Pragmatic Thinking - how does it work?

[padren]

One of the things I've been interested in lately is how much phrases come up like "it's just a theory" or "but we don't know for sure" was ways to backup a specific belief. Other phrases like "It's widely accepted that..." or "It's obvious that..." come up a lot too.

 

What I wonder is, how does our thinking change when it comes to pragmatic living?

 

 

We all make decisions about information all the time, and we rarely have a huge collection of empirical evidence to back up those decisions. We do generally have some sort of "long history of observations" that, while we can't easily conceptualize in a singular way, give us an impression of what data to be skeptical of. We use authorities of knowledge we trust, which may be because of scrutinized credentials or because we trusted them in the past, and "it seemed to work out well then."

 

If you are standing near the edge of the street and someone yells "Mind that bus!" you generally will look, not ask for evidence on the basis that "You'll have to make a stronger case for the existence of that bus before I commit to the effort of turning around and looking that way, considering my schedule shows no buses passing through this road for at least 20 minutes the burden of proof is on-whap"

 

Granted, the cost of verifying is low, the risk and time limit to act is high, and the motivation to convey inaccurate information (even if they don't know it is wrong) is low. But the interesting thing is - we all have ways of thinking to make our way through (even if we have trouble making sense of) the world.

Often in debates, we can see our own stances get strained when we go out on limbs we would not normally go out on in any general topic. No one ever says "But we don't even know if reality is real! Not really!" in response to whether that Nigerian prince email is legit. It's not practical.

 

 

So how do we deal with thinking in the day to day world of getting by? Are we "plagued" by the shortcuts we use, or are they a practical necessity due to the sheer volume of information? I think it would be interesting to explore practical thinking in general.

 

Any thoughts?

[pioneer]

One thing about practical thinking; much of the thought processing is done at an unconscious level by the mainframe of the brain. The unconscious compares the absorbed data, does the data crunching, and spits out a bottom line; Eureka!. But it occurs so fast, one may not be able to formulate the solution to the final answer, in a conscious way. One might have to do that second.

 

Science makes an effort to formulate the solution in a formal and conscious way. The scientist would not spend a lot of time and resources on a topic, unless they already had a hunched for the bottom line. The practical thought will often come first, even in science, before the formalisms. In many cases, we are good to go almost immediately. However, the protocol of rituals will be enforced, except during emergencies.

 

The system needs the rituals of science, so others who can't see, can also see. Often politics plays a role for this process. If their unconscious is not able to generate the bottom line of this particular practical thinking, they need a formal conscious way to see the same thing. They don't wish to be put out to dry trying to pretend to understand like an actor.

 

Even if they can't still see, using the formal solution, they can still use the subjectivity of another's prestige to add emotional certainty. In emergencies, there is not enough time for the rituals and practical thinking is allowed more freedom since it is ready to go almost immediately.

[jimmydasaint]

I don't really know the answer padren. I take it that experience, knowledge, peer pressure and culture play a large part in what we term pragmatic thinking. If I am correct in my premise then pragmatism to a Zulu warrior would be very different from an Inuit. I also find that pain and hurt are good teachers

[Severian]

This is true for big issues too, not just small ones. For example, I am fairly sure that evolution occurs (not necessarily 100% according to Darwin, but pretty close) even though I haven't personally sifted through all the evidence. I sounds like a reasonably believable idea and I trust the scientists that have done the analysis.

 

Even in my job (I am a professional particle physicist) I do this. I trust the results in published papers assuming the peer review process would have caught any mistakes, but I don't have any direct evidence that they are correct. I trust data given to me by the experiments, without asking them to prove to me that this is the correct data and has been gathered in an unbiased way.

 

On some level it is always essential to trust. We can adopt a rigorous "show me the evidence" approach when the conclusions we would otherwise reach are something that we don't instinctively believe (or something we need to be really sure about for reasons of safety or integrity) but when it comes to most things, this is just impractical.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well someone somewhere should be rigorously skeptical of every new idea, but once several people with good credentials accept it most of us will believe them. Anything else is just too impractical. Of course its also good to have some people constantly skeptical of each idea, but I don't think there's a shortage of that.

[Doctordick]

You guys should be asking "thinking - how does it work?'

 

So how do we deal with thinking in the day to day world of getting by? Are we "plagued" by the shortcuts we use, or are they a practical necessity due to the sheer volume of information? I think it would be interesting to explore practical thinking in general.

So then, why don't we do that?

 

One thing about practical thinking; much of the thought processing is done at an unconscious level by the mainframe of the brain. The unconscious compares the absorbed data, does the data crunching, and spits out a bottom line; Eureka!. But it occurs so fast, one may not be able to formulate the solution to the final answer, in a conscious way.

Now this seems to be an excellent starting point. We should not go adding to the difficulty by presuming beliefs built by that process. That attack is clearly not analytical: i.e., not something we can logically discuss. Let's get back to the underlying issue; exactly what do we mean by “thinking” and, can we formulate a logical solution embodying that final answer? I say the answer is yes!

 

I don't really know the answer padren. I take it that experience, knowledge, peer pressure and culture play a large part in what we term pragmatic thinking. If I am correct in my premise then pragmatism to a Zulu warrior would be very different from an Inuit. I also find that pain and hurt are good teachers

Now I think your comment is quite on point. It just doesn't provide a lot to work with.

 

This is true for big issues too, not just small ones. For example, I am fairly sure that evolution occurs (not necessarily 100% according to Darwin, but pretty close) even though I haven't personally sifted through all the evidence. I sounds like a reasonably believable idea and I trust the scientists that have done the analysis.

Ah, trust! But aren't you just adding to the difficulty by presuming beliefs built by the process? In other words, it seems to me that you are simply avoiding the original issue. That serves no purpose at all.

 

Well someone somewhere should be rigorously skeptical of every new idea, but once several people with good credentials accept it most of us will believe them. Anything else is just too impractical. Of course its also good to have some people constantly skeptical of each idea, but I don't think there's a shortage of that.

Oh, I would differ with you; I think there is a major shortage of real skeptics! In my old age, I have come to the conclusion that “belief” is a totally unnecessary philosophical concept. As Bertrand Russell once said, “most people would rather die than think”. (I may have paraphrased that, but he did say something like that.) In fact, conscious analysis is not really a necessary aspect of success at all. I have known many successful people who never gave even the first thought to logical analysis of anything. But I am a rather strange person and perhaps I should tell you a little about myself.

 

When I was three years old, I witnessed an argument my father had with my aunt's husband concerning aliens from outer space. (It was always quite clear to me that my father had utterly no respect for my uncle.) When my uncle left, slamming the door as he went, my father turned to me and said, "anyone who believes more than ten percent of what he hears, or more than fifty percent of what he reads, or more than ninety percent of what he sees with his own eyes is gullible!" At the time, I had no idea as to what percent was nor what the word gullible meant but the comment was none the less absolutely engraved on my mind in every detail, never to be forgotten. The one thing I knew is that I didn't want to be one (at the time I think I had the impression it was a birth defect of some sort that required absolute disrespect).

 

My dad's comment may have had more impact on my life than any other experience I ever had. My single biggest worry has always been, "just how does one determine what one is supposed to believe?" I have to add to that the fact that adults just love to "pull kids legs". When I would catch them at it, they were always delighted. As a consequence, long before I even began school, I came to believe adults always lied to kids. I never saw it as malicious but rather presumed it as training not to be gullible (and, believe me, I was firmly convinced that I was indeed gullible; a problem I made every effort to hide). I simply could not tell when I was being told the truth and when I was being lied to.

 

Now, all children like to think they are grown up and so did I. By the time I was five or six, I stopped openly catching adults in their bullshit: I began to pretend I believed everything they said (just like a real adult). Oh, I didn't act on it but I certainly didn't tell them when I thought what they said was bullshit. My mother once told me one learns a lot more by listening than they do by talking. Oh, she also told me that if I did something which I really felt was right but turned out to be wrong, I could be forgiven; however, if I ever did something which I myself felt was wrong, that was unforgivable so I always went with what felt like the right thing to do (I never made an attempt to justify it). I think she was a very intelligent person.

 

I only brought this up to explain something about the way I lived my life and what I have to add to this thread. I thought about things all the time but I absolutely never thought out what I was supposed to do. What I always did was to "go with my gut!" All my life, I have never made decisions based on logic applied to my beliefs (because I had no idea as to what I was supposed believe, other than my gut instincts); I have always simply done what seemed to be the right thing to do emotionally. In essence I just turned control of my actions over to my subconscious. I think that was, to a great extent, exactly what padren meant by pragmatic living in his opening post and why I think what I have to say is worth listening to.

 

I lived my life as an unthinking thoughtless entity while, at the same time, always trying to figure out how to determine what should and shouldn't be believed. Before I got to High School, the only subject I was good at was mathematics. That subject (as taught) made it quite clear, what is and is not to be believed. But, as practically every thoughtful person says, mathematics has nothing to do with reality. That is why I ended up in Physics. Physicists seemed to be the only people who provided any way to test their beliefs. I ended up with a Ph.D. in Theoretical Nuclear Physics from Vanderbilt University. One problem I had was that, by the time I got into graduate school, they ceased providing tests for their beliefs. As Mr Skeptic said above, when people with good credentials accepted things, we were expected to believe them (in spite of the fact that, time after time throughout history, the authorities were shown to be wrong). Believing them began to get difficult if not impossible.

 

It is now my opinion that the source of the difficulty is belief itself. Belief is the single most potent corrupter of intellectual analysis which exists. I now find it clear that "belief" is simply not necessary in order to solve the problem confronting us. It turns out that the solution is simply sitting there in mathematics. Mathematics could, in fact, be defined to be the invention and study of internally consistent concepts. That is why physicists have consistently contributed to mathematics time after time. Our view of reality is supposed to be a collection of internally consistent concepts so, every time a scientist comes up with a new set of useful internally consistent concepts, the mathematicians adopt a representation of those concepts into their field.

 

It follows directly that, if and when a solution is found, it will be expressible in mathematics. I have found a solution and it turns out that asking the right question is the key to the difficulty. If you ask the right question and approach the possibilities without any prejudice of belief (i.e., making sure no possibility is omitted), the solution will unravel itself.

 

The solution is to define exactly what we mean by “understanding”. If anyone is really interested in seeing how such a thing rolls out, I will explain exactly what I am talking about. I am of the opinion that it is a serious answer to the question, "thinking - how does it work?'

 

It is probably also a major clue to real AI. Oh, by the way, I think it is quite evident that the mental view one possesses of reality is clearly acquired via “practical thinking” not by analytical analysis: i.e., babies simply display no expertise at analytical analysis. Furthermore, you should note that “beliefs” are an acquired thing; children are not born with “beliefs”. Think about that for a moment. It implies that understanding (at least initially) is acquired in the complete absence of beliefs. If you want to be rational, you should at least give me the opportunity to express what I have discovered.

 

Have fun -- Dick

[Doctordick]

Well, no responses but a decent number of views. I will take it that some people are interested. I like a comment made by tar in post #41 of the closed thread “Is philosophy relevant to science”:

 

By my thinking there is no door between my mind and reality. My brain is real' date=' my senses pick up real actual patterns from and about reality and perceive them and store them in an analog fashion as to represent rather acurately what is going on around me. I can build maps and models of it, use transforms and analogies, and get a pretty good "idea" of what it is that I am in and of. I can put "myself" in the shoes of any entity I chose, and imagine what they might be experiencing. I can "imagine" unseen others.

 

It is in light of these thoughts that I "understand" other's philosophies, religion and psychology.

And from my personal point of view, the scientific method is a fine way for us to utilize the explorations of reality that others have made, and to add those explorations to my own understanding of the nature of "the thing in itself".

[/quote']

Add to that a comment made by a friend of mine from Finland:

 

In some important ways' date=' our world views always are; the chosen terminology can be anything, as long as it is a self-coherent way to express valid predictions. That is just another way to say, it's chosen expression form is bunch of circularly understood concepts. And that is another way to express why I think it is so childish when people argue about the correctness of the circle they most like to use.

[/quote']

The real issue here is “language”. Language is entirely a “collection of circularly understood concepts”. When tar says, “my senses pick up real actual patterns from and about reality and perceive them and store them”, he is actually presuming that his concept of “senses” and the “perception of reality” obtained from them are correct. That is a belief and is not necessarily a fact. However, there is a way of handling the issue without actually succumbing to the belief.

 

Communications are achieved via a language. Knowing the language involves understanding those circularly defined concepts represented by the symbols going to make up that language. The important point here is that the actual symbols used to represent that language are an immaterial issue. Absolutely any concept representable in a language is just as easily represented by a set of numerical labels attached to the conceptual elements represented by the symbols going to make up that language.

 

Now a lot of people will complain about that assertion. But, before you jump to the conclusion that such a representation cannot be absolutely general, consider two very important issues. First, all internet communications rely on the ability to convert anything to be communicated into a collection of binary numbers (and that includes words, pictures, mechanical interactions and even could include smells and taste via the technology possibly becoming available to us). And secondly, almost everyone's view of the universe includes the concept of nerve signals connecting their brain to reality. Now those nerve signals themselves could certainly be represented by numerical labels.

 

If follows, from the above, that absolutely any possible communication conceivable can be represented by a set of numerical labels which, in turn, can be represented by the mathematical notation [math](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/math]. The language being represented is not an issue here because, the problem of understanding the language is fundamentally identical to understanding anything.

 

I think it is quite evident that the mental view one possesses of reality is clearly acquired via “practical thinking” not by analytical analysis: i.e., babies simply display no expertise at analytical analysis. Furthermore, you should note that “beliefs” are an acquired thing; children are not born with “beliefs”. Think about that for a moment. It implies that understanding (at least initially) is acquired in the complete absence of beliefs.

The real beauty of this representation is the fact that the supposed language plays no role in the problem at all: i.e., this means that any generalization which can be made from this representation applies even to issues not yet thought of. It is possible that future views of the universe might very well be quite different from those we currently hold. That is simply not an issue; the communications of those views could still be represented in the notation [math](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/math].

 

Oh, as an aside, I have left the number of numbers in that representation finite. That will turn out to be a very important factor. It arises directly from the definition of “infinite”. If the number of elements in a collection is infinite then it follows that, no matter how many you have considered, you have not finished considering them. Essentially, all communications must be finite in extent. Note that this does not require that the concepts being communicated are finite but merely that the number of elements used to communicate the issues be finite.

 

If anyone has any complaints with what I have said so far, let me know; I will try to clarify anything you find difficult to understand. And, DrRocket, I am already well aware of your brilliant and insightful comprehension of my work and the detailed proof reading you have made of my earlier posts so it really serves no useful purpose for you to comment further. I wholly appreciate all the hard work you have already done.

 

I have reproduced this load of crap to avoid letting you edit it after the fact. But it is still just a load. There is absolutely nothing here of any mathematical or physical interest. In fact it is not clear that there is even a lucid thought.

Thank you for your kind support.

 

Have fun -- Dick