[lit-ideas] Re: The Educational Value of Slips of the Whatever
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:04:22 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Tue, 29/9/09, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 5. I mentioned "learning". We forget that even "p & q,
> therefore q" is learnt in an important sense. Imagine a test
> where members of the public can win a fortune or save the
> life of a loved one by answering one question correctly in
> the next 24 hours; if they answer wrongly the test finishes;
> if they answer 'don't know' they are given another question.
> My conjecture is that if the stakes were high enough and the
> first question was "Is it true that 'If p & q, then q'?"
> most people would say 'don't know', hoping they would get
> another question where they felt on safer ground. If so,
> this tells us that even what seems cast-iron logically has
> for many what P referred to as its "moment of uncertainty".
A perhaps better example is the Wason (Selection) test/task: this can be wiki'd
at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task , along with related
entries.
If you don't want to know the result look away now, as a comment on one such
test/task follows (further to Pinker's excellent 2 page discussion in "How the
Mind Works":-
If the rule to be tested is 'If vowel, then even number' and the cards are
'4', 'A', 'D', '7' - a common response is to chose 'A' and '4'.
'4' is incorrect because it cannot falsify the rule. But it is surely chosen
because if the flip of '4' is a vowel it appears to confirm the rule.
'A' is correct. But I guess many choose it, as with '4', because if the flip is
a vowel it appears to confirm the rule. But this is not a logically valid
reason for the choice. 'A' is correct only because if the flip were an odd
number that would falsify the rule.
Other choices are logically irrelevant because they cannot falsify the rule.
Here we see where logical thinking does not come naturally to most. It has to
be "learnt" - as against our instinctive 'confirmationist bias'. A bias that is
at the pyschological root of resistance and opposition to P's LdF which in my
experience mathmos, computer bods and logicians find a piece of piss to accept
and digest where the less logically-minded struggle.
D
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