Rationality: What it is, why it seems scarce, and why it matters

[Analytics]

11 minutes ago, webbles said:

I meant to comment on this in my previous post but forgot.  I understood what Carroll was saying.  He was talking about knowing all the forces/particles/stuff that affect our day-to-day lives.  And yes, I believe that we can rule out the ability to bend spoons with the power of our mind (unless one of his loopholes is true and then all bets are off).

I'm saying that that statement is not true.  He likes to reference the "Core Theory" as if it explains everything in our energy level and sizes.  But it actually doesn't.  It is a quantum equation that should work at our energy level and sizes, but we actually don't know how quantum mechanics translate into classical mechanics.  https://quantummoxie.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/why-sean-carroll-is-wrong/ talks about this:

 

Thanks for posting this. Earlier I was searching for some serious criticisms of Dr. Carroll's actual arguments, this blog post from 2013 was the best I found. It's written by Ian Durham, who has a Ph.D. in math and is a professor of Physics at Saint Anselm College, a small Catholic Liberal Arts college in New Hampshire. I'll note that this was written in response to some blog entries that Carroll had previously written, and many (most?) of the criticisms in this blog entry are addressed in Big Picture (2016) through Carroll's emphasis on effective field theory. Dr. Durham focuses his brief critique on some details we don't know. 

I'm glad Dr. Durham has taken a semi-serious look at this, and I'd be interested in his (and your) thoughts about Sean Carroll's paper "The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes", which is an invited contribution to the book Levels of Reality: A Scientific and Metaphysical Investigation, and is available for download on the Cornell University website here. On page 4 of that paper is a useful diagram that shows the relationship between Everyday life, astrophysics, the core theory, unknown particles and forces, and the underlying reality (i.e. "theory of everything"). This illustrates his claim that "everyday life" rests on "Core Theory", but not on unknown particles and forces (including spiritual particles and forces), and about how this is true even if "underlying reality" is radically different than the Core Theory.

To emphasize ways that his theory could be wrong (and shine light on the burden skeptics of his claim have), he says in his paper:

Quote

 

Needless to say, the claim that we fully understand the laws of physics underlying every-day life might very well be incorrect, even if there are good reasons to accept it. It is easy enough to list some potential loopholes to the argument, ways in which the claim might fail to be true by going outside the EFT framework.

• Violations of locality. In the context of an EFT, locality of interactions implies that the electromagnetic or gravitational fields (or unknown fifth-force fields) produced by an object are simply the net fields produced by each of the constituent particles individually. Outside the EFT paradigm, we could imagine forces that depend non—locally on sources, so that whether or not a force is produced would depend on the specific arrangement of particles within it. Such a force might not be produced by a collection of electrons, protons, and neutrons in the form of a cantaloupe, for example, but be produced by the same particles when they are in the form of a human brain. To the best of my knowledge, this possibility has not been investigated carefully (and to be honest, there is not a lot of motivation for it).

• Quantum wave function collapse. In conventional quantum mechanics, the probability of a measurement outcome is given by the absolute-value squared of the corresponding amplitude of the wave function (the Born Rule). Other than that, the process is thought to be entirely random, with no structure other than that statistical rule. But perhaps it is not, and quantum systems evolve in subtle and specific ways to bring about particular outcomes. This scenario has been studied, typically in the context of trying to attain a better understanding of consciousness (Penrose, 1989; Chalmers & McQueen, 2014).

• Departures from physicalism. Everything we have said presumes from the start that the world is ultimately physical, consisting of some kind of physical stuff obeying physical laws. There is a long tradition of presuming otherwise, and if so, all bets are off. The well-known issue is then how non-physical substances or properties could interact with the physical stuff.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but provides a flavor of the options available to us.

The reasons for denying the claim advanced in this paper, and going for one of the above loopholes instead, generally arise from a concern that the physical dynamics of the Core Theory cannot suffice to account for higher-level phenomena, whether the phenomenon in question is life after death or the experience of qualia. Our considerations do not amount to an airtight proof (which would be essentially impossible), but they do highlight the challenge faced by those who think something beyond the Core Theory is required. The dynamics summarized in equation (7) are well-defined, quantitative, and unyielding, not to mention experimentally tested to exquisite precision in a wide variety of contexts. Given a quantum state of the relevant fields, it accurately predicts how that state will evolve. Skeptics of the claim defended here have the burden of specifying precisely how that equation is to be modified. This would necessarily raise a host of tricky issues, such as conservation of energy and unitary evolution of the wave function. A simpler – though still extremely challenging – alternative is to work to understand how those dynamics give rise to the emergent levels of reality in our macroscopic world.

 

 

[CV75]

21 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

In the typical presentation it’s ignored:

(from wiki)

”Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?”

I still think it is interesting that selection can change, but the odds for the 2 remaining doors cannot (the remain 1/3 for the originally chosen door having a car; 2/3 for the remaining unchosen door), and that the behavior changes in favor of the door with the greater odds.

[webbles]

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Thanks for posting this. Earlier I was searching for some serious criticisms of Dr. Carroll's actual arguments, this blog post from 2013 was the best I found. It's written by Ian Durham, who has a Ph.D. in math and is a professor of Physics at Saint Anselm College, a small Catholic Liberal Arts college in New Hampshire. I'll note that this was written in response to some blog entries that Carroll had previously written, and many (most?) of the criticisms in this blog entry are addressed in Big Picture (2016) through Carroll's emphasis on effective field theory. Dr. Durham focuses his brief critique on some details we don't know. 

I'm glad Dr. Durham has taken a semi-serious look at this, and I'd be interested in his (and your) thoughts about Sean Carroll's paper "The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes", which is an invited contribution to the book Levels of Reality: A Scientific and Metaphysical Investigation, and is available for download on the Cornell University website here. On page 4 of that paper is a useful diagram that shows the relationship between Everyday life, astrophysics, the core theory, unknown particles and forces, and the underlying reality (i.e. "theory of everything"). This illustrates his claim that "everyday life" rests on "Core Theory", but not on unknown particles and forces (including spiritual particles and forces), and about how this is true even if "underlying reality" is radically different than the Core Theory.

To emphasize ways that his theory could be wrong (and shine light on the burden skeptics of his claim have), he says in his paper:

 

I actually already did talk about that paper in this thread.  My thoughts can be seen at 

 

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, CV75 said:

I still think it is interesting that selection can change, but the odds for the 2 remaining doors cannot (the remain 1/3 for the originally chosen door having a car; 2/3 for the remaining unchosen door), and that the behavior changes in favor of the door with the greater odds.

Another way to visualize is it is that opening the door doesn’t give you any new information. You already knew at least one of the doors you didn’t pick didn’t have the prize in it and you know he is always going to open a door without the prize so opening it really doesn’t tell you anything.

[The Nehor]

On 12/6/2021 at 7:18 PM, mfbukowski said:

I think it needs to be stated a little differently for clarity- though you are technically right.   We are limited to our PERCEPTIONS of these CONSTRUCTS we CALL "wave functions etc."

Where these PERCEPTIONS/ APPEARANCES exist is in our consciousness - not out there "in the world" necessarily.   We have developed the best PARADIGM and we CALL these observations "wave functions"- IN THE PARADIGM.  These "wave functions" are products of HUMAN APPEARANCES to CAUSES WE DEFINE.   There IS a "cause" of the appearances but we cannot help to see it as HUMANS see it- not necessarily "AS IT IS"

 

 

[Kenngo1969]

On 12/2/2021 at 7:07 PM, Analytics said:

I would suggest that to the extent our biases and personal experiences cause our evaluation of the evidence to diverge, we are failing to achieve the ideal of rationality.

You keep on saying, "I'm not saying that the people who disagree with me are wrong," but then you keep on posting things such as the above, the translation of which is, "But the people who disagree with me are wrong."  What's a guy/gal to do?    

[Analytics]

On 12/7/2021 at 12:15 AM, webbles said:

For the third item, he says it would have be weaker than gravity and since gravity is already so weak, this new field would not affect us.  I think that is a fault in his logic.  For spiritual people, they generally describe the spiritual interaction as extremely weak (still small voice).  This force is even weaker than gravity yet apparently is observable by them.,,,

 

22 hours ago, webbles said:

Yes, I read and linked one of his papers that talked about this.  This new force ("Light of Christ") is noticeable to some people.  So it should not be ignored by the "effective field".

These "unknown particles" that I'm talking are composed of the same "fundamental particles" that protons, neutrons, etc are composed of.  So they would interact with the universe in the same way those do.  In fact, we are currently discovering new particles that are based on these "fundamental particles".

An interesting book that might be relevant to this line of thought is Life on the Edge: The Coming Age of Quantum Biology. First, note that this book was published in 2014, 3 or 4 years after Ian Durham wrote that blog post claiming that we don't know the relationship between the classical world and the quantum world. The truth is we now know a lot about it.

Your ideas about living bodies being able to detect subtle fields has some truth to it. Life on the Edge dives pretty deep into both biology and quantum mechanics. Generally, quantum mechanical "spookiness" dissipates over larger systems and in aggregate, results in the classical world we see. What's fascinating is that we now know this isn't always the case, and that there are several aspects of life where "delicately arranged quantum entangled states" manifest themselves in life. We now know that robins can actually detect the Earth's magnetic field. Quoting from the book so as not to misspeak: 

Quote

The problem is that the earth’s magnetic field is very weak—between 30 and 70 microtesla at the surface: sufficient to deflect a finely balanced and almost frictionless compass needle, but only about a hundredth the force of a typical fridge magnet. This presents a puzzle: for the earth’s magnetic field to be detected by an animal it must somehow influence a chemical reaction somewhere in the animal’s body—this is, after all, how all living creatures, ourselves included, sense any external signal. But the amount of energy supplied by the interaction of the earth’s magnetic field with the molecules within living cells is less than a billionth of the energy needed to break or make a chemical bond. How, then, can that magnetic field be perceptible to the robin?

...

In recent years our knowledge of such things has made huge strides—and not only in connection with birds. Quantum phenomena such as superposition and tunneling have been detected in lots of biological phenomena, from the way plants capture sunlight to the way that all our cells make biomolecules. Even our sense of smell or the genes that we inherit from our parents may depend on the weird quantum world. Research papers on quantum biology are now appearing regularly in the pages of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals; and there exists a small but growing number of scientists who insist that aspects of quantum mechanics do indeed play a nontrivial, indeed crucial, role in the phenomenon of life, and that life is in a unique position to sustain these weird quantum properties at the edge between the quantum and classical worlds.

McFadden, Johnjoe; Al-Khalili, Jim. Life on the Edge (p. 4,22). Crown. Kindle Edition.

 

I think the biggest challenge with your theory is that if spirit bodies and forces are composed of fermions and bosons, then in principle we should be able to detect them with scientific instruments such as those meters you see in Ghostbusters and Supernatural.  

Edited December 8, 2021 by Analytics

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, Kenngo1969 said:

You keep on saying, "I'm not saying that the people who disagree with me are wrong," but then you keep on posting things such as the above, the translation of which is, "But the people who disagree with me are wrong."  What's a guy/gal to do?    

Whether or not somebody is right and whether or not somebody is engaging in a rational evaluation of things are two different topics. Rationality is about your thought process, not about whether or not your conclusions are right.

Pinker suggests that the essence of secular rationality is, "(1) There is objective truth and (2) I don't know it (and neither do you)... Perfect rationality and objective truth are aspirations that no mortal can ever claim to have attained."

Edited December 8, 2021 by Analytics

[CV75]

17 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Another way to visualize is it is that opening the door doesn’t give you any new information. You already knew at least one of the doors you didn’t pick didn’t have the prize in it and you know he is always going to open a door without the prize so opening it really doesn’t tell you anything.

And then there's the door that didn't hit me on the way out.

[CV75]

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

Whether or not somebody is right and whether or not somebody is engaging in a rational evaluation of things are two different topics. Rationality is about your thought process, not about whether or not your conclusions are right.

Pinker suggests that the essence of secular rationality is, "(1) There is objective truth and (2) I don't know it (and neither do you)... Perfect rationality and objective truth are aspirations that no mortal can ever claim to have attained."

I was going to get to this had you replied to my last reply to you. We have layers of bias. A bias for expansion is manifest as “epistemic humility” and a bias for preservation as “epistemic pride”. There may be a bias for justifying either. Then there is of course the original biases of thoughts vs. feelings, things and transactions vs. people and relationships, etc.

This leads to the next idea, personality types, types (such as Meyers-Briggs), levels of of intelligence among groups of people, moral foundations theory, etc. all of which play into rational and irrational processes. 

The Pinker quote must be based on his feelings, since he believes there is objective truth, but that he has not seen (or recognized) it in order to know for sure. An aspiration, at its root, is a hope or ambition, not a fact.

Edited December 8, 2021 by CV75

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, CV75 said:

I was going to get to this had you replied to my last reply to you. We have layers of bias. A bias for expansion is manifest as “epistemic humility” and a bias for preservation as “epistemic pride”. There may be a bias for justifying either. Then there is of course the original biases of thoughts vs. feelings, things and transactions vs. people and relationships, etc.

This leads to the next idea, personality types, types (such as Meyers-Briggs), levels of of intelligence among groups of people, moral foundations theory, etc. all of which play into rational and irrational processes. 

That's an interesting framework. Thanks for sharing.

2 hours ago, CV75 said:

The Pinker quote must be based on his feelings, since he believes there is objective truth, but that he has not seen (or recognized) it in order to know for sure. An aspiration, at its root, is a hope or ambition, not a fact.

Pinker can speak for himself of course, but I'm not sure it's accurate to say the basis for thinking "objective truth" exists is driven by feelings, aspirations, hope, or ambition. Earlier I'd claimed that "2 + 2 = 4" is objective truth. Even if everybody in a society somehow thought that "2 + 2 ≠ 4", I assert they would all be wrong. "2 + 2 = 4" isn't something our society arbitrary came up with. Our society came up with it because it is true. I don't know whether I could deductively prove this. After all, deductive logic necessarily entails starting with unproved axioms. I'm simply asserting "2 + 2 = 4" is true because I can't imagine anybody conceiving a way it could not be true.

That is why I believe objective truth exists. It might be driven by my own naivete and lack of imagination. But I don't think it is driven by ambition.

Thinking we could learn something about objective truth and at least take a step closer to understanding it is a hope and an ambition. Sure. But belief that fully understanding The Truth is simply understanding the limitations of being human.

  

[CV75]

29 minutes ago, Analytics said:

That's an interesting framework. Thanks for sharing.

Pinker can speak for himself of course, but I'm not sure it's accurate to say the basis for thinking "objective truth" exists is driven by feelings, aspirations, hope, or ambition. Earlier I'd claimed that "2 + 2 = 4" is objective truth. Even if everybody in a society somehow thought that "2 + 2 ≠ 4", I assert they would all be wrong. "2 + 2 = 4" isn't something our society arbitrary came up with. Our society came up with it because it is true. I don't know whether I could deductively prove this. After all, deductive logic necessarily entails starting with unproved axioms. I'm simply asserting "2 + 2 = 4" is true because I can't imagine anybody conceiving a way it could not be true.

That is why I believe objective truth exists. It might be driven by my own naivete and lack of imagination. But I don't think it is driven by ambition.

Thinking we could learn something about objective truth and at least take a step closer to understanding it is a hope and an ambition. Sure. But belief that fully understanding The Truth is simply understanding the limitations of being human.

  

In order to assert that "2 + 2 = 4" is not true, you simply need to adopt, even temporarily, the rational framework others use to assert how it is not true. I offered a few examples. You might even begin to apply one of them in a given circumstance. I would say that both resistance and receptivity to such an experiment have very much to do with non-rational, aspirational factors.

Perhaps I can rephrase my post to make it more palatable: The Pinker quote must be based on his feelings, since he believes there is objective truth, but that he has not seen (or recognized) objective truth in order to know for sure. An aspiration, at its root, entails a hope [and lots of other synonyms* that convey non-rational, emotional mental states], not a fact. I’m sure one of these better resonates with you in describing your underlying drive to believe that objective truth exists.

* desire, hope, longing, yearning, hankering, urge, wish, aim, ambition, expectation, inclination, objective, goal, target, end, object, dream, yen, itch

[webbles]

7 hours ago, Analytics said:

An interesting book that might be relevant to this line of thought is Life on the Edge: The Coming Age of Quantum Biology. First, note that this book was published in 2014, 3 or 4 years after Ian Durham wrote that blog post claiming that we don't know the relationship between the classical world and the quantum world. The truth is we now know a lot about it.

Your ideas about living bodies being able to detect subtle fields has some truth to it. Life on the Edge dives pretty deep into both biology and quantum mechanics. Generally, quantum mechanical "spookiness" dissipates over larger systems and in aggregate, results in the classical world we see. What's fascinating is that we now know this isn't always the case, and that there are several aspects of life where "delicately arranged quantum entangled states" manifest themselves in life. We now know that robins can actually detect the Earth's magnetic field. Quoting from the book so as not to misspeak: 

When you say the "spookiness" dissipates, you are talking about "decoherence".  According to quantum theory, quantum particles are constantly in a state of "coherence"; they are basically waves, not particles.  You can't say that an electron is in a specific place, but instead you have a probability of where the electron is.  This also means that an electron is in more than one place at at time.

Decoherence is when the wave becomes a particle.  It's been studied since at least the 1980's.  One active area is quantum computers.  We have to be able to control or prevent the decoherence of the particles to achieve quantum computing.

I agree that we do know a lot of coherence and decoherence.  We knew a lot when that blog was posted.  I don't think, in those 3 or 4 years, we've gained that much more understanding to invalidate the blog entry.  Quantum biology has been around since Schrodinger first proposed the idea in 1944.  In 1963, it was proven that photon tunneling (which is a quantum mechanic) effects DNA mutation.  That's when it was first named "quantum biology".

7 hours ago, Analytics said:

I think the biggest challenge with your theory is that if spirit bodies and forces are composed of fermions and bosons, then in principle we should be able to detect them with scientific instruments such as those meters you see in Ghostbusters and Supernatural.  

I'm not sure if this is joke or not.  Referring to scientific instruments from movies doesn't mean we actually have those instruments in real life   But, yes, if spirit bodies were composed of fermions and bosons, then you should be able to put a living being into a particle accelerator and detect them.  I don't think the living being would enjoy that very much, though.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

I'm not sure if this is joke or not.  Referring to scientific instruments from movies doesn't mean we actually have those instruments in real life   But, yes, if spirit bodies were composed of fermions and bosons, then you should be able to put a living being into a particle accelerator and detect them.  I don't think the living being would enjoy that very much, though.

Please don’t shame people for their weird kinks.

[Analytics]

15 hours ago, webbles said:

I'm not sure if this is joke or not.  Referring to scientific instruments from movies doesn't mean we actually have those instruments in real life   But, yes, if spirit bodies were composed of fermions and bosons, then you should be able to put a living being into a particle accelerator and detect them.  I don't think the living being would enjoy that very much, though.

No, it wasn't a joke. Real-world ghost hunters use EMF meters "to detect possibly unexplained fluctuations in electromagnetic fields."

It seems you don't quite understand Carroll's point about particle accelerators. The issue is how do the suspected "spirits" interface with a physical body. The way a physical body sees is photons go through the lens of your eye and is focused on the retina. The light hitting the retina triggers some chemical reactions which results in electrical signals transmitting to the brain. Where in that process does information get to the "fine and pure" matter of the "spirit"? In the other direction, when you decide to type the word "word" on your keyboard, waves of electrical signals are going through you brain, and are sent through your nervous system to your fingers. The electrical signals trigger some chemical reactions in the muscles in your hands, which results in them moving. Where in that process is the "spirit" playing a role in deciding what to do?

[As a side bar, do you believe in a literal interpretation of NDE stories? If so, when a spirit floats above his physical body, how does it "see" its body without physical eyes? If a spirit body were capturing some light and focusing it on a spirit-retina, there should be some shadows or distortions in the light whenever a ghost is floating around.]

It's all about how the spirit interfaces with the body. The first option is to say that spirits are composed of the fermions and bosons of the standard model. What that means is that spirits interface with the physical body using the four fundamental forces--gravity, electromagnetic, nuclear strong, and nuclear weak. If spirits can somehow push and receive signals from the brain via those forces, then in principle, they should also push around and be pushed around by other normal matter. If I understand you, this is what you're suggesting. It is also what ghost hunters believe. That is why they look for ghosts in photos, videos, infrared detectors, EMF, thermometers, radio frequencies, Ouija boards, etc.

The second option is to say spirits are something other than normal matter, but can still send and receive electrical signals in your brain via the electromagnetic force. If this were the case, then the standard model indicates you should be able to create spirit matter and anti-spirit matter in the large hadron collider. This hasn't happened, so we know spirits can't push around electrons with the electromagnetic force.

The third option is that quantum field theory is fundamentally wrong and spirits interface with the body through something other than the four forces as described by the standard model (or through the forces in the standard model in a way other than how the standard model predicts).

It's pretty easy to make up ways that a ghost could push around a body. The hard part is to come up with something that is testable and doesn't sound farcical. 

 

[Analytics]

16 hours ago, CV75 said:

In order to assert that "2 + 2 = 4" is not true, you simply need to adopt, even temporarily, the rational framework others use to assert how it is not true.

I offered a few examples. You might even begin to apply one of them in a given circumstance. I would say that both resistance and receptivity to such an experiment have very much to do with non-rational, aspirational factors.

I understand how you could assert  "2 + 2 = 4" is not true within an internally consistent framework. However, from the framework of reality, they would be wrong. "2" and "4" are called natural numbers for a reason. If there were an alien civilization out there that had a conception of math, I wouldn't expect them to use the same symbols we use. I wouldn't expect them to have a base-10 system. They'd probably think about math differently than we do. But I would expect them to know that 2 + 2 = 4.

Maybe I'm just a simpleton, but I honestly think that 2 + 2 = 4 is objectively true.

16 hours ago, CV75 said:

Perhaps I can rephrase my post to make it more palatable: The Pinker quote must be based on his feelings, since he believes there is objective truth, but that he has not seen (or recognized) objective truth in order to know for sure. An aspiration, at its root, entails a hope [and lots of other synonyms* that convey non-rational, emotional mental states], not a fact. I’m sure one of these better resonates with you in describing your underlying drive to believe that objective truth exists.

* desire, hope, longing, yearning, hankering, urge, wish, aim, ambition, expectation, inclination, objective, goal, target, end, object, dream, yen, itch

Pinker's approach is to assign credence's to beliefs. As an example, I don't think the Tennessee Titans will win the Super Bowl this year. I don't know that for sure, but I don't think they will. And I really don't care at all one way or the other. I simply assign a low credence to that happening. My belief here has nothing to do with emotionally-laden words like desire, hope, longing, etc. It's simply what I believe.

Science and engineering is based on the assumption that there is an objective reality, the nature of which can be inferred through observation and experimentation. Their success gives some indication that this underlying assumption is true. One can believe this in a cool, rational way based upon this track record and not upon subjective emotions such as yearning, urging, wishing, etc.

[CV75]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I understand how you could assert  "2 + 2 = 4" is not true within an internally consistent framework. However, from the framework of reality, they would be wrong. "2" and "4" are called natural numbers for a reason. If there were an alien civilization out there that had a conception of math, I wouldn't expect them to use the same symbols we use. I wouldn't expect them to have a base-10 system. They'd probably think about math differently than we do. But I would expect them to know that 2 + 2 = 4.

Maybe I'm just a simpleton, but I honestly think that 2 + 2 = 4 is objectively true.

Pinker's approach is to assign credence's to beliefs. As an example, I don't think the Tennessee Titans will win the Super Bowl this year. I don't know that for sure, but I don't think they will. And I really don't care at all one way or the other. I simply assign a low credence to that happening. My belief here has nothing to do with emotionally-laden words like desire, hope, longing, etc. It's simply what I believe.

Science and engineering is based on the assumption that there is an objective reality, the nature of which can be inferred through observation and experimentation. Their success gives some indication that this underlying assumption is true. One can believe this in a cool, rational way based upon this track record and not upon subjective emotions such as yearning, urging, wishing, etc.

I have to say I'm getting a chuckle out of "the" framework of reality when we've been discussing several. You needn't be a simpleton to honestly think there is only one.

In addition, scientists and engineers like their objectives. You like to assign credence to beliefs even though you don't care who wins the Super Bowl.

[pogi]

On 12/8/2021 at 9:14 AM, Analytics said:

 

Pinker suggests that the essence of secular rationality is, "(1) There is objective truth and (2) I don't know it (and neither do you)... Perfect rationality and objective truth are aspirations that no mortal can ever claim to have attained."

I agree with Pinker on this.  I subscribe to the philosophy of holism which suggests that you can't know anything with certainty until you know everything.  "Objective truth" or the ability to know/see things as they are, thus remains illusive in mortality and we are reliant on relative truth until we can see the BIG PICTURE and how all the pieces and variables fit together in the grand equation of everything.   I use it a lot, but I love the parable of the blind men and the elephant to explain it.  To me, "objective truth" is the elephant in its wholeness.  No human has every witnessed the elephant "as it is", but only as they perceive it with their limited perspectives. 

If Pinker is right that we don't (and can't!) know objective truth, and are thus entirely dependent on what we can relatively perceive in mortality, how can he suggest that his approach is the best approach to approximate objective truth?  If he can't know objective truth, how can he suggest that he is getting closer or further from it with his methods?  Isn't that an entirely faith based approach to objective truth?  He doesn't know what he doesn't know.  What variables is he blind to that obscures his perspective of how to best approximate objective truth through mental processes?  

When you say in your OP "I want to get to the truth of the matter...", I scratch my head and think "wait, isn't he claiming that objective truth can't be known, and that it is something that "no mortal can ever claim to have attained"???"

I can't help but observe the futility and irrationality of such a quest when one claims objective truth "can't" be known or attained.   Where is the reason in that???

You also said in the OP that if 2 people disagree they can't both be correctly applying the tools of reason:

Quote

But in any case, I will reaffirm that if the presumptive goal of an argument here is to approach the actual truth of something, correctly applying the tools of reason should cause our collective belief to converge towards the truth. If different people come to different conclusions, and especially if those conclusions are correlated with belonging to different faith or sociological groups, then we have reason to strongly suspect something other than reason is driving the difference in opinions. Some reasoning is better than others, and we ought to focus on the quality of the contenders’ arguments rather than whether or not we’re hurting the other guy's feelings by having a strong credence in our own opinion.

I want to know, why not?  Why can't they both be applying the tools of reason, but simply from different limited perspectives?  You are assuming that the proper use of reason will ultimately lead one to know objective truth and will lead to agreement between individuals.  This seems like an irrational assumption when it is built from the foundational assumption that objective truth can't be known or attained.  How can you know that reason or rationality are effective tools for leading us closer to objective truth if we can't know or see objective truth in mortality???  This whole idea seems so irrational to me.  It is based on nothing more than blind faith in reason.  It is based on faith that what we think we collectively know through the application of reason and rationality is closer to objective truth than what is claimed to be known through spiritual experience and religion.  But how can we test that claim???  Where and what is objective truth to compare the two approaches??? 

All we can claim is that reason can help people see things from the same perspective of questions and applications of instruments, but what if that perspective is entirely missing the big picture and fundamentally leading us further away from objective truth which can only be known through spiritual means?  How can reason prove me wrong?  It can't!  It is as faith based as religion. 

Edited December 9, 2021 by pogi

[webbles]

7 hours ago, Analytics said:

It seems you don't quite understand Carroll's point about particle accelerators. The issue is how do the suspected "spirits" interface with a physical body. The way a physical body sees is photons go through the lens of your eye and is focused on the retina. The light hitting the retina triggers some chemical reactions which results in electrical signals transmitting to the brain. Where in that process does information get to the "fine and pure" matter of the "spirit"? In the other direction, when you decide to type the word "word" on your keyboard, waves of electrical signals are going through you brain, and are sent through your nervous system to your fingers. The electrical signals trigger some chemical reactions in the muscles in your hands, which results in them moving. Where in that process is the "spirit" playing a role in deciding what to do?

I believe Carroll's point about particle accelerators is that it has shown us all of the various fundamental particles that interact with the "effective field theory".  It also has found many of the sub-atomic particles that are comprised of those fundamental particles.  I'm just saying that if spirit matter was another form of sub-atomic particle that is also composed of the same fundamental particles (just in a different configuration), then the only way to identify it would be to put the spirit matter in a particle accelerator.  And if spirit matter only attaches itself to a living person, then it makes it pretty unethical to do that experiment.

As for how spirit matter interacts with normal matter, it would mostly likely go through the electromagnetic force.  It could also possibly go through the weak force.  Strong force probably has too small of a range and gravity is probably too weak at that level.

7 hours ago, Analytics said:

It's all about how the spirit interfaces with the body. The first option is to say that spirits are composed of the fermions and bosons of the standard model. What that means is that spirits interface with the physical body using the four fundamental forces--gravity, electromagnetic, nuclear strong, and nuclear weak. If spirits can somehow push and receive signals from the brain via those forces, then in principle, they should also push around and be pushed around by other normal matter. If I understand you, this is what you're suggesting. It is also what ghost hunters believe. That is why they look for ghosts in photos, videos, infrared detectors, EMF, thermometers, radio frequencies, Ouija boards, etc.

Yes, that's what I'm suggesting.  That spirit matter is just made up of the fundamental particles.

[Analytics]

5 hours ago, pogi said:

I agree with Pinker on this.  I subscribe to the philosophy of holism which suggests that you can't know anything with certainty until you know everything.  "Objective truth" or the ability to know/see things as they are, thus remains illusive in mortality and we are reliant on relative truth until we can see the BIG PICTURE and how all the pieces and variables fit together in the grand equation of everything.   I use it a lot, but I love the parable of the blind men and the elephant to explain it.  To me, "objective truth" is the elephant in its wholeness.  No human has every witnessed the elephant "as it is", but only as they perceive it with their limited perspectives. 

If Pinker is right that we don't (and can't!) know objective truth, and are thus entirely dependent on what we can relatively perceive in mortality, how can he suggest that his approach is the best approach to approximate objective truth?  If he can't know objective truth, how can he suggest that he is getting closer or further from it with his methods?  Isn't that an entirely faith based approach to objective truth?  He doesn't know what he doesn't know.  What variables is he blind to that obscures his perspective of how to best approximate objective truth through mental processes?  

Those are fair questions. I think, though, that you may have misunderstood his point when he said objective truth is an aspiration "that no mortal can ever claim to have attained." I think his point is that we can't know the ultimate truth about everything, not that we can't know any truth about anything.

Pinker sometimes refers to them as the "normative" tools of rationality, and he sees them as tools that were developed in various intellectual communities over time. Tools are often tested and proven in simplified scenarios where we do know the actual truth of things.

5 hours ago, pogi said:

When you say in your OP "I want to get to the truth of the matter...", I scratch my head and think "wait, isn't he claiming that objective truth can't be known, and that it is something that "no mortal can ever claim to have attained"???"

I can't help but observe the futility and irrationality of such a quest when one claims objective truth "can't" be known or attained.   Where is the reason in that???

He says, "the conviction that they are out there licenses us to develop rules we can all abide by that allow us to approach the truth collectively in ways that are impossible for any of us individually. The rules are designed to sideline the biases that get in the way of rationality: the cognitive illusions built into human nature, and the bigotries, prejudices, phobias, and -isms that infect the members of a race, class, gender, sexuality, or civilization."

5 hours ago, pogi said:

You also said in the OP that if 2 people disagree they can't both be correctly applying the tools of reason:

I want to know, why not?  Why can't they both be applying the tools of reason, but simply from different limited perspectives?  You are assuming that the proper use of reason will ultimately lead one to know objective truth and will lead to agreement between individuals. 

You seem to be ignoring the qualifications I made in what I said. I never said anyone would "know objective truth" and that it would lead homogenous agreement. I said rational investigation would lead people in the general direction of truth. That's it.

5 hours ago, pogi said:

This seems like an irrational assumption when it is built from the foundational assumption that objective truth can't be known or attained.  How can you know that reason or rationality are effective tools for leading us closer to objective truth if we can't know or see objective truth in mortality???  This whole idea seems so irrational to me.  It is based on nothing more than blind faith in reason.  It is based on faith that what we think we collectively know through the application of reason and rationality is closer to objective truth than what is claimed to be known through spiritual experience and religion.  But how can we test that claim???  Where and what is objective truth to compare the two approaches??? 

Cognitive scientists spend a lot of time researching questions like this. Books like Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, The Art of Critical Decision Making, Thinking Fast and Slow, and of course Rationality spend a lot of time discussing such things. Our natural inclination is to choose a side first and then use our intelligence to defend that side. The fact that this leads to everybody becoming entrenched defending their team's side rather than converging on a single position should provide a clue that its problematic.

Quoting Wikipedia: 

Quote

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.^[1] People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias cannot be eliminated entirely, but it can be managed, for example, by education and training in critical thinking skills.

Some thinking approaches are of higher quality than others.

5 hours ago, pogi said:

All we can claim is that reason can help people see things from the same perspective of questions and applications of instruments, but what if that perspective is entirely missing the big picture and fundamentally leading us further away from objective truth which can only be known through spiritual means?  How can reason prove me wrong?  It can't!  It is as faith based as religion. 

I think there is a qualitative difference between having faith that the normative tools of critical thinking will lead towards better decisions and more truth than having faith in the dogma of this or that religion.

[pogi]

18 hours ago, Analytics said:

Those are fair questions. I think, though, that you may have misunderstood his point when he said objective truth is an aspiration "that no mortal can ever claim to have attained." I think his point is that we can't know the ultimate truth about everything, not that we can't know any truth about anything.

Are you certain he believes that we can know any objective truth?

Again. from Pinker:

Quote

(1) There is objective truth and (2) I don't know it (and neither do you)... 

More from Pinker:

Quote

 

Pinker’s line is that while we may never definitely establish objective truth, objective truth nonetheless exists, and our best means of getting closest to it is through rational understanding.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/04/rationality-by-steven-pinker-review-it-all-stands-to-reason

 

I completely agree with him on this point that objective truth exists and that reason can help us better approximate it.  I also agree that mankind will never know objective truth as it is.  More and more scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers agree that our perceptions and "external reality as it is" (I am using that term and "objective truth" interchangeably), can never be the same.  It seems to me that Pinker is a "metaphysical realist":

Quote

Today, a number of metaphysical realists maintain that external reality exists, but they also suggest that our understanding of it is an approximation that we can improve upon. 

I think I probably fall into that category as well.  But, never the twain (our subjective perspectives and external reality as it is) shall meet...in mortality. 

Good stuff:

Quote

Professor of neuroscience Beau Lotto explained to Big Think that the world you see is not necessarily the world that is, because we evolved to view the world in a way that is useful rather than accurate:

“Is there external reality? Of course there’s an external reality. The world exists. It’s just that we don’t see it as it is. We can never see it as it is. In fact it’s even useful to not see it as it is. And the reason is because we have no direct access to that physical world other than through our senses. And because our senses conflate multiple aspects of that world, we can never know whether our perceptions are in any way accurate. It’s not so much: do we see the world in the way that it really is, but do we actually even see it accurately? And the answer is no, we don’t… So at this most basic level, we don’t represent even the information we’re getting in any accurate way. And the reason is because it was useful to see it this way. So what are you seeing [is] the utility of the data not the data.”

https://bigthink.com/thinking/objective-reality-2/

Quote

Science both points toward a reality that exists independently of how any subjective observer interacts with it and shows us how much our viewpoints can get in the way of understanding the world as it is. The question of how objective science is in the first place is also a problem — what if all we are getting is a very refined list of how things work within our subjective view of the world?

A middle route might be to view science as the systematic collection of subjective information in a way that allows for intersubjective agreement between people. Under this understanding, even if we cannot see the world as it is, we could get universal or near-universal intersubjective agreement about something like how fast light travels in a vacuum. This might be as good as it gets, or it could be a way to narrow down what we can know objectively. Or maybe it is something else entirely.

Philosopher Daniel Schmachtenberger told Big Think:

“There is no all encompassing perspective that gives me all of the information about almost any situation. What this means is that reality itself is transperspectival. It can’t be captured in any perspective. So multiple perspectives have to be taken. All of which will have some part of the reality, some signal.”

Fair point, but you may have to worry about if you are actually getting the right information about those perspectives.

https://bigthink.com/thinking/objective-reality-2/

You see, there is no way to escape our perspectives and subjective/relative realities to capture reality (or objective truth) as it is.  We can't know it.  The best we can do is to view science as a pragmatic tool which allows for "intersubjective agreement between people".   But without being able to compare our intersubjective agreement (scientific evidences) with reality as it is (objective truth), we can't say for certain that reason alone offers the best approach to perceive objective truth as it is.
 

 

   
 

Edited December 10, 2021 by pogi

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, pogi said:

Are you certain he believes that we can know any objective truth?

I don't know if we're talking about the same thing. There is a difference between "we can't know everything" and "we can't know anything." And I can't help but think we might be equivocating on the word "know." 

Pinker said:

Quote

In 2002, the US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously explained the distinction: “There are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” The theory of rational choice is a theory of decision making with known unknowns: with risk, not necessarily uncertainty.

Pinker, Steven. Rationality (p. 177). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

If we can't know anything, can there really be known unknowns? If we can't know anything, how could we know we don't know something?

2 hours ago, pogi said:

I completely agree with him on this point that objective truth exists and that reason can help us better approximate it.  I also agree that mankind will never know objective truth as it is.  More and more scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers agree that our perceptions and "external reality as it is" (I am using that term and "objective truth" interchangeably), can never be the same.  It seems to me that Pinker is a "metaphysical realist":

I think I probably fall into that category as well.  But, never the twain (our subjective perspectives and external reality as it is) shall meet...in mortality. 

I would suggest there is a continuum between believing that rationality can lead one towards the truth and a full-on postmodern view that the truth is completely unknowable and all we have is social constructs and intersubjective agreements. From what you've said, I think Pinker believes the truth is more knowable than you do. 

2 hours ago, pogi said:

Good stuff:

You see, there is no way to escape our perspectives and subjective/relative realities to capture reality (or objective truth) as it is.  We can't know it.  The best we can do is to view science as a pragmatic tool which allows for "intersubjective agreement between people".   But without being able to compare our intersubjective agreement (scientific evidences) with reality as it is (objective truth), we can't say for certain that reason alone offers the best approach to perceive objective truth as it is.  

I disagree here. The idea that "intersubjective agreement between people" is the "best we can do" as a proxy for the truth is wrong. If that is the yardstick by which we measure truth, science and reason are terrible tools for arriving at the truth. Relying on confirmation bias is a much better way to maintain intersubjective agreement.

Rationality is about making your views congruent with the real world, not with the views of other people. As a final quote on this point:

Quote

Though we can never prove that reasoning is sound or the truth can be known (since we would need to assume the soundness of reason to do it), we can stoke our confidence that they are. When we apply reason to reason itself, we find that it is not just an inarticulate gut impulse, a mysterious oracle that whispers truths into our ear. We can expose the rules of reason and distill and purify them into normative models of logic and probability. We can even implement them in machines that duplicate and exceed our own rational powers. Computers are literally mechanized logic, their smallest circuits called logic gates.

Another reassurance that reason is valid is that it works. Life is not a dream, in which we pop up in disconnected locations and bewildering things happen without rhyme or reason. By scaling the wall, Romeo really does get to touch Juliet’s lips. And by deploying reason in other ways, we reach the moon, invent smartphones, and extinguish smallpox. The cooperativeness of the world when we apply reason to it is a strong indication that rationality really does get at objective truths.

And ultimately even relativists who deny the possibility of objective truth and insist that all claims are merely the narratives of a culture lack the courage of their convictions. The cultural anthropologists or literary scholars who avow that the truths of science are merely the narratives of one culture will still have their child’s infection treated with antibiotics prescribed by a physician rather than a healing song performed by a shaman. And though relativism is often adorned with a moral halo, the moral convictions of relativists depend on a commitment to objective truth. Was slavery a myth? Was the Holocaust just one of many possible narratives? Is climate change a social construction? Or are the suffering and danger that define these events really real—claims that we know are true because of logic and evidence and objective scholarship? Now relativists stop being so relative.

Pinker, Steven. Rationality (pp. 41-42). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

[pogi]

12 minutes ago, Analytics said:

I don't know if we're talking about the same thing. There is a difference between "we can't know everything" and "we can't know anything." And I can't help but think we might be equivocating on the word "know." 

So we don’t get too splintered, I will address this first.  Are you suggesting that when Pinker said we can’t know objective truth that he is defining objective truth as the truth about “everything”?  That seems like a strange and unusual use of the term “objective truth”, so I’m not sure I buy it.  It seems to me that he is saying that certainty (or knowledge of external things as they are) is unattainable.  We can only approximate through reason.   
 

How is that not reasonable?  You can’t reasonably argue otherwise given our foundation of neuroscience.

[Analytics]

9 minutes ago, pogi said:

So we don’t get too splintered, I will address this first.  Are you suggesting that when Pinker said we can’t know objective truth that he is defining objective truth as the truth about “everything”?  That seems like a strange and unusual use of the term “objective truth”, so I’m not sure I buy it.  It seems to me that he is saying that certainty (or knowledge of external things as they are) is unattainable.  We can only approximate through reason.   
 

How is that not reasonable?  You can’t reasonably argue otherwise given our foundation of neuroscience.

I don't know. To me, "knowledge of external things as they are" isn't a well-defined concept. What would that even look like? I know Pinker is a fan of Sean Carroll, and Carroll talks about "poetic naturalism" and "domains of applicability." These concepts are about models for describing reality, and the limits to the usefulness of different ways of talking about something. 

For example, if I say "I know there is a TUL pen on my desk," in what way am I being wrong? Maybe it isn't really a TUL pen and is a counterfeit? Maybe it isn't really there and I'm hallucinating? Maybe everything is a hallucination and I'm in a matrix? Or maybe calling it "a pen" isn't accurately describing what it really is on the most fundamental subatomic level? Or maybe there is a one-in-a-trillion chance that it isn't a TUL pen, but rather is a device the government is using to spy on me?

[webbles]

On 12/2/2021 at 9:52 PM, Analytics said:

In an absolute sense, science never disproves anything. Full stop.

But in a practical sense, since is about as confident that spirits aren't real as it is about anything.

Carroll's statement is bold and confident, but does have some explicit qualifications. You'll enjoy the book, I think.

My hold on "The Big Picture" finally came in and I read it.  It was alright.  It didn't really improve my opinion of the "Core Theory".  It looks like the "Core Theory" only works if you also accept the "Many-worlds" theory or similar theories that don't use the "wave-function collapse".  That's because the "Core Theory" combines the Standard Model with Gravity by "smoothly" integrating the Schrödinger equation.  But a "wave-function collapse" doesn't allow smooth integration so acceptance of the "Copenhagan interpretation" or similar would mean that the "Core Theory" isn't accurate.

I don't accept the "Many-Worlds" theory, mainly because I find it basically negates any discoveries we make.  For example, lets say that a quark, in addition to the various properties we have discovered, also has a "spirit property" or a "conscious property".  Per, "The Big Picture", we can supposedly prove that those properties don't exist because we haven't yet seen them in our millions of experiments.  Except, per "Many-Worlds", each time that a quantum particle would "collapse", instead the "worlds" split.  So, when two particles are smashed together in the LHC, every possible result happens and each of those possibilities are seen in a different "world".  Now suppose that our "world" just happens to be the extremely unlikely world where we never see the "spirit property" appear in the LHC experiments?  That probability would be extremely low because we've done millions of experiments, but maybe that is the reason why we are arguing over whether it exists or not.  In all of the other "worlds", we aren't having this discussion because we've discovered the "spirit property".  Unfortunately, we can't tell.

Another reason why I don't care for the "Many-Worlds" theory is because it actually allows for spoon-bending powers and similar.  For example, what can cause a spoon to bend when I'm holding it?  A gravitational pull on the spoon that is somehow localized just to the spoon, a magnetic force that pulls the spoon, or heat on the handle that weakens it so the spoon bends.  The last two all have an unlikely possibility of actually happening.  When a person is holding a spoon and "willing" it to bend, there is a remote possibility that it will bend and one world will have it bending and the other worlds wouldn't.  So, if I'm in the world where the spoon bent, how do I prove that it wasn't by the person's "mind power"?  Maybe I do further studies?  But in each study, the one of the "worlds" will include the "mind power" working.  So for scientists in that world, they actually have to deal with spoon-bending powers.  And what if "spoon-bending" powers is actually the norm and we are arguing this in the small-probability world where it doesn't occur?  We can't tell.

Another problem with the "Core Theory" (or at least the equation) is that it contains multiple parts which zero out for different types of experiments.  When dealing with particles where we use the Standard Model, the gravitational part is 0.  When dealing with particles where we use relativity, the standard model part is 0.  We haven't yet had an experiment that uses both of those parts of the "Core Theory" so it is possible that the equation is inaccurate in how it combines relativity and the Standard Model.

I did enjoy reading about "Aumann's Agreement Theorem".  I find Sean Carrol to be a little optimistic in thinking that the agreement theorem actually works with humans, though.  The theorem only works for humans if we are "Bayesian rational agents" and I find that extremely unlikely.  Since we don't actually have any choice, we probably don't have the ability to revise any or all of our posteriors.  Maybe I'm programmed to always believe that God exists.  No amount of reasoning or explaining will be able to change me.