[lit-ideas] Re: The Educational Value of Slips of the Whatever
- From: "Richard Henninge" <RichardHenninge@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:14:21 +0200
Evidently Donal is no mathmo, computer bod or logician:
"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."
...
Whoops! The choice of '7' is logically relevant because if the flip were a
vowel it would falsify the rule. The choice of both 'A' and '7' are
logically necessary--I wouldn't call them logically "valid"--to falsify the
rule because you have to turn over every visible odd number to see if it
conceals a rule-breaking, rule-invalidating vowel, as well as any vowel to
see if its hidden side conceals a rule-breaking, rule-falsifying odd number.
Carry on.
Richard Henninge
University of Mainz
...
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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