tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post4609767613563289562..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: Abductive ReasoningAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-7382834825732247142021-05-30T09:39:22.386-04:002021-05-30T09:39:22.386-04:00grok, to understand intuitively; derived from the ...grok, to understand intuitively; derived from the Martian. <br /><br />https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grokZachrielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16081260898264733380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-87576644700785528022021-05-29T18:56:11.636-04:002021-05-29T18:56:11.636-04:00Grim: What we can't do is reason from the For...<b>Grim</b>: <i> What we can't do is reason from the Forms, as Plato had hoped to do, because the Forms (which are logical objects) don't exist as themselves in the physical world. </i><br /><br />Perhaps we are misunderstanding your argument, but reasoning with abstractions is pervasive in the natural sciences.Zachrielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16081260898264733380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-65564963516974958522021-05-27T11:06:41.962-04:002021-05-27T11:06:41.962-04:00The illative senseThe illative senseAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09341196934952098957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-1110043483863170712021-05-26T23:58:49.608-04:002021-05-26T23:58:49.608-04:00Why thank you, Galen. Why thank you, Galen. Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-17428521122032946652021-05-26T19:16:13.849-04:002021-05-26T19:16:13.849-04:00It's in the Grammar of Assent. Not Twitter.It's in the Grammar of Assent. Not Twitter.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09341196934952098957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-91233987747666179802021-05-26T19:12:51.254-04:002021-05-26T19:12:51.254-04:00Cardinal John Henry Newman had a word for the asse...Cardinal John Henry Newman had a word for the assertion of belief based on probability.....Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09341196934952098957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-78990749721642327172021-05-26T14:09:55.119-04:002021-05-26T14:09:55.119-04:00Grim: brilliant (because I’ve persuaded myself tha...Grim: brilliant (because I’ve persuaded myself that what you’ve expressed so well reflects my own inchoate thoughts, which didn’t exist in actuality.)Galenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08125583145056956261noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-40656983851584664942021-05-26T12:27:50.565-04:002021-05-26T12:27:50.565-04:00This comes up regularly at the Hall, where I usual...This comes up regularly at the Hall, where I usually frame it in terms of Aristotle's discussion of appropriate reasoning from the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics (<a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html" rel="nofollow">specifically EN 1.3</a>).<br /><br />"Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also give rise to a similar fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for before now men have been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage. We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs."<br /><br />That's what Aristotle says about it. Note that here the argument isn't that we do what you're calling 'abductive reasoning' because it's an inferior sort of reasoning, but we don't always have access to deductive proofs. Rather, the argument is that <i>you would be foolish</i> to look for deductive proofs in fields where they are not possible. It would be just as unwise to accept a deductive proof on a political question as it would be to accept a rhetorical argument as a solution to a mathematical question.<br /><br />I have a whole talk I give about why this might be true. The short version is that I think that logical objects don't exist in the physical world (see the recent discussion of the <i>Parmenides</i> for example), and as such logical reasoning can't apply to the physical world. Rather, what we have instead is analogies: two things that are different are treated by us as more-or-less the same, so that we can reason about them as if in fact they were the same.<br /><br />However, all analogies always break, because in fact the two different things are not the same. At some point, every analogy runs into that problem and breaks. So, the kind of reasoning we have to do in physical reality is analogical and probabilistic, as Aristotle says. We can do good work in deciding if the breaking point in our analogy is going to come before or after the conclusion we're hanging on the analogy, for example; we can try to construct better analogies by finding more-similar objects. What we can't do is reason from the Forms, as Plato had hoped to do, because the Forms (which are logical objects) don't exist as themselves in the physical world. Neither do other logical objects (e.g., mathematical objects like circles are only approximated; thus, handling an object as if it were a circle or a sphere is another kind of analogy).<br /><br />God may be able to do better, but not us. Thus, for us, part of 'good thinking' is recognizing when we shouldn't even be aiming for deductive proofs or other sorts of strict logic. When we find someone claiming to engage in those things in spaces where those things are inappropriate, we should reject their arguments. Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.com