It\'s an English question but I couldn\'t find in a list so I choose computer sc
ID: 3873069 • Letter: I
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It's an English question but I couldn't find in a list so I choose computer science... 1) . What did you learn from the article "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds" and what do you think about the claims of that article? (8 to 10 sentences) It's an English question but I couldn't find in a list so I choose computer science... 1) . What did you learn from the article "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds" and what do you think about the claims of that article? (8 to 10 sentences) 1) . What did you learn from the article "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds" and what do you think about the claims of that article? (8 to 10 sentences)Explanation / Answer
I don’t know if I’d call these “limitations” of reason, since that really makes sense only in light of some antecedent picture of what reasoning is supposed to be. But that’s a minor quibble. I’ve read a long paper by Mercier and Sperber but I only learned yesterday that they have a book coming out. I ordered it along with Dennett’s new book. I like their general approach very much.
One problem I’d like to understand better can be put like this: how is it possible for us to understand that we are often not reasoning correctly? If systematic errors in reasoning (such as confirmation bias) are widespread and indeed adaptive, then what happens in the course of cultural evolution for logicians, statisticians, and psychologists to be in the epistemic position of being able to test and exposure these errors? Why aren’t we all completely blind to our epistemic constraints? (Think of this as a sort of species-wide Dunning-Kruger effect.)
I’ve been worrying about that problem for a long time — ever since I started reading cognitive science in grad school — and I still don’t have a nice solution to it.
The research described should really be seen as a reductio ad absurdum on “knowledge is justified true belief”. We do not learn facts. We learn behaviors. And these researchers taught their subjects some bad behaviors. That ought to be an ethical issue.
I learned to swim and to ride a bicycle when I was still a pre-teen child. I cannot unlearn those behaviors. That’s our nature. We learn new behaviors, perhaps even new behaviors that seem to interfere with existing behaviors. But we cannot unlearn behaviors.
The research seems consistent with knowledge being behavioral. It only seems paradoxical because the researchers have flawed ideas about knowledge and learning.
One problem I’d like to understand better can be put like this: how is it possible for us to understand that we are often not reasoning correctly? If systematic errors in reasoning (such as confirmation bias) are widespread and indeed adaptive, then what happens in the course of cultural evolution for logicians, statisticians, and psychologists to be in the epistemic position of being able to test and exposure these errors? Why aren’t we all completely blind to our epistemic constraints? (Think of this as a sort of species-wide Dunning-Kruger effect.)
I’ve been worrying about that problem for a long time — ever since I started reading cognitive science in grad school — and I still don’t have a nice solution to it.
I think it’s pretty simple, actually. We take different perspectives and apply different approaches to the same problem to see if we get the same answers. If we don’t, then we know we’ve made at least one mistake somewhere and can work toward figuring out where the mistake most likely lies.
For example, even though confirmation bias is widespread, that hasn’t prevented us from detecting it or from understanding that it can lead to fallacious reasoning. You can design an experiment to detect confirmation bias even if everyone is susceptible to it.
The danger would be if there were some kind of universal error that couldn’t be tested for and couldn’t be argued against on probabilistic grounds. Then you’d be hosed, and it would motivate the cognitive equivalent of my Cartesian skepticism regarding perception.
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