for discovering it in the first place. This phenomenon was first explicitly identified by Plato (or by Socrates, depending on how authentic one thinks Plato's portrayals of Socrates were in the Dialogues). It is most explicit in the Meno where the slave boy first has to be brought to explicitly recognize that he doesn't actually know how long the sides of a square would have to be in order to double the square's area before he is ready to embark on a process by which he can actually find out. Of course, forcing your friends to recognize their ignorance will not make you a popular person. Look where it got Socrates! Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax: 416-736-5814 --- |
- [tips] Re: Music lessons help kids improve brain deve... Christopher D. Green
