Some thoughts about reasoning, induction and the limits of facts

When people think of reasoning they often think of deductive reasoning: the old example is "All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therfore Socrates is mortal." Assuming the premises are true, deductive reasoning gives us a truth.

Inductive reasoning is reasoning from what happened in the past to predict the future. Whenever the X we've seen Y. All men before Socrates eventually died, so he probably will too. 

Deduction yields a purer type of knowledge than induction. Deduction from true premises yields truths. Induction can only yield probabilities: likelihoods or odds.  

The problem with deduction and it's privileged position in teaching reasoning is that true, readily agreed upon premises are rare. I think that we should think more about induction. 

Thinking about induction in law and science

An explanation of my apparent fixation on the U.S. Constitution

Some people apparently read this blog. They may have noticed that the Constitution comes up a lot when I start ejecting opinions. I can understand why some might be put off by this. For one, Constitutional fetishization / founder worship is one symptom of today's problematic right-wing politics, which apparently seeks ownership of American symbols like the flag, Constitution and "our troops." But, more generally, it can be annoying to see someone invoking the same thing over and over (monomania?)

So let me be clear about my attitudes towards the Founders and the Constitution.

The Founders were men just like any other men, imperfect and a product of their times. But their times, if a member of their high social stratum, were intellectually fertile and ambitious. Among other things, the behavior and work of the Founders reflected the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment:

Harry Frankfurt's Theory of Bullshit: the basics

Take three people: the "straight shooter," the liar and the bullshitter.

What separates the straight shooter and the liar from the bullshitter? The relevance of what they believe to be true to what they are saying.

The straight shooter tries to communicate a true belief. The liar constructs a lie based on their true belief as well.

The bullshitter communicates without concern for truth or falsehood.

Here is a perfect example of the platonic Frankfurtian bullshit artist, Donald Trump, at work: 

Mr. Trump liked to tell guests that the nursery rhyme-themed tiles in the room were made by a young Walt Disney. 

“You don’t like that, do you?” Mr. Trump would say when he caught Mr. Senecal rolling his eyes. The house historian would protest that it was not true.  

“Who cares?” Mr. Trump would respond with a laugh.

A weaker example (but with higher stakes): 

Ted Cruz can be easily attacked without resorting to bullshit. Yet on the day of the Indiana primary, Trump maintained that Ted Cruz's father was "with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death, before the shooting" of JFK. This is, to put it mildly, an unsubstantiated claim. Trump doesn't know whether it's true or false. And he doesn't care. 

I encourage anyone reading this to check out On Bullshit. It's a short and entertaining read and has helped me understand present-day problems with discourse.

What should a Good American value?

I saw a picture of a friend displaying markers of Orthodox Jewish piety. It made me think: he has notions of what it means to be a good Jew. I have other Jewish friends who have largely different notions of what it means to be a good Jew. But there is some overlap. And they are serious about being what they define as a good Jew and not letting Jewishness fade away. 

What quality might define a good American? What part of our national fabric - of Americanness - should we not let fade away? 

I think that a Good American must value freedom of expression. Even when it makes us uncomfortable or even feel unsafe. 

Because, for one, this value makes Americans different. Jews have ancient traditions and heritage that defines them. Americans don't have that. We are a new people, a new type of people even - a people lacking a genetic or geographic heritage. (In my experience, Europeans find it strange when Americans say "I'm Italian" or "I'm Scottish." But, unlike many Europeans, Americans have genetic/geographic origins that are independent of their state of citizenship.) 

If Americans continue to let people say what they will and believe what they will as a fundamental value, we will continue to be different. Because allowing that to happen is so unnatural and unprecedented. It goes against the grain of human tendency. It is natural for society to suppress unpopular ideas and voices.

Regarding freedom of expression as the fundamental, cornerstone value has a unique protective effect for a good society. It is a dogma that protects against dogmatism as the basis for oppression. It disallows regime-sponsored punishment of heretics, a common feature of every oppressive regime I can imagine.

A cultural shift is underway in this country in which freedom of speech is slipping as a keystone value. A walk through a college campus might illustrate this. Speech and speakers are being suppressed on the grounds that it makes certain people feel uncomfortable or unsafe. 

The students on these campuses, and everyone else, must realize that the free circulation of ideas is essential for a healthy academy, just as the free circulation of blood is necessary for a healthy body and the free circulation of money is necessary for a healthy economy. 

Valuing freedom of speech as an American is not just the continuation of a tradition. It is partial maintenance of the Enlightenment-era spirt underlying this country's creation, Constitution and political identity. If we wish for our oft-invoked Founders' beliefs to remain relevant to our national character, we should maintain freedom of expression as a paramount value. As someone once said, it's the First Amendment for a reason. 

Jazz and reason

Jazz improvisation has logic to it: musicians improvise within chords, chords have logical relationships.

Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

          - David Hume

In what other endeavor is this so purely realized?

What is science?

I recently came across a humanities professor's assessment of science (Your professors say, “This is how things are.” They give you certainty.) This person doesn't understand science at all. And maybe it's not his fault, because scientific education rarely gets into the philosophy of science. A little bit goes a long way: 

There is no certainty in science. Scientific "truths" represent a provisional consensus among those who scrutinize the relevant experiments. While it may not be the smoothest process, if a relevant experiment supports a theory, the theory will gain support if continued experiments continue to support it (and the theory is a defeasible proposition to begin with). See how the theory of general relativity came into acceptance for an example. 

Furthermore, the frontiers of scientific understanding force man to cope with experimental results beyond his intuitive grasp. Quantum mechanics gives us a world that is unpredictable, to say the least. 

 I don't want to force collegians to spend hours upon hours in a lab, but I do think that educated people need to understand that science, at its heart, is a process rather than a set of conclusions (for its conclusions only lead to more questions - questions that can't necessarily be answered through the scientific method.)