Can we trust reason ?

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za_w...@yahoo.com

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Jan 8, 2018, 4:04:40 AM1/8/18
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Can we trust reason or is everything just a delirium ?

I will give a proof that reason is inconsistent and all that we can ever have are rationalizations.

Given the fact that we cannot know if reason is leading us to correct conclusions and everything is not just a delirium, we can do something to avoid ever being wrong. The only thing that we can do to be sure that we are never wrong is to stop thinking altogether, to suppress whatever thought comes to our mind. But if we do this, then it means that the judgement that got us to this conclusion was correct. So it means that we can trust reason. If we trust reason, then it means we can start thinking again. But if we start thinking again, then it means that the judgment that led us in the first place to the conclusion that we should stop thinking, was wrong. But if it was wrong, then it means that we cannot trust reason. So in order to avoid being wrong, we should again stop thinking altogether. And so on to infinity.

From here we conclude that reason is inconsistent and all that we can ever have are rationalizations.

NYIKOS, PETER

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Jan 8, 2018, 10:05:55 AM1/8/18
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The "proof" by za_wishy reminds me of the old nihilistic claim that nothing is certain -- not even the claim itself. It even contains an equivocation: never being wrong about anything versus  not being wrong about having done a valid chain of reasoning.

We mathematicians deal in ironclad proofs all the time. I've been through literally thousands, and come up with at least a thousand of my own, myself. Can I guarantee that these proofs are correct?  In some cases, there are so many steps that I have to wonder whether I got all the details right. And so I may start thinking about the proof  again -- but there is nothing inconsistent about any of this.

In other cases, I may go over a proof carefully to see whether I can make the proof clearer to others. Or I may go over it because I have a conjecture whose proof just might be an easy, or a clever, modification of the proof of this earlier theorem. Again it's a case of my starting to think about the proof    again, but there is no contradiction here either.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics       
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

 

From: za_wishy via Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. [Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2018 6:17 PM
To: Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.
Subject: [MaybeSpam][Sadhu Sanga] Can we trust reason ?

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David Marjanovic

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Jan 8, 2018, 10:06:03 AM1/8/18
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You are rediscovering an old discussion here. In the 12th century, al-Ghazali (soon known in Europe as "Algazel") wrote a work that promoted religion over reason in general (and Neoplatonism in particular), making, as far as I understand, exactly your argument. The work was called Tahāfut al-falasifa, "Incoherence of the philosophers". Ibn Rushd (soon known in Europe as "Averroes") wrote a reply titled Tahāfut at-tahāfut, "Incoherence of the incoherence". To the best of my meagre knowledge, the point goes like this:

If you attack reason by using reason, you're contradicting yourself.
If you attack reason without using reason, you're being unreasonable.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With that out of the way, back to the actual topic. Can we blindly trust reason? Can we blindly trust anything?

We can't blindly trust reason, of course. It has happened again and again that a perfectly logical conclusion turned out to be wrong because it was drawn from insufficient or incorrect data.

The best we can do is the scientific method: the principle of parsimony. The harder it is to reconcile our logical conclusions with our observations of the hard facts of reality, the more likely it is that they are wrong. Absolute certainty cannot be had; very good certainty can be, sometimes, actually pretty often.

How reliable, then, are our observations? Do we actually observe anything, or are we (as you suggest) just hallucinating?

Here, too, absolute certainty cannot be had. Still, solipsism is highly unparsimonious: it requires the assumption that I have a vast and incredibly coherent imagination, an idea that is not congruent with any further evidence. Most likely, then, when different people and different instruments agree on a simple observation (like a measurement), they're not making it up.

I would like to discuss evolutionary epistemology, which explains why our senses are good at certain things and really bad at others (optical illusions for instance), but I don't have time to do this today; please tell me if you're interested.

Dr. David Marjanović
Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin
The opinions and conclusions expressed above probably reflect those of my institution, but I haven't asked.

================================================

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Serge Patlavskiy

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Jan 8, 2018, 11:19:00 AM1/8/18
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-
"za_wishy" on Jan 7, 2018 wrote:
> Can we trust reason or is everything just a delirium ?
.
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> on Jan 8, 2018 wrote:
> Can I guarantee that these proofs are correct?
.
[S.P.] The first-person approach to studying consciousness requires applying a special system of proofs which differs from the one traditionally used in Physics and other disciplines based on a third-person approach. For example, suppose, there is a researcher who studies own consciousness and who, say, experiences some consciousness-related phenomenon (like premonition, etc.). Now then, for him/her, it is not possible to prove in a traditional way to others that such a phenomenon was experienced. That is why, in a Science of Consciousness, a special system of proofs has to be used.
.
With respect,
Serge Patlavskiy




From: "NYIKOS, PETER" <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
To: "Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com" <Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, January 8, 2018 5:05 PM
Subject: RE: [Sadhu Sanga] Can we trust reason ?

The "proof" by za_wishy reminds me of the old nihilistic claim that nothing is certain -- not even the claim itself. It even contains an equivocation: never being wrong about anything versus  not being wrong about having done a valid chain of reasoning.

We mathematicians deal in ironclad proofs all the time. I've been through literally thousands, and come up with at least a thousand of my own, myself. Can I guarantee that these proofs are correct?  In some cases, there are so many steps that I have to wonder whether I got all the details right. And so I may start thinking about the proof  again -- but there is nothing inconsistent about any of this.

In other cases, I may go over a proof carefully to see whether I can make the proof clearer to others. Or I may go over it because I have a conjecture whose proof just might be an easy, or a clever, modification of the proof of this earlier theorem. Again it's a case of my starting to think about the proof    again, but there is no contradiction here either.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics       
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

 

From: za_wishy via Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. [Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2018 6:17 PM
To: Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.
Subject: [MaybeSpam][Sadhu Sanga] Can we trust reason ?

Can we trust reason or is everything just a delirium ?

I will give a proof that reason is inconsistent and all that we can ever have are rationalizations.

Given the fact that we cannot know if reason is leading us to correct conclusions and everything is not just a delirium, we can do something to avoid ever being wrong. The only thing that we can do to be sure that we are never wrong is to stop thinking altogether, to suppress whatever thought comes to our mind. But if we do this, then it means that the judgement that got us to this conclusion was correct. So it means that we can trust reason. If we trust reason, then it means we can start thinking again. But if we start thinking again, then it means that the judgment that led us in the first place to the conclusion that we should stop thinking, was wrong. But if it was wrong, then it means that we cannot trust reason. So in order to avoid being wrong, we should again stop thinking altogether. And so on to infinity.

From here we conclude that reason is inconsistent and all that we can ever have are rationalizations.
-- 

Вірусів немає. www.avast.com

jinankb

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Jan 9, 2018, 4:38:02 AM1/9/18
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Can we BLINDLY trust reason?

It is interesting to note the use of the word BLINDLY here. Engaging with the known awakens the reasoning mind whereas engaging with the unknown awakens humility, wonder, and intuition

I have been researching the mind,thought-based cognition and seeing/sense based cognition EXPERIENTIALLY... I stopped reading for few years and to my surprise, I found my self SEEING and also I found that my mental habits changed. I stopped reasoning, wanting immediate conclusion, was able to hold doubts etc
As  I have been living with the so-called illiterate people at that time I found their cognitive system is also based on senses/ experience. (literates learn the WORD; illiterates learn the WORLD!)

There is a false notion made up by the literates that among illiterate knowledge is transmitted orally as theirs is done through text. This is not true at all. Here the knowledge is transmitted experientially. I have also been studying how children make sense of the world and have been able to decode the finer processes.

I am a designer (National Institute of Design), with a degree in Engineering who has been researching on what, why and how of learning from 1985 or so.

Naturally, this has led me to do research on what and how children learn the REAL WORLD and what conditions help children to learn the real world and develop their natural cognitive system. As a consequence of this, I have also been studying how to learn the PRINTED WORD from childhood and the very act of teaching rewires and damages the cognitive system.

What began as a search to understand the way the non-western countries are being re-colonized through western education, led me to go deeper into exploring the process of CREATION and transferring of knowledge among the illiterate artisan communities in India.

As I began to study the total learning system (learning source, tools, process, structure and comprehension) of illiterate people, I began to understand the world of children-what and how children actually LEARN, why and what they play, why what and how do they make toys or use any material as toys and finally what condition is required for the organic development of their cognitive system.

The more I understand the system to learn the WORLD the more it becomes clear that how learning the WORD has rewired the modern humans and alienated by the biologically based process of creating knowledge and being in the world.

THE MOST UNUSUAL ASPECT OF MY RESEARCH IS THAT I ALSO STOPPED READINGFOR FEW YEARS as I began to realize that modern humans are formed by the printed word! I felt a sort of textualization of experience was taking place. This did help me a lot as I was able to reverse, to a large extent, the cognitive habit formed by reading which had also
numbed my senses. I was able to reclaim the experientially rooted process of learning in which conscious reasoning has no role and insight became the normal way of 'knowing'.

I have observed and documented more than 5 to 6000 videos and several thousand images of various activities that children do on their own. I have made an effort to understand the logic and structure behind the toys children make their autonomous play, as well as un-instructed drawings done by children.

I consider this research on how children learn is the most important work that could help to look afresh the present research on children, learning, and cognition as well as the educational paradigm totally in favor of children and for humanity. My study on why what, how, when and where children play is unique as I have consistently observed and documented through videos and images. This can pave the way for respecting the creativity and the autonomous urge in children/ life to
learn and re-organize the spaces required for children.

I have studied the so-called play, 'making' of the so-called toys and also the drawings children do on their own. It is very clear that children are learning the WORLD they experience through all these activities and there is a clear logic to their 'play'. Through play children re-experience the world, re-explore the way the world looks, functions and its possibilities and toy is nothing but a means to explore these.

Another aspect I studied is what children draw on their own and I was able to find the connection between what they experience, what they play and make and what they draw! So through drawing, children are exploring the three-dimensional world in terms of two-dimensional space. in a way, drawing is the 'play' that children do on the two-dimensional surface.

I am writing this mail to seek whether any collaboration is possible to explore afresh the whole aspect of how children learn, how the cognitive source not only enable learning but also the formation of ethical as well as the aesthetic dimensions.

Please see the following sites
reimaginingschools.wordpress.com,  http://sadhanavillageschool.org/,
https://www.youtube.com/user/sadhanavillagepune,
https://www.youtube.com/user/jinansvideos


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Jinan,
TEXT DISTORTS, DIGITAL DESTROYS, WORLD AWAKENS

Bruno Marchal

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Jan 11, 2018, 9:19:49 AM1/11/18
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It is the idea behind Gödel’s theorem, but once made mathematically precise it only shows that we cannot use reason to guarantie truth. We can only hope to be consistent and sound. It means that proof/belief should not be systematically associated with consistency and soundness. It is part of what I called machine’s metaphysics or theology. It is very important in machine theology, where invoking truth isa king to blasphemy. We have to stay modest. Intelligence is only the courage to try theories, and to admit we *might be* wrong.

Bruno

Alex Hankey

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Jan 12, 2018, 5:07:22 PM1/12/18
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Anyone asking this question should familiarise themselves with the Vedic approach to development of mind as presented in the Vedic sciences of ancient India. Only then can be the workings of the mind be trusted. 
Best
Alex 


On 11 January 2018 at 17:13, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

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