Truth and fuzzy logic

Dee

The Socratic method has its uses,  if used to introduce children to a pretty effective way to arrive at the truth of a matter. It's all very good on paper but pretty ineffective in the real world.

You bring up an example..,.....

Cheetahs are faster than humans". One Socratic question undermining this claim could be, "Does this imply that dead cheetahs are faster than living humans?" A refinement of the claim could then be, "Living cheetahs can run faster than living humans". Then one could ask, "Can then a living cheetahs with all of its limbs amputated run faster than an Olympic marathon runner?" And so on and so on........

This clearly demonstrates how annoying the method can be as an example like this in the real world would lead the one being questioned believing his questioner was a smug smart a-s. An exchange like this in everyday conversations would lead to nothing except frustration and confusion, the market place of ancient Greece where people stood about for hours debating is hardly comparable to everyday exchanges.

Nietzsche was correct when he stated " there are no facts only interpretations " everyone has their own opinions and interpretations of the same thing , no one understands it exactly like anyone else.

Agreement on a topic is only broadly accepted get down to the nuts and bolts and agreement is pretty rare,

John_C_87

@Dee

Nietzsche was correct when he stated " there are no facts only interpretations " everyone has their own opinions and interpretations of the same thing , no one understands it exactly like anyone else.
The argument with Nietzche is fact like any position in 3 - D space requires three points to be fixed, truth, whole truth, and nothing but truth at which point it is not interpretable. Law in legislation does not hold truth, whole truth, and nothing but truth very well as accusation of crime is focus of principle used in the bindings of legislation written as accusation said to be a form of law, itself.

 Law : a binding custom or practice of a community : a rule of conduct or action prescribed ( see prescribed sense 1a) or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority

(2)

: the whole body of such customs, practices, or rules

Law Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

A body of rules of conduct of binding legal force and effect, prescribed, recognized, and enforced by controlling authority.

Law legal definition of law (thefreedictionary.com)
See that there is no admission in the legal description of law to the use of crime and accusation to describe legilsation as a truth, whole truth, and nothing but truth?

Throughout much of the 19th century the Italian Mafia's and other organized crime figures have held grievance against the United States Government particularly during prohibition or the Executive Office of the Kenedy's along with other international governments that law is often write by legislation as literal organized crime. A person, a people gave direction to use law in truth, whole truth, and nothing but truth, it does not mean use crime and interpret it as law. It is that process which deems law as a legal practice and United State Constitutional Right remains a ability we as people have or do not have. We as people demonstrate or do not demonstrate.This as a united state of law includes council.

MayCaesar

Dee said:

The Socratic method has its uses,  if used to introduce children to a pretty effective way to arrive at the truth of a matter. It's all very good on paper but pretty ineffective in the real world.

You bring up an example..,.....

Cheetahs are faster than humans". One Socratic question undermining this claim could be, "Does this imply that dead cheetahs are faster than living humans?" A refinement of the claim could then be, "Living cheetahs can run faster than living humans". Then one could ask, "Can then a living cheetahs with all of its limbs amputated run faster than an Olympic marathon runner?" And so on and so on........

This clearly demonstrates how annoying the method can be as an example like this in the real world would lead the one being questioned believing his questioner was a smug smart a-s. An exchange like this in everyday conversations would lead to nothing except frustration and confusion, the market place of ancient Greece where people stood about for hours debating is hardly comparable to everyday exchanges.

Nietzsche was correct when he stated " there are no facts only interpretations " everyone has their own opinions and interpretations of the same thing , no one understands it exactly like anyone else.

Agreement on a topic is only broadly accepted get down to the nuts and bolts and agreement is pretty rare,

Nietzsche's statement, while technically, perhaps, true, seems to be a bit of a reach. It is possible that, in some absolute sense, facts either do not exist at all or, at least, cannot be established by an intelligent observer as holding true - however, there is some reality that punishes people for choosing certain interpretations over alternatives. There is something that assures that a person who does not believe in gravity and lives as though it did not exist, well... does not live for long.
Perhaps one could think of hierarchies of interpretations of any particular observation, ranging from the least practically tenable ones to those that are nearly irrefutable in practice - so that some interpretations are more accurate than others, but no interpretation is strictly factual. And if an objective comparison of this kind is possible, then arriving at a common ground should also be possible. Whatever our interpretations are with respect to gravity, at the very least we both have to agree that jumping off the top of the CN tower is a really bad idea - and we can engage in a dialogue (Socratic?) to see where this agreement leads us.

I totally agree with you that the method is annoying and impractical in many real life situations. Obviously, discussing the cheetah question in this sense serves little purpose, while requiring a lot of mental and time investment. There are situations, however, in which extreme accuracy is crucial - for instance, in a dispute between two parties that have signed a complex economical contract and disagree on its reading - and in which all the involved parties may be willing to spend hours, days, weeks, months, years discussing it Socratically given how big the economical implications of its outcome are.

Ward Farnsworth who wrote "A Practitioner's Handbook" on the Socratic method further insists that the true value of the method is shown by application of it to one's own thinking. Our patterns of thinking are developed throughout our lives and build on top of each other, accumulating countless tiny "bugs" that, over time, sum up to serious consistent flaws in our thinking - and the Socratic method, painful as its application to one's own thoughts can be, is one of the few tools known to effectively expose and repair these flaws. Socrates, should he have been a great practitioner of his own method, has likely spent much more time criticizing his own thoughts than others' - and, in fact, in Plato's dialogues Socrates frequently refers to himself as being "extremely annoying and frustrating" and the like.

Dee

@MayCaesar

@MayCaesar

Nietzsche's statement, while technically, perhaps, true, seems to be a bit of a reach. It is possible that, in some absolute sense, facts either do not exist at all or, at least, cannot be established by an intelligent observer as holding true - however, there is some reality that punishes people for choosing certain interpretations over alternatives. There is something that assures that a person who does not believe in gravity and lives as though it did not exist, well... does not live for long.

There is a lot of truth in Niertzches statement in the sense I take it.

I often wonder if Nierzsche meant this in an absolute sense or in a more liberal  type of way as like you say it does seem a bit of a reach.

Nietzsche was always contentious and rarely conciliatory. Atheists mostly detest him as he tears at their masks of moral assurance , theists also detest him equally because of his Atheism, I always had a soft spot for him considering the times he lived his stance on a lot of things did not make him many friends and he had a pretty lonely existence.

Perhaps one could think of hierarchies of interpretations of any particular observation, ranging from the least practically tenable ones to those that are nearly irrefutable in practice - so that some interpretations are more accurate than others, but no interpretation is strictly factual. 

Again that makes sense and I would  agree but again the problem arises of how any particular observer interprets the observations.

We have heard on this site a christian posting up testimony from a qualfied doctor who stated regards one of the miracle claims " god the ultimate surgeon has cured her", 

How do you even begin to reason with someone like this and how these people interpret information? They actually believe their interpretations are scientific and irrefutable.

And if an objective comparison of this kind is possible, then arriving at a common ground should also be possible. Whatever our interpretations are with respect to gravity, at the very least we both have to agree that jumping off the top of the CN tower is a really bad idea - and we can engage in a dialogue (Socratic?) to see where this agreement leads us.

To take the Nietzsches statement in an absolute sense I think leads to extreme scepticisim regarding the possibility of any certain knowledge, which while I agree with Hume regards the problems of induction , causation and self even Hume admitted its impossible for human beings to live their lives doubting.

I totally agree with you that the method is annoying and impractical in many real life situations. Obviously, discussing the cheetah question in this sense serves little purpose, while requiring a lot of mental and time investment. There are situations, however, in which extreme accuracy is crucial - for instance, in a dispute between two parties that have signed a complex economical contract and disagree on its reading - and in which all the involved parties may be willing to spend hours, days, weeks, months, years discussing it Socratically given how big the economical implications of its outcome are.

A lot of problems regards reaching agreement boil down to language and its meaning.

If a parrot says ' I am happy' the parrot means nothing but  if you or I utter these words we don't just say something we mean something.

When the parrot says something it means nothing yet when I say something it does and I have an inner mental process of meaning while others have theirs, words in their primrary signification stand for nothing but the minds of him / her that uses them which is a fellow human with likes / dislikes , bisases etc,etc.

Ward Farnsworth who wrote "A Practitioner's Handbook" on the Socratic method further insists that the true value of the method is shown by application of it to one's own thinking. Our patterns of thinking are developed throughout our lives and build on top of each other, accumulating countless tiny "bugs" that, over time, sum up to serious consistent flaws in our thinking - and the Socratic method, painful as its application to one's own thoughts can be, is one of the few tools known to effectively expose and repair these flaws. Socrates, should he have been a great practitioner of his own method, has likely spent much more time criticizing his own thoughts than others' - and, in fact, in Plato's dialogues Socrates frequently refers to himself as being "extremely annoying and frustrating" and the like.

At least Socrates was courageously honest. Having reached an opinion on most things by a certain age people rarely change , maybe the thinking gets rigid over time and more entrenched.

I became a huge fan of David Hume about 10 years ago by listening to a talk by Brian Magee a man who expressed his ideas brilliantly , this was many years after holding a totally different opinion because the speaker didnt understand Hume and spoke from a truly one sided biased view of the man and his works.

This taught me a valuable lesson as in don't take  the first opinion given just because of the persons reputation and credentials, lesson learned.

MayCaesar

Dee said:

There is a lot of truth in Niertzches statement in the sense I take it.

I often wonder if Nierzsche meant this in an absolute sense or in a more liberal  type of way as like you say it does seem a bit of a reach.

Nietzsche was always contentious and rarely conciliatory. Atheists mostly detest him as he tears at their masks of moral assurance , theists also detest him equally because of his Atheism, I always had a soft spot for him considering the times he lived his stance on a lot of things did not make him many friends and he had a pretty lonely existence.

I used to view Nietzsche as an extreme contrarian - but, perhaps, it is fairer to view his role as similar to Solzhenitsyn's. In questioning people's most fundamental moral underpinnings and beliefs he forced people to think deeply about their values. No one who survived a close encounter with Nietzsche emerged from it unscarred, but many of the scars eventually gave way to tissues healthier than the original pre-scar ones. He was not necessarily right in most things he claimed, but in claiming them and prompting people to attack them he caused them to think harder than they would when reading less controversial material. Naturally, just like in Socrates' case, forcing people to think hard in a provocative manner does not make one many friends.

Dee said:

Again that makes sense and I would  agree but again the problem arises of how any particular observer interprets the observations.

We have heard on this site a christian posting up testimony from a qualfied doctor who stated regards one of the miracle claims " god the ultimate surgeon has cured her", 

How do you even begin to reason with someone like this and how these people interpret information? They actually believe their interpretations are scientific and irrefutable.

I have had some interesting conversations with deeply religious people throughout which both parties changed their minds on something. I think that success of any such discussion has two ingredients: a) presence of good will in both parties, and b) existence of a point of agreement on something related to the subject.

As an example, I had a very interesting conversation with a Korean teacher, formerly atheist turned Protestant. Her being a teacher, she has thought a lot about epistemology, and we could quickly determine a few epistemological points we both agree on - one of them being the idea that interpretation of sensory data is ambiguous, yet its source is not. She was also clearly interested in questioning her faith, as, while it was deep, she did have some disagreements with the mainstream Protestant movement in the US and wanted to smooth out that friction. This allowed me to, through a series of questions, to get her to agree that there is a real possibility that god does not exist - I did not convince her to give up her faith, naturally, but I did get her to agree on a weaker claim than what Protestantism makes. Getting someone from the point at which they believe that they have the truth to the point where they agree that they might be wrong is a major accomplishment - and if they are an honest thinker, they should be able to take it from there and move in a good direction on their own.

If these ingredients are missing, however... Well, if someone's goal in a conversation is to stroke their ego, or if they are so repulsed by your views that they will never agree with anything you say, not even that 2+2=4 - then, indeed, it is completely hopeless. But then, I do not think Socrates advocated for engaging with such people either.

Dee said:

To take the Nietzsches statement in an absolute sense I think leads to extreme scepticisim regarding the possibility of any certain knowledge, which while I agree with Hume regards the problems of induction , causation and self even Hume admitted its impossible for human beings to live their lives doubting.

Naturally, it is impossible to doubt absolutely everything - but doubts exist on a spectrum, and I think that having a certain degree of skepticism with respect to anything we assume to be true is healthy. Sure, you cannot question every time you take a step whether you know how to walk - but you can wonder if the method of walking you have learned is optimal.

I look at it mostly from the statistical perspective. Every belief I hold has a certain degree of certainty; not something I can quantify, but something I can have an intuitive sense about. When I see someone on the street who for some reason looks like a lawyer to me, my confidence in my inference is too low to place any real bet on it - however, if I had to pick a profession for that person, that of a lawyer would be my choice. On the other hand, when I see a yellow blob on the sky in the afternoon, I am quite confident that it is the Sun, same star as the one I saw before - and while, strictly speaking, there is a non-zero probability that I am wrong, in my estimation that probability is too low to not neglect it completely.

Where I think we get in trouble is when we apply multiple lines of reasoning at the same time that are in conflict with each other and give us very different estimates. Suppose you want to talk to your boss about a promotion. One line of reasoning tells you, "I have worked in this company long enough and achieved a lot, and my boss has praised my work on multiple occasions. I absolutely deserve a raise and will likely get it". Another line of reasoning tells you, "I feel so uncomfortable talking to my boss about it. What if he gets upset at me? What if he is having a bad day and is going to just fire me on the spot?" If we were dealing with proper statistics, we would be able to weight these two arguments against each other and arrive at some sort of mathematical expectation and go from there - but given how fuzzy our estimates are in the first place, these two arguments do not merge together into some sort of weighted average, but pull us in different directions.
And then we have nothing better to do than to employ some heuristics that empirically work well for us. It can be something like this: "Whenever I believe that I deserve something, but I feel very uncomfortable talking about it, I will bite a bullet and go talk to it". Or: "I will play it safe and, whenever possible, avoid a potential conflict".

Dee said:

A lot of problems regards reaching agreement boil down to language and its meaning.

If a parrot says ' I am happy' the parrot means nothing but  if you or I utter these words we don't just say something we mean something.

When the parrot says something it means nothing yet when I say something it does and I have an inner mental process of meaning while others have theirs, words in their primrary signification stand for nothing but the minds of him / her that uses them which is a fellow human with likes / dislikes , bisases etc,etc.

I wonder then if a different method can be developed that sheds light on the meaning of the words we use. When two humans disagree on something, usually it is because they mean different things by the same words/sentences - and they have a hard time finding what exactly they disagree on for they use the same language to talk about it that got them into this impasse to begin with. If someone by "equality" means equality of outcome, while someone else means some sort of absolute equality across all metrics by it, then it will be very hard for them to even acknowledge each other's terminology for the whole equality-related vocabulary is likely to differ significantly between them.

I suppose the best method I have heard of is simply asking a lot of clarifying questions, until the definition starts becoming transparent. If someone says, "I believe that cows should be equal to humans", initially this sentence does not make a lot of sense to me, and I have no clue what exactly the person means. If I ask him to clarify the meaning of the word "equal", I might get some information out of him - but it is unlikely that I will understand the entirety of the meaning of the phrase. I can, however, start asking certain innocent questions: "Do you believe that humans are already equal to each other?", "Are cows equal to each other?", "Do you believe that goats should be equal to humans as well?", "Do you differentiate between equality and equivalence?" Sadly, this is highly impractical, and most conversation partners will quickly bail out of such an interrogation.

I do have some success with this Socratic-like technique when I employ it. It is quite helpful when I hear something that sounds completely outlandish to me, yet my conversation partner says it with a straight face and clearly does not see anything weird in it. Asking just a couple of questions may often clarify the statement significantly, without making my partner feel like he is on the receiving end of something ill-willed.

Dee said:

At least Socrates was courageously honest. Having reached an opinion on most things by a certain age people rarely change , maybe the thinking gets rigid over time and more entrenched.

I became a huge fan of David Hume about 10 years ago by listening to a talk by Brian Magee a man who expressed his ideas brilliantly , this was many years after holding a totally different opinion because the speaker didnt understand Hume and spoke from a truly one sided biased view of the man and his works.

This taught me a valuable lesson as in don't take  the first opinion given just because of the persons reputation and credentials, lesson learned.

There is also something more subtle that can be observed in some people: they will talk a lot about how they are ignorant about many things in the world and how everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt - while really meaning, "I am much smarter than all of you, sheep, as I understand my limitations much better than you". It is the same kind of confusion, only much less obviously expressed. It still comes down to overvaluing one's ability to think correctly, in this case - to think about one's own thinking.

I think that true "enlightenment", if you will, comes when you stop comparing yourself to others at all, realizing that you know infinitely more about your mind than theirs and have no business saying that your thinking is somehow more refined than theirs. When you hear someone saying something obviously fallacious, and, instead of instantly reacting with, "Well, that is embarrassing; anyone should be able to avoid making such a blunder!", you react with, "Curious. I wonder if things like this are as easy for others to see in me as they are for me to see in them". It is not pretense of humbleness, but genuine humbleness. I am not sure how much of it Socrates had (perhaps, we will never know), but he was clearly aware of the necessity to have it.

Living in society, we naturally think about every group of humans in terms of hierarchies. A professor is more knowledgeable than a student; a father is wiser than a son; a celebrity is more valuable than a homeless drunk... And, sure, such comparisons make a lot of sense and often are strictly logical. But they are also incomplete, for these properties do not exist on a line, but, at least, on a multi-dimensional spectrum. Accepting someone's opinion due to their reputation and accomplishments may be better than accepting any random opinion, but such acceptance comes with significant risk. At Russian universities they like to say, "Trust, but verify". Meaning that, upon hearing something from what you consider to be a highly reputable source, it makes sense to provisionally accept that something, yet put it in your mental pile of "plausible hypotheses", rather than the pile of "accepted assertions". And a major part of one's intellectual work is sorting through the pile of "plausible hypotheses" and throwing individual hypothesis either into the discard pile, or the "accepted" pile. With the full understanding that even in these piles everything is fundamentally provisional.

Dee

@MayCaesar

I used to view Nietzsche as an extreme contrarian - but, perhaps, it is fairer to view his role as similar to Solzhenitsyn's. In questioning people's most fundamental moral underpinnings and beliefs he forced people to think deeply about their values. No one who survived a close encounter with Nietzsche emerged from it unscarred, but many of the scars eventually gave way to tissues healthier than the original pre-scar ones. He was not necessarily right in most things he claimed, but in claiming them and prompting people to attack them he caused them to think harder than they would when reading less controversial material. Naturally, just like in Socrates' case, forcing people to think hard in a provocative manner does not make one many friends.

I'd agree. I remember as a student reading Nietzsche and finding his writings terrifying in a way because they seemed without hope , this I found out later was because I was still a christian and a certain amount of guilt came with reading Nietzsche's writings as they were deemed grossly immoral  and not something one would openly admit reading.

Incredible for me was that when I shed  my belief in Christianity I found his writings a breath of fresh air. Nietzsche doesn't fit easily into societal boxes and is still misunderstood , he pissed a lot of people of and his sister totally destroyed his reputation( for a while)  with her totally disjointed views and belief that  an Ayran settlement could be achieved.

I have had some interesting conversations with deeply religious people throughout which both parties changed their minds on something. I think that success of any such discussion has two ingredients: a) presence of good will in both parties, and b) existence of a point of agreement on something related to the subject.

As an example, I had a very interesting conversation with a Korean teacher, formerly atheist turned Protestant. Her being a teacher, she has thought a lot about epistemology, and we could quickly determine a few epistemological points we both agree on - one of them being the idea that interpretation of sensory data is ambiguous, yet its source is not. She was also clearly interested in questioning her faith, as, while it was deep, she did have some disagreements with the mainstream Protestant movement in the US and wanted to smooth out that friction. This allowed me to, through a series of questions, to get her to agree that there is a real possibility that god does not exist - I did not convince her to give up her faith, naturally, but I did get her to agree on a weaker claim than what Protestantism makes. Getting someone from the point at which they believe that they have the truth to the point where they agree that they might be wrong is a major accomplishment - and if they are an honest thinker, they should be able to take it from there and move in a good direction on their own.

If these ingredients are missing, however... Well, if someone's goal in a conversation is to stroke their ego, or if they are so repulsed by your views that they will never agree with anything you say, not even that 2+2=4 - then, indeed, it is completely hopeless. But then, I do not think Socrates advocated for engaging with such people either.

Thats interesting indeed and I think what you stated as in one crucial factor is vital  ....existence of a point of interest......

Your conversation seems  was of value and I think one would come out of such an exchange with mutual respect remaining intact.

I've had two excellent exchanges with christians in the last year where I was asked to pose one question that I thought offered a significant challenge to their beliefs, my question unsettled the two and they openly admitted such. One of thees people is a proffesor of theolgy  and the other an ordained christian minister.

I started off by asking   agreement on one use of terminology as in if they understood that  if I  used the term "intervention"  what I  mean by that?  As  in for us to know if an intervention has taken place evidence of such must be obvious to all , they accepted that was a fair and correct way of using such a term.

So my one question was , " god is claimed to be pure goodness itself so it follows all his decisions must be  morally correct , therefore gods decision not to intervene when a child is being raped must be morally correct , how can this be so?

Both admitted to being somewhat shocked by the question but took it in the spirit of enquiry , the minister admitted he had no answer  but that he had faith god had has his  reasons which he couldn't know.

The theologist took a long time considering it ( over a week)  and he went for  gods decision must be morally god for reasons known to himself and again fell back on the fact he has faith in god.

I still communicate with both as I  admired their honesty and admittance that they cannot answer certain questions to my satisfaction , they also asked me several questions that made me think , I enjoyed the exchanges.

Naturally, it is impossible to doubt absolutely everything - but doubts exist on a spectrum, and I think that having a certain degree of skepticism with respect to anything we assume to be true is healthy. Sure, you cannot question every time you take a step whether you know how to walk - but you can wonder if the method of walking you have learned is optimal.

I look at it mostly from the statistical perspective. Every belief I hold has a certain degree of certainty; not something I can quantify, but something I can have an intuitive sense about. When I see someone on the street who for some reason looks like a lawyer to me, my confidence in my inference is too low to place any real bet on it - however, if I had to pick a profession for that person, that of a lawyer would be my choice. On the other hand, when I see a yellow blob on the sky in the afternoon, I am quite confident that it is the Sun, same star as the one I saw before - and while, strictly speaking, there is a non-zero probability that I am wrong, in my estimation that probability is too low to not neglect it completely.

Where I think we get in trouble is when we apply multiple lines of reasoning at the same time that are in conflict with each other and give us very different estimates. Suppose you want to talk to your boss about a promotion. One line of reasoning tells you, "I have worked in this company long enough and achieved a lot, and my boss has praised my work on multiple occasions. I absolutely deserve a raise and will likely get it". Another line of reasoning tells you, "I feel so uncomfortable talking to my boss about it. What if he gets upset at me? What if he is having a bad day and is going to just fire me on the spot?" If we were dealing with proper statistics, we would be able to weight these two arguments against each other and arrive at some sort of mathematical expectation and go from there - but given how fuzzy our estimates are in the first place, these two arguments do not merge together into some sort of weighted average, but pull us in different directions.

And then we have nothing better to do than to employ some heuristics that empirically work well for us. It can be something like this: "Whenever I believe that I deserve something, but I feel very uncomfortable talking about it, I will bite a bullet and go talk to it". Or: "I will play it safe and, whenever possible, avoid a potential conflict".

One thing I've noted over the years is that  a fair proportion of peole ( majority men)  let ego dictate their reponses in a lot of cases. I used to work as a magician/ mentalist and during my routine  I would do a find the lady / 3 card monte routine  , you wouldn't believe how many men would bet the works on what they thought was the money card and mostly because male ego and bravado was on the loose , women almost never placed a bet.

Another thing was women would nearly always ask "can you read my palm or do a card reading" men would rarely ask for such as it was seen as " weak / feminine ", men preffered card tricks and were entertained by them but with alaways an eye on working them out..  

I wonder then if a different method can be developed that sheds light on the meaning of the words we use. When two humans disagree on something, usually it is because they mean different things by the same words/sentences - and they have a hard time finding what exactly they disagree on for they use the same language to talk about it that got them into this impasse to begin with. If someone by "equality" means equality of outcome, while someone else means some sort of absolute equality across all metrics by it, then it will be very hard for them to even acknowledge each other's terminology for the whole equality-related vocabulary is likely to differ significantly between them.

I suppose the best method I have heard of is simply asking a lot of clarifying questions, until the definition starts becoming transparent. If someone says, "I believe that cows should be equal to humans", initially this sentence does not make a lot of sense to me, and I have no clue what exactly the person means. If I ask him to clarify the meaning of the word "equal", I might get some information out of him - but it is unlikely that I will understand the entirety of the meaning of the phrase. I can, however, start asking certain innocent questions: "Do you believe that humans are already equal to each other?", "Are cows equal to each other?", "Do you believe that goats should be equal to humans as well?", "Do you differentiate between equality and equivalence?" Sadly, this is highly impractical, and most conversation partners will quickly bail out of such an interrogation.

I do have some success with this Socratic-like technique when I employ it. It is quite helpful when I hear something that sounds completely outlandish to me, yet my conversation partner says it with a straight face and clearly does not see anything weird in it. Asking just a couple of questions may often clarify the statement significantly, without making my partner feel like he is on the receiving end of something ill-willed.

Yes it all boils down to what you said in your opening as in points of agreement then one or two clarifying questions , Wittgensteins view was to me pretty telling as in to grasp the meaning of a word is not to have it correlated with some mysterious inner object , but , roughly speaking to know how its used.

There is also something more subtle that can be observed in some people: they will talk a lot about how they are ignorant about many things in the world and how everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt - while really meaning, "I am much smarter than all of you, sheep, as I understand my limitations much better than you". It is the same kind of confusion, only much less obviously expressed. It still comes down to overvaluing one's ability to think correctly, in this case - to think about one's own thinking.

I think that true "enlightenment", if you will, comes when you stop comparing yourself to others at all, realizing that you know infinitely more about your mind than theirs and have no business saying that your thinking is somehow more refined than theirs. When you hear someone saying something obviously fallacious, and, instead of instantly reacting with, "Well, that is embarrassing; anyone should be able to avoid making such a blunder!", you react with, "Curious. I wonder if things like this are as easy for others to see in me as they are for me to see in them". It is not pretense of humbleness, but genuine humbleness. I am not sure how much of it Socrates had (perhaps, we will never know), but he was clearly aware of the necessity to have it.

Yes thats an admirable way to approach things. I'm very approachable and open to debate in face to face and rarely a cross word takes place, active argumentation and conversation is part of our lively pub scene over here.

Online debate is very frustating as it nearly always descends into an open brawl and its mostly over terminology and individuals posting up topics saying something is true because scientists , theologists , academics say so etc , etc.

iving in society, we naturally think about every group of humans in terms of hierarchies. A professor is more knowledgeable than a student; a father is wiser than a son; a celebrity is more valuable than a homeless drunk... And, sure, such comparisons make a lot of sense and often are strictly logical. But they are also incomplete, for these properties do not exist on a line, but, at least, on a multi-dimensional spectrum. Accepting someone's opinion due to their reputation and accomplishments may be better than accepting any random opinion, but such acceptance comes with significant risk. At Russian universities they like to say, "Trust, but verify". Meaning that, upon hearing something from what you consider to be a highly reputable source, it makes sense to provisionally accept that something, yet put it in your mental pile of "plausible hypotheses", rather than the pile of "accepted assertions". And a major part of one's intellectual work is sorting through the pile of "plausible hypotheses" and throwing individual hypothesis either into the discard pile, or the "accepted" pile. With the full understanding that even in these piles everything is fundamentally provisional.

I like that " fundamentally provisional" thats sound advice. What are your views on David Humes philosophy especially his views on science?

MayCaesar

Dee said:

I'd agree. I remember as a student reading Nietzsche and finding his writings terrifying in a way because they seemed without hope , this I found out later was because I was still a christian and a certain amount of guilt came with reading Nietzsche's writings as they were deemed grossly immoral  and not something one would openly admit reading.

Incredible for me was that when I shed  my belief in Christianity I found his writings a breath of fresh air. Nietzsche doesn't fit easily into societal boxes and is still misunderstood , he pissed a lot of people of and his sister totally destroyed his reputation( for a while)  with her totally disjointed views and belief that  an Ayran settlement could be achieved.

Nietzsche has done similar things to many people. I remember well a classmate from the middle school who was really into Nietzsche: his philosophical inquiry took him to dark places and made him quite sympathetic to the Third Reich (in fact, he believed that Germany should have conquered Russia - needless to say, in the post-Soviet Russia that was a highly unacceptable view) - but later his views evolved and he became quite opposed to nationalism of any kind. We all go through different philosophical phases in life, and skeptics such as Nietzsche, Socrates or Hume, if nothing else, facilitate this evolution.

Dee said:

Thats interesting indeed and I think what you stated as in one crucial factor is vital  ....existence of a point of interest......

Your conversation seems  was of value and I think one would come out of such an exchange with mutual respect remaining intact.

I've had two excellent exchanges with christians in the last year where I was asked to pose one question that I thought offered a significant challenge to their beliefs, my question unsettled the two and they openly admitted such. One of thees people is a proffesor of theolgy  and the other an ordained christian minister.

I started off by asking   agreement on one use of terminology as in if they understood that  if I  used the term "intervention"  what I  mean by that?  As  in for us to know if an intervention has taken place evidence of such must be obvious to all , they accepted that was a fair and correct way of using such a term.

So my one question was , " god is claimed to be pure goodness itself so it follows all his decisions must be  morally correct , therefore gods decision not to intervene when a child is being raped must be morally correct , how can this be so?

Both admitted to being somewhat shocked by the question but took it in the spirit of enquiry , the minister admitted he had no answer  but that he had faith god had has his  reasons which he couldn't know.

The theologist took a long time considering it ( over a week)  and he went for  gods decision must be morally god for reasons known to himself and again fell back on the fact he has faith in god.

I still communicate with both as I  admired their honesty and admittance that they cannot answer certain questions to my satisfaction , they also asked me several questions that made me think , I enjoyed the exchanges.

It sounds like the key that made the interactions you describe work well was that neither party was dead set on "winning" the exchange, but, instead, enjoyed a good debate and wanted to have more of it. This might be indicative of the bigger truth: the less we focus on achieving the desired outcome and the more we immerse ourselves in the process, the more constructive the endeavor becomes.

I sometimes am asked by strong religious believers, "Is there anything that could possibly convince you that god exists if he did?" The answer I have had the best luck with was, "Absolutely. If I saw X, Y or Z, that would convince me that god exists". Not only does this demonstrate intellectual honesty and good will on my part, but - and perhaps, more importantly - it also sets my own mind right, as I approach the discussion hoping to challenge my own views, rather than to strengthen them. It also makes other people relate to me as they realize that there is a lot of commonality in our reasoning, and that while points of contention exist, they are malleable and we can work together on probing their stability.

However, as helpful as it is, I think it is also helpful to have some boundaries. For instance, it seems pretty pointless to try to have a civilized discussion with someone who believes that every unbeliever must be killed: as an unbeliever, I do not want to have a gun pointed at me at the beginning of the conversation. Same goes with lunatics who believe that, because I am a "privileged white male", I must pay some dues to the alleged victims of my privilege: you approach a conversation like this - I am out.

Dee said:

One thing I've noted over the years is that  a fair proportion of peole ( majority men)  let ego dictate their reponses in a lot of cases. I used to work as a magician/ mentalist and during my routine  I would do a find the lady / 3 card monte routine  , you wouldn't believe how many men would bet the works on what they thought was the money card and mostly because male ego and bravado was on the loose , women almost never placed a bet.

Another thing was women would nearly always ask "can you read my palm or do a card reading" men would rarely ask for such as it was seen as " weak / feminine ", men preffered card tricks and were entertained by them but with alaways an eye on working them out..  

That is a very astute observation. Something we had not touched on in this discussion is the influence of specific biological traits on our ways of thinking. For various historical-biological reasons, "losing face" is a much bigger deal for men than for women, and men are much more inclined to take unjustified risks and to engage in obvious fallacies in order to keep the "power momentum" going.

I have had a lot of political conversations with both men and women in person, and it has been my experience that men are much more likely to disagree with me and push back against my points, even if the disagreement is very minor - while women much more commonly say, "I see where you are coming from; your view makes sense".

Dee said:

Yes it all boils down to what you said in your opening as in points of agreement then one or two clarifying questions , Wittgensteins view was to me pretty telling as in to grasp the meaning of a word is not to have it correlated with some mysterious inner object , but , roughly speaking to know how its used.

Agreed. In fact, a view exists according to which languages are not fully connected to anything "real" at all: whatever word we use to characterize something goes well beyond merely characterizing anything, and at the same time it does not characterize it perfectly well. Take the word "car": I can come up with plenty of examples of vehicles that will give many people a pause, that they will not be sure whether they should call it a "car" or not - and, in contrary, when they do call something a "car", they may have some abstract object in mind and the real object may have some aspects that they expect to not be there.

One interesting method of probing the limits of one's definition of something is to continuously ask questions, "Is this X? Is that also X?" - gradually adding small changes to the original object. After a few iterations the object becomes something that almost certainly no one would call X - yet at what point exactly does this happen? The answer will depend on the questioned individual.

Dee said:

Yes thats an admirable way to approach things. I'm very approachable and open to debate in face to face and rarely a cross word takes place, active argumentation and conversation is part of our lively pub scene over here.

Online debate is very frustating as it nearly always descends into an open brawl and its mostly over terminology and individuals posting up topics saying something is true because scientists , theologists , academics say so etc , etc.

Jordan Peterson has made this (highly contentious) point on numerous occasions: that not only are humans fundamentally social creatures, but that our knowledge is fundamentally acquired through conversations. We can build all kinds of castles of sand in our own minds, but only in collision with other people's castles can we strip ours of sand and see what remains - and that is closer to the "true" knowledge than what we had before. Perhaps the issue with online discussions is that we do not perceive it as a social interaction - at least, not to the extend to which we do a face-to-face conversation. I notice that sometimes when messaging my friends: it almost feels like we are sending batches of information back and forth, rather than conversing. Perhaps the explicitly social element, the tension between two (or more) human organisms sharing the same space, is integral to proper exchange of ideas.

Some people believe that the Internet anonymity causes people to show their true colors - yet it seems that people here actually behave much worse than their nature would suggest. It could just be that this mode of communication is relatively recent and proper etiquette has not been developed and widely accepted yet - but it also could be something more fundamental to our nature.

Dee said:

I like that " fundamentally provisional" thats sound advice. What are your views on David Humes philosophy especially his views on science?

Based on my very limited understanding of his philosophy, it makes a lot of sense to me: he encourages people to question their most fundamental assumptions and be suspicious of their ability to think rationally, yet accepts that certain epistemological assumptions are necessary in order for us to function in this world. Science is grounded in the idea of causality which, according to Hume, cannot be rationally justified - yet living as if it could be rationally justified makes more sense than the alternative.

Something I disagree with (my understanding of) Hume is the idea that human psychology puts an irreversible twist on our ability to reach any conclusion. While it is true that thought and feelings/emotions are inseparable, there certainly are ways to remove feelings and emotions from the equation in specific contexts: the whole scientific method is tasked with doing just that. But, I suppose, Hume's view is more nuanced: he might not necessarily disagree with me here, but say that, while it is true that the process of doing science can be devoid of influence of feelings and emotions, interpretations of its results must still be influenced by them. I can perform some experiments and establish that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the Sun's heat is generated primarily by thermonuclear reactions - yet I will never be able to prove that my individual biases have not contributed to this conclusion, and even if every single scientist in the world arrives at the same conclusion, there is always a probability that all of us had the same biases.

In the statistical framework, we may employ the Bayesian approach and, under some mild assumptions, show that our conclusions very likely would not change if we somehow became purely rational creatures and followed the same scientific methodology. What are the odds that 2+2=4 is, in fact, false and I have only arrived at this conclusion due to reading too much into the sensory data entering my brain? A Bayesian would say, "Extremely low". Hume could say, "But not zero", and the Bayesian would reply, "Small enough to neglect and assume to be zero". But then Hume can also say, "But the Bayesian framework itself could be false or, at least, rationally unjustifiable".

I suppose I do not have a way to knock out this argument. I strongly sympathize with Hume's view that we are all psychological creatures looking for the best way to study reality, and perfect rationality is unattainable. It just seems to me that logical loops are not as much of a problem as many philosophers (including Hume) assume they are: sometimes circular arguments may make a lot of sense. If a circular argument consistently leads to a match between predictions and observations, then it must be connected to reality (at least temporarily), and is that not all that we want from an argument in the end? 

Dee

@MayCaesar

Nietzsche has done similar things to many people. I remember well a classmate from the middle school who was really into Nietzsche: his philosophical inquiry took him to dark places and made him quite sympathetic to the Third Reich (in fact, he believed that Germany should have conquered Russia - needless to say, in the post-Soviet Russia that was a highly unacceptable view) - but later his views evolved and he became quite opposed to nationalism of any kind. We all go through different philosophical phases in life, and skeptics such as Nietzsche, Socrates or Hume, if nothing else, facilitate this evolution.

Yes a lot of times our flirtations with with various  philosophies are acts of rebelion against the status quo as one tries to find their way in life.

sounds like the key that made the interactions you describe work well was that neither party was dead set on "winning" the exchange, but, instead, enjoyed a good debate and wanted to have more of it. This might be indicative of the bigger truth: the less we focus on achieving the desired outcome and the more we immerse ourselves in the process, the more constructive the endeavor becomes.

You're  right winning never came into it , they were to me geuinely interesting and engaging exchanges and very enjoyable.

I sometimes am asked by strong religious believers, "Is there anything that could possibly convince you that god exists if he did?" The answer I have had the best luck with was, "Absolutely. If I saw X, Y or Z, that would convince me that god exists". Not only does this demonstrate intellectual honesty and good will on my part, but - and perhaps, more importantly - it also sets my own mind right, as I approach the discussion hoping to challenge my own views, rather than to strengthen them. It also makes other people relate to me as they realize that there is a lot of commonality in our reasoning, and that while points of contention exist, they are malleable and we can work together on probing their stability.

I think a lot of belivers feel comfortable knowing they dont know and cannot know everything regarding their beliefs as mystery is involved , i know several people my wife included who admit they havent all the answers but nevertheless dont feel the need to defend their beliefs, its like a comfort blanket to them.

I also have been asked before what would convince and I always say " surely an all  knowing powerful entity would know exactly what would convince me"?

It is rather strange that many belivers have said to me in the past that "god wants you to come to him ,if he came to you then it makes it to easy as a leap of faith has to come into it"

Very strange indeed.

 Several christians over the years actually suggested that if god revealed himself we would all start behaving in a morally good way and I say " whats so wrong with that"?

I also wonder and always did how many actually truly believe or is it just a habit of the indoctrinated as my experience as a forme Catholic most people used to hope the Sunday mass would be a short one.

However, as helpful as it is, I think it is also helpful to have some boundaries. For instance, it seems pretty pointless to try to have a civilized discussion with someone who believes that every unbeliever must be killed: as an unbeliever, I do not want to have a gun pointed at me at the beginning of the conversation. Same goes with lunatics who believe that, because I am a "privileged white male", I must pay some dues to the alleged victims of my privilege: you approach a conversation like this - I am out.

It's impossible to reason with these people as they are to far go and if one had the abilty to get through to them it would result in the mental  destruction of that individual as their whole self is invested in their beliefs and all that entails.

I often have conversations on Quora its a pretty enjoyable place and a lot of academics and specialists in various fields gravitate towards it.

A devout Muslim ( an Iman) on Quora asked me was I an Islamaphobe and I said yes I was,  as I correctly  feared Islam and detested its dogmatic belief system , Muslims are  followers of a vile belief system thats regressive and divisive and brutalises and victimises people on a daily basis worldwide.

Somehow Muslims think labelling an opponent an "Islamphobe" will stop debate its a clever little ruse and works on silencing those who are afraid of the always active PC mob ready to pounce.

People like George Bush stating " Islam is the religion of peace" emboldened hardliners even more.

That is a very astute observation. Something we had not touched on in this discussion is the influence of specific biological traits on our ways of thinking. For various historical-biological reasons, "losing face" is a much bigger deal for men than for women, and men are much more inclined to take unjustified risks and to engage in obvious fallacies in order to keep the "power momentum" going.

I have had a lot of political conversations with both men and women in person, and it has been my experience that men are much more likely to disagree with me and push back against my points, even if the disagreement is very minor - while women much more commonly say, "I see where you are coming from; your view makes sense".

Yes , men nearly always push back and I totally agree about interactions with women.

Funny as well was that most men used to feel that women who got a card /palm reading from me were gullible and emotional creatures who somehow lacked a mans cool calculated use of logic and reason.

The truth was the women were.far from gullible the reason for the readings was mostly because they cared and were geuinely interested in  if i did in fact know things about them and their past ,present and future , it can be incredibly convincing and compelling.

A funny event ,  I once muttered incantations over a coin and made it move across a table much to the amusement of those present , a guy approached me afterwords and asked me to give up my evil ways and claimed I was in commuication with Satan who granted me these powers. No amount of denials on my part could convice him otherwise.

I was with my wife once in Dublins city centre and dressed all in black and also have black hair  a preacher standing on a soap box screamed " Satan is amongst us ,oh dear Jesus save us " I looked behind me and he said " You " pointing at me " you are him ", I was of course delighted at the comparison.

Agreed. In fact, a view exists according to which languages are not fully connected to anything "real" at all: whatever word we use to characterize something goes well beyond merely characterizing anything, and at the same time it does not characterize it perfectly well. Take the word "car": I can come up with plenty of examples of vehicles that will give many people a pause, that they will not be sure whether they should call it a "car" or not - and, in contrary, when they do call something a "car", they may have some abstract object in mind and the real object may have some aspects that they expect to not be there.

To me the words we use are like signposts they point the way but say nothing about the way.

I remember reading that the Chinese ( I think) have several different words for snow depending on its texture and the state its in , I believe a lot of their language is lot like  that as it seems to be more defined and descriptive.

I wonder how that experience of language would feel to ours?

One interesting method of probing the limits of one's definition of something is to continuously ask questions, "Is this X? Is that also X?" - gradually adding small changes to the original object. After a few iterations the object becomes something that almost certainly no one would call X - yet at what point exactly does this happen? The answer will depend on the questioned individual.

Thats an excellent point. In the ongoing debate about language and code yet again I attempted to seek clarity on the Op's definition of the term " language" and " code " and no matter how I tried it was utterly useless and utter confusion reigned.

 (Jordan Peterson has made this (highly contentious) point on numerous occasions: that not only are humans fundamentally social creatures, but that our knowledge is fundamentally acquired through conversations. We can build all kinds of castles of sand in our own minds, but only in collision with other people's castles can we strip ours of sand and see what remains - and that is closer to the "true" knowledge than what we had before. Perhaps the issue with online discussions is that we do not perceive it as a social interaction - at least, not to the extend to which we do a face-to-face conversation. I notice that sometimes when messaging my friends: it almost feels like we are sending batches of information back and forth, rather than conversing. Perhaps the explicitly social element, the tension between two (or more) human organisms sharing the same space, is integral to proper exchange of ideas.

Some people believe that the Internet anonymity causes people to show their true colors - yet it seems that people here actually behave much worse than their nature would suggest. It could just be that this mode of communication is relatively recent and proper etiquette has not been developed and widely accepted yet - but it also could be something more fundamental to our nature.

I totally agree with that.

I like Peterson ,he is one sharp guy and his knowledge on a vast array of subjects is astonishing, the only place he falls down is when talking about his god belief as he goes on and on never really getting anywhere , I'm still confused as to what he actually believes regarding god/gods.

I feel the same regards texting on the mobile as i normally keep it short as I much prefer the face to face also.

Some people believe that the Internet anonymity causes people to show their true colors - yet it seems that people here actually behave much worse than their nature would suggest. It could just be that this mode of communication is relatively recent and proper etiquette has not been developed and widely accepted yet - but it also could be something more fundamental to our nature.

I think that its frustration mainly at the fact face to face works because we are not just reading dry text we are actually interacting the way we should be.

I know in my case as in the most recent debate on language I made a statement that most  anyone would find totally coherent and reasonable but th OP simply refuses to see it that way, most frustrating indeed.

Based on my very limited understanding of his philosophy, it makes a lot of sense to me: he encourages people to question their most fundamental assumptions and be suspicious of their ability to think rationally, yet accepts that certain epistemological assumptions are necessary in order for us to function in this world. Science is grounded in the idea of causality which, according to Hume, cannot be rationally justified - yet living as if it could be rationally justified makes more sense than the alternative.

Something I disagree with (my understanding of) Hume is the idea that human psychology puts an irreversible twist on our ability to reach any conclusion. While it is true that thought and feelings/emotions are inseparable, there certainly are ways to remove feelings and emotions from the equation in specific contexts: the whole scientific method is tasked with doing just that. But, I suppose, Hume's view is more nuanced: he might not necessarily disagree with me here, but say that, while it is true that the process of doing science can be devoid of influence of feelings and emotions, interpretations of its results must still be influenced by them. I can perform some experiments and establish that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the Sun's heat is generated primarily by thermonuclear reactions - yet I will never be able to prove that my individual biases have not contributed to this conclusion, and even if every single scientist in the world arrives at the same conclusion, there is always a probability that all of us had the same biases.

In the statistical framework, we may employ the Bayesian approach and, under some mild assumptions, show that our conclusions very likely would not change if we somehow became purely rational creatures and followed the same scientific methodology. What are the odds that 2+2=4 is, in fact, false and I have only arrived at this conclusion due to reading too much into the sensory data entering my brain? A Bayesian would say, "Extremely low". Hume could say, "But not zero", and the Bayesian would reply, "Small enough to neglect and assume to be zero". But then Hume can also say, "But the Bayesian framework itself could be false or, at least, rationally unjustifiable".

I suppose I do not have a way to knock out this argument. I strongly sympathize with Hume's view that we are all psychological creatures looking for the best way to study reality, and perfect rationality is unattainable. It just seems to me that logical loops are not as much of a problem as many philosophers (including Hume) assume they are: sometimes circular arguments may make a lot of sense. If a circular argument consistently leads to a match between predictions and observations, then it must be connected to reality (at least temporarily), and is that not all that we want from an argument in the end? 

Thats a good summary of Humes philosophy.

Hume believed all knowledge ' forks" into two kinds, truth of reason and truths of fact, he also believed causation was a matter of fact ,not a logical necessity.

Hume thought the self a hypothetical entity ,based on inference ,a convienient and unexamined fiction,like that of " physial objects" ,or more oddly ,a kind of process.

Regards proof philosphers poke holes in our reasoning in reaching conclusions by stating most our beliefs are mistaken maybe so but we dont need absolute certainties to navigate the world and rejection of our reasoning as being  in error is not really productive and leads to extreme scepticism which is a  pretty useless way to navigate life.

Hume knew that one had to live with what we have, and in our daily lives doubting everything wasn't useful for day to day living.

MayCaesar

Dee said:

I think a lot of belivers feel comfortable knowing they dont know and cannot know everything regarding their beliefs as mystery is involved , i know several people my wife included who admit they havent all the answers but nevertheless dont feel the need to defend their beliefs, its like a comfort blanket to them.

I also have been asked before what would convince and I always say " surely an all  knowing powerful entity would know exactly what would convince me"?

It is rather strange that many belivers have said to me in the past that "god wants you to come to him ,if he came to you then it makes it to easy as a leap of faith has to come into it"

Very strange indeed.

 Several christians over the years actually suggested that if god revealed himself we would all start behaving in a morally good way and I say " whats so wrong with that"?

I also wonder and always did how many actually truly believe or is it just a habit of the indoctrinated as my experience as a forme Catholic most people used to hope the Sunday mass would be a short one.

It seems that there are two layers to people's beliefs about most topics: the inner layer is the set of core beliefs that they do not question at all or, at least, are firmly confident of - and the outer layer is the set of more malleable beliefs and uncertainties: this is the one people refer to when they say that they do not have all the answers. Someone might unquestionably believe in existence of an all-powerful deity, but have doubts about said deity's benevolence, or particulars of its divine plan. I have been particularly interested in discovering where, in each individual case, the border between the two lies and why, and it seems that in most cases (mine included) the person himself cannot articulate it.

One of the highest values in my personal system is freedom, and I used to think that I had a fairly rational derivation of this hierarchy of values - but recently I found a few gaps in my reasoning, thanks to conversations with skeptics. Those gaps are not that difficult to find once you set out to look for them, but for some reason I am naturally inclined to lazily patch them up with half-baked justifications, rather than seriously question whether they are indicative of deeper issues in my approach. It is interesting how, once you accept that you can potentially be wrong about absolutely anything, become at peace with it and start looking for what you might be wrong about, you suddenly start finding holes in your reasoning all over the place - approaching the state of continuous uncertainty Socrates talked about.

Since belief in god is based on so little (if any) evidence, people naturally have to rely on their ability and habit to suppress their disbelief of their own assertions. What if god does not exist and all of this is just a product of human fantasies? To a deep believer such a thought would be equivalent in its danger to a scientist's thought: "What if all science is just fantasy and we do not know anything?" It is like the entire world suddenly starts shaking and you have nothing to hold on to to avoid getting thrown off into the psychological abyss. 
At the same time, the problems with some of the religious claims are so glaring that even the deepest believers cannot force themselves to be blind to them. So people seem to stand above a ravine, with each foot resting on the opposite edge, and balance themselves in such a way that ravine does not have any effect on their posture. Yet the ravine never goes away, and the posture will never be as straight as it was if they committed to one of the edges and moved both of their feet there.

And you are absolutely right, it appears that many people do not as much believe in their religion as they accept it culturally/socially. I just listened to Douglas Murray's account on that with respect to the Church of England, where, as he eloquently put it, "Bishops are on the edge of becoming atheists": they will talk in circles and metaphors about various religious dogmas, but whenever confronted with factual claims such as "Did god create the Universe?", they will either change the subject or conjure up a convoluted response amounting to "It is complicated".

Dee said:

It's impossible to reason with these people as they are to far go and if one had the abilty to get through to them it would result in the mental  destruction of that individual as their whole self is invested in their beliefs and all that entails.

I often have conversations on Quora its a pretty enjoyable place and a lot of academics and specialists in various fields gravitate towards it.

A devout Muslim ( an Iman) on Quora asked me was I an Islamaphobe and I said yes I was,  as I correctly  feared Islam and detested its dogmatic belief system , Muslims are  followers of a vile belief system thats regressive and divisive and brutalises and victimises people on a daily basis worldwide.

Somehow Muslims think labelling an opponent an "Islamphobe" will stop debate its a clever little ruse and works on silencing those who are afraid of the always active PC mob ready to pounce.

People like George Bush stating " Islam is the religion of peace" emboldened hardliners even more.

This could be an unintended product of rapid evolution of human brains. We have acquired the ability to formulate very complex systems of beliefs, but along with it we have also learned to build a very intricate web of deflections around those systems, so they are hard to attack from the outside - and, more importantly, from the inside. There is a danger to a mind that is constantly shifting, and some mental stability is required for an individual to progress in life - but the downside to stability is rigidity in thinking.

A person who believes that calling someone an Islamophobe automatically wins the argument clearly is not interested in having an honest exchange of ideas. And, perhaps, on a deeper level he does not himself believes that it does win the argument. But he knows instinctively that it will allow him to avoid facing very unpleasant and challenging questions, so he chooses the easier path and calls someone a name and tells himself that he has won.

An interesting rule of thumb I heard from someone else who participates in a lot of debates is this: in order to have a constructive argument, first grant your opponent the most charitable interpretation of their position that you can muster - and then respond to that interpretation. It allows you to avoid lazy thinking, or "intellectual obesity" as someone put it, and forces you to grapple with the biggest challenges to your viewpoints, demolishing weaker ones and solidifying stronger ones. It is like, when playing chess, intentionally choosing tougher opponents: if you always play against newcomers who you can easily beat, then you will feel good about yourself, but learn absolutely nothing - while playing against opponents better than you at the game, you will be frequently crushed, but become a better player after each game.
Naturally, this only aligns with the goal of learning something from a debate. If the purpose of a debate is to convince yourself that you are right and your opponent is wrong, then "Islamophobe", "Nazi", etc. are fair game.

Regarding Bush'es statement, it illustrates the problem with human language we discussed above: that people may mean different things by different words/sentences. Obama clearly talked about a very benevolent interpretation of Islam, but those with a more malevolent interpretation of it can now weaponize his words and attribute them to their interpretation. "Islam", after all, means different things to different people: to a fanatic from Taliban it means strife towards imposing Sharia value on the entirety of humanity - while to my Muslim friend it means a personal spiritual journey towards fulfillment and serenity, and she would say that there is no bigger heretic than the one who takes up arms in order to expand influence of Islam.

Peter Boghossian recently wrote an incredible book called "How to Have Impossible Conversations", where he development a framework one can use to have a productive conversation in conditions of even extreme personal/ideological antagonism. The essence of the framework is this: you first establish agreement on the essential terminology and assumptions (and it is okay at this stage for either side to make some compromises), then use a few methods (such as defending your opponent's position as if it was your own, with your opponent attacking it relentlessly) to make sure that you both understand each other's positions well and respect them - and then you naturally are going to start collaborating rather than fighting as you have had too much agreement and shared experiences to view each other with hostility.
Naturally, this framework only works when both opponents genuinely agree to follow it. If one person is set to being combative no matter what, then any framework is going to be completely useless.

Dee said:

Yes , men nearly always push back and I totally agree about interactions with women.

Funny as well was that most men used to feel that women who got a card /palm reading from me were gullible and emotional creatures who somehow lacked a mans cool calculated use of logic and reason.

The truth was the women were.far from gullible the reason for the readings was mostly because they cared and were geuinely interested in  if i did in fact know things about them and their past ,present and future , it can be incredibly convincing and compelling.

A funny event ,  I once muttered incantations over a coin and made it move across a table much to the amusement of those present , a guy approached me afterwords and asked me to give up my evil ways and claimed I was in commuication with Satan who granted me these powers. No amount of denials on my part could convice him otherwise.

I was with my wife once in Dublins city centre and dressed all in black and also have black hair  a preacher standing on a soap box screamed " Satan is amongst us ,oh dear Jesus save us " I looked behind me and he said " You " pointing at me " you are him ", I was of course delighted at the comparison.

I find your experiences to be very relatable. Honestly, I have always gotten along much better with women than men, and the vast majority of my friends are women. Not to stereotype too much, but with men almost always there is some degree of " contest" going on, and I certainly must be guilty of that as well, even though I do not notice it - while with women mutual understanding and respect is more common.

As an example, when my female friend drives me somewhere or when I drive her, the car is just a vehicle, and neither of us makes much of it. On the other hand, when a man with a shiny car drives me somewhere, there will sometimes (not often, but sometimes) be some measure of gloating over how cool the car is. 

There is the flip side of the coin as well though. I find that certain female authority figures are difficult to work with: men in such positions generally will be pretty blunt when they have something negative to say about your work, and you will be able to quickly determine and address the issue - while women tend more to avoid difficult discussions and let the issues pile up, until everything blows up. It is hard to say to what extend this is a purely cultural issue though, and in my experience Western women tend to be more direct and Eastern more polite.

Dee said:

To me the words we use are like signposts they point the way but say nothing about the way.

I remember reading that the Chinese ( I think) have several different words for snow depending on its texture and the state its in , I believe a lot of their language is lot like  that as it seems to be more defined and descriptive.

I wonder how that experience of language would feel to ours?

I can give you an example. In Russian there are different words for "dark blue" ("синий") and "light blue" ("голубой"), and those words are very deeply embedded in the culture, and using them in place of each other will lead to nearly unreadable sentences in many instances. In English in most cases people will just say "blue", and "teal", while a bit closer to the Russian "light blue", is very rarely used and still is not quite that color.

This makes it very difficult to translate certain passages between languages. A Russian could say "the sky is синий" on a peculiar day and "the sky is голубой" on a regular day, while an American or an English would just say, "the sky is blue" in both cases, erasing the distinction - that may be crucial when it comes to poetry, for instance.

It literally affects how we think about things, what features we notice. As Russians have a far richer vocabulary for describing the colors of the sky than the English or Americans, they naturally pay more attention to sky's features and notice some features that people from most other cultures are blind to. When we do not know what we are looking for, we cannot see it, and our vocabulary strongly affects what we can look for.

Another example is a seemingly innocent feature of "applied Russian": when referring to people significantly older than you or being in position of power relative to you, people use their full name (First Name + Middle Name), while when referring to peers, they usually just use the First Name - or even shortened First Name for close friends. That leads to an almost physical sensation of distance from the older/more powerful people, one that does not exist in English-speaking societies. Furthermore, when I speak English, even having growing up in a Russian-speaking society, I also do not feel this distance - but if I were to start speaking Russian again, I would. In some respect, speaking different languages, we become different people and live in different worlds. Someone once said that "You are as many times a person as many languages you know", and there is certainly a grain of truth to it.

Dee said:

I totally agree with that.

I like Peterson ,he is one sharp guy and his knowledge on a vast array of subjects is astonishing, the only place he falls down is when talking about his god belief as he goes on and on never really getting anywhere , I'm still confused as to what he actually believes regarding god/gods.

I feel the same regards texting on the mobile as i normally keep it short as I much prefer the face to face also.

Something I have been making increased use of recently is WhatsApp's voice message feature. Somehow talking in voice, even with a significant delay, makes the conversation feel more alive and vibrant, than via text. Text is useful when you want to compose your thoughts and deliver them in an efficient form - but when you want to really connect with someone on a personal level, there is no replacing real human voice.

I wonder what happens when AIs learn to perfectly emulate human voice, so you could tell an AI what general message you want to send someone, and the AI will write a complete voiceover of that message that will be indistinguishable from if you were actually voicing it. Will even this mode of interaction start feeling somewhat surreal, as we will no longer know whether we can trust that the voice we are hearing belongs to the real person?

Dee said:
I think that its frustration mainly at the fact face to face works because we are not just reading dry text we are actually interacting the way we should be.

I know in my case as in the most recent debate on language I made a statement that most  anyone would find totally coherent and reasonable but th OP simply refuses to see it that way, most frustrating indeed.

What I guess complicates things in this case even more is that we are using language to have a debate on language. As you suggested, if this conversations was had in person, then the personal component of it could break the ice - but when text is all we have, then it is very easy to assign a poorer interpretation to originally a sound argument.

Dee said:

Thats a good summary of Humes philosophy.

Hume believed all knowledge ' forks" into two kinds, truth of reason and truths of fact, he also believed causation was a matter of fact ,not a logical necessity.

Hume thought the self a hypothetical entity ,based on inference ,a convienient and unexamined fiction,like that of " physial objects" ,or more oddly ,a kind of process.

Regards proof philosphers poke holes in our reasoning in reaching conclusions by stating most our beliefs are mistaken maybe so but we dont need absolute certainties to navigate the world and rejection of our reasoning as being  in error is not really productive and leads to extreme scepticism which is a  pretty useless way to navigate life.

Hume knew that one had to live with what we have, and in our daily lives doubting everything wasn't useful for day to day living.

You and Hume are making a very insightful point here: that absolute certainties and, by extension, perfection is not required in order to make real decisions in the real world. It would be great if we could have a computer algorithm allowing us to always precisely calculate what the "best" course of action is, but we can do fairly well even with the limited tools and knowledge we have. As long as we can establish certain patterns, regardless of how rational assumption of them being related to "laws of nature" (if there is even such a thing) is, we can do far better than if we just made random choices all the time.

The opposite side of the coin, as you said, is that there are cases in which it is better not to doubt anything and just go with what you feel is right. When fighting out a lion, it is better to not question your every move, but focus on executing the escape plan however flawed it may be.

As with many other philosophical ideas, such questioning is the ideal, something to strive for when it is appropriate - but to not take as a dogma, something to be practiced all the time. It may not be useful to have doubts when approaching a beautiful woman and striking a conversation with her, but it certainly is useful to think carefully about your decision 5 years down the road on whether to marry her.

Dee

@MayCaesar

Thank you for your very informative and interesting piece , I want to give it some thought over the weekend and will get back to you next week.