[lit-ideas] Re: Tune in and turn off
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 21:19:29 -0700
Andreas wrote:
The basis of rationality, indeed, of Western thought is deliberative,
attentive thought. You carry out a processs by paying attention and
weighing the options. You think by being aware of the issue. Indeed,
cogito, ergo sum.
But the study finds the opposite: when you think, you are not
self-aware. It refutes 2,500 years of Westen philsophy.
This raises a number of questions of its own. Is 'self-awareness'
anywhere defined in this study? Does the denial that when we 'think' we
are not 'self-aware,' amount to a denial that when we think we aren't
aware of 'thinking'? If that's the claim, no study could show it,
because its false. Very often when we think we know we're thinking, and
we're aware of posing and discarding various directions to take in
sorting through or trying to set forth a piece of discursive reasoning.
We do 'pay attention, and we do weigh options. There are various ways to
solve a moderately interesting problem in logic, some are elegant and
direct, some are cumbersome and redundant, even though correct. To deny
that one doesn't choose between and is aware of choosing between one or
the other of DeMorgan's theorems, or between a 'long' and 'short' form
of solving by assigning truth values seems to me to fly in the face of
plain facts.
The short form of assigning truth values might illustrate this. If one
assigns the value false (F) to the conclusion of an argument in
elementary propositional logic and then tries to assign truth values to
its individual premises to determine whether there is an instance in
which the conclusion is F and the conjoined premises true (T), one will
assign Ts and Fs in accordance with the possibilities for a given
elementary valid form. Denying the antecedent, e.g.
If P then Q
not-P
-----
Therefore, not-Q
The denial of not-Q is Q.
(The aim of such an exercise is to try to find an instance in which the
conjoined premises are true and the conclusion false. If the argument is
valid, this will be impossible.)
Now you can work 'backwards' and try to assign the truth value T to each
of the other premises (in order to generate 'Premises true & Conclusion
false. Each complex or elementary proposition has a truth value: the
only case in which a conditional is T is when its antecedent is T and
its conclusion F. Otherwise, it's true. Peter Sober will tell you how to
go on. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/log/forking.htm
Notice what Sober says about the decisions one makes, about writing down
tentative truth assignments and so on. This is simple discursive
reasoning. There's no reason to think that more complex reasoning
requires any less attention.
As for being aware of the self, Hume demolished the notion of an
identifiable Cartesian center of thinking called 'the self' well over
two hundred years ago. If one cannot be aware of a separate entity
called 'the self' at any time, a fortiori one cannot be aware of it 'in
thinking.'
I know that Andreas doesn't really think that 2,500 years of Western
Philosophy consisted of theses, claims, arguments, conclusions,
positions and so on that were so much alike as makes no difference.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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