Defining the nature of rational discussion!

[Kriminal99]

Originally Posted by Doctordick

I am sorry but I have yet to be very impressed by the accomplishments of philosophy.
I defined the adjective "squirrel" to mean it was not deductive logic. That makes it everything else. The only issue of significance is that it's conclusions should be open to doubt. I sincerely doubt you even have an inkling of what I was talking about when I introduced the concept of squirrel conclusions. I think you have made up your own idea quite askew of what I am asking people to consider.
Say, I would love to see the proof of that. It seems to me it must be along the same lines as the proof that "man will never fly". Or perhaps it is more alone the lines of "nature arbores a vacuum". There are more ways to skin a cat than conceived of in your philosophy ... but not in mine; because I have found a way to leave the issue open and still explain the universe! Which, of course, any intellectual knows is impossible.

Have fun -- Dick

Knowledge is Power
and the most common abuse of that power is to use it to hide stupidity

Im sorry you had trouble understanding philosophy. It is rarely followed by the type who is driven by a need to appear intelligent through artificial means rather than being directly driven by a need to understand the world around them.

It was all non deductive reasoning that I was referring to when I was talking about induction. All intuition is driven by induction. Our use of deduction even involves the use of induction to evaluate premises it is based on, and also as a double check on things we deduce to make sure again they are not founded on false premises. When you get on a bus and remain standing and the bus swerves, and you automatically and succesfully react so that you do not fall down it is not because your mind subconsiously knows the laws of physics and used them to calculate exactly what you needed to do. It is because your mind has a wealth of memories it can process (deduction, removing factors etc) to come up with a clear coarse of action.

A proof of an infinite regress? You know when I said that about being what you learn in philosophy I was attempting to remind you I had no idea that you would have never been exposed to this type of thing... For that matter it is usually religous nuts that have trouble with this type of thing rather than scientists, because scientists can see what is meant by this just by breaking down the world into smaller and smaller particles. What you think there is nothing smaller just because we lack all ability to see past a certain point? Or to see in a certain way?

So you have an explanation for the universe... Whats to stop someone from asking what drives the system you have depicted in your mind? (or any so called "understanding" or "explanation" of the universe, traditionally referring to god) Back in the day the religous guys claim if there was a self explaining truth it could serve as a stopping point, and god was a self explaining truth (because hey, its god). Speaking in terms of how we actually think I guess this would be the equivalent of something (other than A = A the basis for deduction) that a person would see to be true 100% of the time at which point we would just accept it as true. But since it was based on induction it could still be doubted, as can all inductive claims be. The truth is the idea of a self explaining truth doesn't even make sense.

[Doctordick]

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

Im sorry you had trouble understanding philosophy.

That seems to imply that you cannot comprehend the idea that someone could understand philosophy and still fail to be impressed by its accomplishments. If that is true, you should at least be able to lay out a few of those impressive world shaking accomplishments instead of berating me for not being impressed.

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

A proof of an infinite regress?

No, a proof that the "only thing towards an explanation of the universe science is capable of discovering is more links in an infinite regress...". That is a rather all consuming assertion, as I said, a conclusion in the vein of "man will never fly". Please give your proof that "more links in an infinite regress" is the only explanation of the universe science will ever discover.

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

For that matter it is usually religous nuts that have trouble with this type of thing rather than scientists, because scientists can see what is meant by this just by breaking down the world into smaller and smaller particles.

Oh, I see, if I were a decent scientist, it would be obvious to me that "infinite regression" is the only path to success.

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

So you have an explanation for the universe... Whats to stop someone from asking what drives the system you have depicted in your mind?

Nothing! And my answer is actually quite funny although you couldn't begin to understand without following my thoughts. There is nothing to stop someone from asking and the answer to the question itself (if you understood my arguments) would be clearly nothing!

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

The truth is the idea of a self explaining truth doesn't even make sense.

I suppose that is the great world shaking conclusion of philosophy which is supposed to impress me so much.

Originally Posted by Doctordick

There are more ways to skin a cat than conceived of in your philosophy ... but not in mine; because I have found a way to leave the issue open and still explain the universe! Which, of course, any intellectual knows is impossible.

I guess you must be one of the intellectuals I was referring to. As an aside, let me point out that I said "I have found a way to leave the issue open and still explain the universe", I didn't say that I ignored the issue. The point is that there is another route which is not "infinite regression" but is instead a holistic attack.

Have fun -- Dick

Knowledge is Power
and the most common abuse of that power is to use it to hide stupidity

[Doctordick]

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

I'm more and more curious to know whether you have tried reading any of Popper's work and what your opinion is, or would be. Specifically, "Conjectures and Refutations", especially in the latter parts where he really gets into falsificationism and discusses expectations and probabilities. I think you would find many of the things he says there interesting.

I ran across a book by Karl Popper; his "Objective Knowledge" published in 1979. "Conjectures and Refutations" (which was apparently published in 63) is referred to so I would expect the later presentation to be representative of his thoughts. Honestly, I have been so far quite disappointed. I find his thoughts rather simple minded and unremarkable (he hammers away at exactly the same definitive conundrums clouding the vision of all the philosophers I read). Many times he mentions issues of significant importance but invariably fails to even consider the possibility of handling them.

I don't think the man has much imagination to speak of and I find it very difficult to hold his intellect in high regard. On the other hand, he did bring up a concept which might be quite valuable as a communication tool. "Truth" as a scientific concept is hard to justify as it is fundamentally impossible to delineate. Popper instead uses the term "reliable" which is actually quite easy to define and defend. According to Popper's position, a theory is "reliable" if its predictions are consistent with what is known. Now that seems to be a reasonable quality to delineate and, if you can comprehend its implications, it also sheds considerable light on exactly what I have discovered. Perhaps you can understand it from that perspective.

By following a path totally ignored by the scientific community (that is, creating an abstract definition of an explanation and examining the consequences and range of that definition) I have come across a unique abstract explanation which is both simple and easy to evaluate. I can prove that this particular explanation is 100% reliable (that is, it must, by construction, always yield exactly what is known and that it is unique in this regard) but, more important than that, I can show that there is a 1:1 mapping between the defined concepts and operations of any internally consistent explanation of anything and the defined concepts and operations of that specific abstract explanation. That is, I can show a specific step by step procedure which will convert any explicit given explanation into my abstract solution.

As I said, my purpose was to communicate this solution to someone; I had hoped you would have the education and wherewithal to follow me. So far, I can see nothing in your reaction except simple adamant refusal to think about anything I say. I presented to you an abstract definition of an explanation. You neither agreed to work with that definition nor gave any reason as to why you felt that definition was unacceptable. You simply walked away from the conversation without even a parting comment. I found that to be extremely rude. I was hoping you were more scientifically objective than that.

By the way, the critical issue in being able to understand the universe revolves around a very significant fact totally ignored by every philosopher and scientist I have ever talked to. That issue is the fact that, when it comes to the universe (i.e., "everything", as that is the very definition of "the universe"), definition of one's senses is part of the "explanation" and not part of "what is to be explained". Everyone presumes, without even the slightest thought about it, that their explanation of the universe is based upon information gained through their senses. The problem with this position is that we cannot possibly model our senses (the fundamental source of that information) until after we have modeled the universe. This is a dilemma that not one of you "great thinkers" has even begun to consider. It is, in fact, the very key to understanding itself.

Have fun -- Dick

Knowledge is Power
and the most common abuse of that power is to use it to hide stupidity

[Kriminal99]

Originally Posted by Doctordick

That seems to imply that you cannot comprehend the idea that someone could understand philosophy and still fail to be impressed by its accomplishments. If that is true, you should at least be able to lay out a few of those impressive world shaking accomplishments instead of berating me for not being impressed.
No, a proof that the "only thing towards an explanation of the universe science is capable of discovering is more links in an infinite regress...". That is a rather all consuming assertion, as I said, a conclusion in the vein of "man will never fly". Please give your proof that "more links in an infinite regress" is the only explanation of the universe science will ever discover.
Oh, I see, if I were a decent scientist, it would be obvious to me that "infinite regression" is the only path to success.
Nothing! And my answer is actually quite funny although you couldn't begin to understand without following my thoughts. There is nothing to stop someone from asking and the answer to the question itself (if you understood my arguments) would be clearly nothing!
I suppose that is the great world shaking conclusion of philosophy which is supposed to impress me so much.
I guess you must be one of the intellectuals I was referring to. As an aside, let me point out that I said "I have found a way to leave the issue open and still explain the universe", I didn't say that I ignored the issue. The point is that there is another route which is not "infinite regression" but is instead a holistic attack.

Have fun -- Dick

Knowledge is Power
and the most common abuse of that power is to use it to hide stupidity

There are a limited supply of approaches to understanding the world around us, and they have all been explored in basic form within philosophy. If you aren't going to claim you have a self explaining truth regarding the world, its probably some form of coherentism (belief sets which contain enough linked information that they seem to relieve any feeling of doubt) which suffers from the problem of not being uniquely capable of explaining events. Or one of those "solutions" like Lehr's solution to global skepticism that really doesn't claim anything but simply motivates acceptance of uncertainty until the uncertainty is removed, which basically doesn't really add anything new to the situation.

There really isn't an end to philosophy, if you wanted you could spend your whole life exploring and expanding on ideas that branch off at any point from your experiences in life or using the ideas of other philosophers as springboards. Along the way you learn a lot of things about reasoning and they way we think in general. Yeah its pretty obvious when someone doesn't have a clear understanding of many ideas in philosophy. You don't have to call it philosophy even, we can look at specific things you are doing that I think someone would have learned better than to do while studying philosophy. Thats the point of the rest of my post. Of course your going to dispute this. Ive been on the other side of this argument before, however I believe that I always have the better position because philosophy always contains the basic form of reasoning that other disciplines use. This type of argument really doesn't add anything so I'm going to try and stop here.

The line between science and philosophy may be thin, but most people on this forum have tried to limit it to collecting data from experiments regarding the physical world so it would be less vulnerable to objections than if you included the theorizing aspect of it rather than considering that part of philosophy. But like I said even if you want to include philosophy in your science and still call it science alone, your approach is still going to fall into one of the general categories that have already been explored by philosophy. What makes me so confident of this? Because the ideas explored in philosophy looked at the basic means of forming ideas in the human mind, through which any discipline of reasoning is realized. Mathematics is simply deductive reasoning, limited to certain kinds of concepts which are similar enough to limit the problems involved with induction. IE All numbers are so alike that you don't have to worry if 2 numbers are different such that you can't use the same reasoning when adding it to another number to come to an answer.

Anotherwords people use deductive and inductive reasoning to form any idea, and we know what all the advantages and disadvantages of this are. When looked at in this simple form it's easy to devise all the strategies for dealing with uncertainties, and any claim from any discipline geared towards the same goal HAS to be a more specific form of one of these strategies because its realized by deduction/induction as a human concieved it.

If you claim that your approach "leaves the question open" as in does not deal with uncertainty then you are not really disputing that science leads to an infinite regress. Pointing out that many scientists do not dispute the infinite regress was designed to get you to elaborate on what you are talking about exactly. (and it worked) It seems that you are talking about philosophy, but calling it science. Which is not surprising considering you are a scientist.

Again, the answer to the question being nothing sounds really familiar, and I again would like to assert that it may just be a specific version of a previously presented argument. The ideas are just as much your's as anyone elses, but they are nothing new. Also the same question remains regarding your argument... what does the argument actually accomplish? I mentioned coherentism earlier because I think your argument may simply be this Lehr style argument combined with some belief set that is signifigantly coherent that it seems to further reinforce acceptance of uncertainty. Such an argument would probably be vulnerable to the criticsims against both basic types of arguments.

[Qfwfq]

Originally Posted by Doctordick

As I said, my purpose was to communicate this solution to someone; I had hoped you would have the education and wherewithal to follow me. So far, I can see nothing in your reaction except simple adamant refusal to think about anything I say. I presented to you an abstract definition of an explanation. You neither agreed to work with that definition nor gave any reason as to why you felt that definition was unacceptable. You simply walked away from the conversation without even a parting comment. I found that to be extremely rude. I was hoping you were more scientifically objective than that.

I wasn't meaning to be rude Dick.

We ran into a serious problem with the main customer here and it caused a lot of tension when things had already been getting tight. Sorry but I couldn't reply to your previous post and I couldn't even print it. I find the things you say interesting but I'll need a spot of time to read that post. I won't be posting much these days but I'll have a look at that post.

I'm glad you're comparing your thoughts with those of Popper, what I really meant to point out is that, if philosophers have rejected publishing your ideas by saying it isn't philosophy, perhaps you could show them they're wrong, regardless of how much you agree with Popper and other epistemologists. I was hoping to point out more exactly some parts of C&R for you, anyway it's mostly in the later parts of the first half. If nothing else, he uses math a lot and I doubt other philosophers ever told him it isn't philosophy.

[cwes99_03]

The only reason I tend not to read or learn to much philosophy or more especially psychology, is that the tune/tenor of the writings tend to change with the wind. More accurately, I don't believe that any man can come up with the answers to lifes problems. I may post certain viewpoints to further the development of threads, but largely I can always find flaws with either the ideas or their execution.

That being said, back to the original post:
I see your point on the differences of what I'll call step by step logic and gut logic. Step by step is what we each do when a totally new problem is presented to us. Gut logic is what we do when a situation similar but not identical to a problem we have already faced is presented to us, and we react as if it were identical to a previous problem.
If it were possible to sit down and do step logic type reasoning with every problem then we would do it. However the world keeps moving on, so we don't take that time with every decision. Instead we largely work on gut logic.
I do propose though a third type of logical reasoning. This would not be gut logic, but instead trained logic. This type of logic says, I've done this exact thing before, and I know what steps of logic are behind it, so I just do it.
Gut and trained types of logic both leave the decision maker open to mistakes. There is only one type of mistake for each, so most people tend to see them as the same. The mistake that is made is misreading the situation. You either misread in that, it isn't identical to a situation you've already faced, or you misread the situation in that, it is similar to a situation you've faces, but the key differences between this new situation and the past situation are enough that the gut reaction would not be a sufficient reaction.

As for squirrels misjudging, I see it all the time. My most fond memory was of a squirrel running from another squirrel. He went down a limb and lept for the eaves of a house, but missed. Instead he fell two stories into some lillies of the valley where he laid stunned for a good minute, before getting up and slowly walking back to the tree he had jumped from. I'm not sure, but I swear I saw the same squirrel a couple of weeks later, do nearly the same thing, this time catching just a bit of the eaves, but again falling into the lillies.

[Doctordick]

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

... but largely I can always find flaws with either the ideas or their execution.

"Always" is a pretty extensive base position. If you think you can, I would very much appreciate your finding the flaws in my presentation.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

I see your point on the differences of what I'll call step by step logic and gut logic. Step by step is what we each do when a totally new problem is presented to us. Gut logic is what we do when a situation similar but not identical to a problem we have already faced is presented to us, and we react as if it were identical to a previous problem.

Your use of the phrase "gut logic" implies to me that you did not understand the thrust of my introduction of that dichotomy: "squirrel" vs "logical" as adjectives.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

If it were possible to sit down and do step logic type reasoning with every problem then we would do it. However the world keeps moving on, so we don't take that time with every decision.

You have missed the point. One cannot do step logic type reasoning with every problem for reasons much more basic than the ones you give. The fundamental problem is that "step by step" logic requires that one be aware of both ends of a step before the decision that the step is logical can be made. There are many problems where the required information far exceeds what we can be aware of. Secondly, any logical argument depends upon axioms which can not be logically proved to be valid (if you ever come up with a proof, that proof itself is dependent upon unproved axioms – and you are in Kriminal99's infinite regress).

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

I do propose though a third type of logical reasoning. This would not be gut logic, but instead trained logic. This type of logic says, I've done this exact thing before, and I know what steps of logic are behind it, so I just do it.

Logic is logic! You are missing the point that there is another way of reaching a conclusion which simply is not via logic.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

... but again falling into the lillies.

Then you should understand why I came up with the adjective "squirrel" for the phenomena I wished to separate off. It has occurred to me that you have missed another subtle side point. It is often quite possible to transform some aspect of a "squirrel" conclusion into a "logical" conclusion by applying logic to some segment of that process; however, after that is done, that particular portion is no longer a "squirrel" conclusion.

The central purpose of science is to transform everything into "logical" conclusions; however, the point I am trying to bring home is that there is always a basis of "squirrel" conclusions upon which that result is dependent. Survival is possible with "squirrel" thought alone but, though "logical" thought is a powerful tool, it cannot even exist in the absence of "squirrel" conclusions.

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

I wasn't meaning to be rude Dick.

We ran into a serious problem with the main customer here and it caused a lot of tension when things had already been getting tight. Sorry but I couldn't reply to your previous post and I couldn't even print it. I find the things you say interesting but I'll need a spot of time to read that post. I won't be posting much these days but I'll have a look at that post.

I'm glad you're comparing your thoughts with those of Popper, what I really meant to point out is that, if philosophers have rejected publishing your ideas by saying it isn't philosophy, perhaps you could show them they're wrong, regardless of how much you agree with Popper and other epistemologists. I was hoping to point out more exactly some parts of C&R for you, anyway it's mostly in the later parts of the first half. If nothing else, he uses math a lot and I doubt other philosophers ever told him it isn't philosophy.

I sincerely apologize to you. As I have said a number of times, I have great difficulty finding anyone sufficiently thoughtful to think seriously about what I say with enough education to follow what is to come and, when I lose someone like you, I get a little depressed. Philosophers tend to get side tracked along the same lines Kriminal99 does. Even popper refers to "metaphysics" as "pseudoscience" implying he doesn't think the subject can be approached scientifically. On the other hand, in deference to him, I intend to make use of the term "reliable" as being a rational and meaningful measure of the value of an explanation. I look forward to hearing critical comments from you.

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

There are a limited supply of approaches to understanding the world around us, and they have all been explored in basic form within philosophy.

That's sort of the position that there is not such thing as original thought isn't it?

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

If you aren't going to claim you have a self explaining truth regarding the world, its probably some form of coherentism (belief sets which contain enough linked information that they seem to relieve any feeling of doubt) which suffers from the problem of not being uniquely capable of explaining events. Or one of those "solutions" like Lehr's solution to global skepticism that really doesn't claim anything but simply motivates acceptance of uncertainty until the uncertainty is removed, which basically doesn't really add anything new to the situation.

, as a matter of fact it isn't!

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

The line between science and philosophy may be thin, but most people on this forum have tried to limit it to collecting data from experiments regarding the physical world so it would be less vulnerable to objections than if you included the theorizing aspect of it rather than considering that part of philosophy.

Doesn't that sort of presume "the physical world" is what they think it is? If you people would get serious, you would realize that "the past", as perceived by the individual, is the only knowledge upon which any "theory" can be built as the individual is aware of nothing beyond that. In the final analysis, if you won't admit the possibility you are wrong, how can you refer to your examination as objective?

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

... your approach is still going to fall into one of the general categories that have already been explored ... What makes me so confident of this?

Because you utterly lack imagination!

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

If you claim that your approach "leaves the question open" as in does not deal with uncertainty ...

"Leaves the question open" means "leaves the question open" and nothing more: i.e. make no deduction which depends on a particular inductive result! This can be done by keeping all your deductions abstract.

Originally Posted by Doctordick

Nothing! And my answer is actually quite funny although you couldn't begin to understand without following my thoughts.

To repeat, you couldn't begin to understand; my mother used to say,"you'll learn a lot more by listening than you ever will by talking", and I think you, for one, need to take that advice seriously.

For the others who take the trouble to read this, I will make an attempt to point out how "squirrel" conclusions can to be taken into account without presuming their validity. First, take another look at my abstract specification of the components of an explanation:

Originally Posted by Doctordick

To summarize: A is what is to be explained, C is what is known, B is a change in what is known, label-i is a reference to the ith element of B (if the number of elements in B is finite they may be ordered as part of the explanation) and P(B) is a function which yields one's expectations for a specific B if the explanation is to be taken to be valid. Note that I am proposing no "truth" here. What I am proposing is a mechanism for referring to the significant aspects of "an explanation" so that we can talk about that explanation without knowing what it is (to us it is an unknown; that is the central issue of "working in the abstract").

Notice that the single most important issue in understanding an explanation is understanding the nature of the elements of A: i.e., having a clear understanding of the meanings referred to by those labels used to talk about the elements of A. Now, right here, an objective analysis steps into a somewhat sticky issue which turns out to be one of the most significant aspects of leaving that question of squirrel conclusions open. Meaning of references is the central issue of understanding any language and managing to learn a language is not a solution achieved by logic alone. It is in fact almost a perfect example of the essence of a "squirrel" achievement: knowledge of a language is an inductive conclusion and cannot be proved valid (you should note that misunderstanding abounds).

It follows directly that, if we are serious about maintaining our objectivity, that set C must include all the information necessary to learn the language within which the explanation is to be expressed: i.e., the true nature of learning an explanation involves learning a language capable of expressing the explanation. The final point on this issue is that symbols (the actual notation used to denote those references called label-i above) are not constrained to be any particular symbols; the issue is a totally open question. Some very significant deductions can be made from this starting point. For the moment, I will allow the reader to think about that issue a bit; perhaps, with a bit of thought, someone can come up with some interesting logical consequences of the circumstance described.

Meanwhile, I will bring up the final factor central to understanding the problem before us. C is supposed to represent the known information that the explanation is designed to explain; however, every explanation also includes elements implied by that explanation and presumed to be actual elements of A though they can not be proved to be so required. These elements also play the role of "known" information (if the explanation is to be seen as 100% reliable). For example, consider the edge of the world in a flat earth world view, the existence of angels in a theory of heaven or the existence of neutrino's in a modern particle physics. Please notice that existence of the neutrino can not be proved in the absence of modern physics theory. Its existence is proved by the requirement that the modern theory of physical reality be correct: conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, conservation of spin, conservation of charge and a number of other complex relationships. Please note that I am not denying the reliability of modern physics, I am merely pointing out that there are serious aspects of the theory which are arrived at inductively and cannot be considered to be absolutely valid.

It is to handle the above circumstance that I introduce a new concept. When a theory is created, the theory itself may require the introduction of elements which are not actual members of the set A. Though these elements are not true elements of A they must none the less obey all the rules the theory requires elements of A to obey (if they don't obey those rules, the theory is clearly unreliable and should be discarded forthwith). On the other hand, when it comes to creating theories, there are very serious differences between the two types of elements. When one creates a theory, that theory must explain elements of A which appear in C and no leeway exists as to the need of that part of the explanation. With regard to these other elements (the ones implied by the theory) the creator of the theory has the freedom to propose or not propose their existence. If proposing their existence makes his theory more reliable (or simplifies the rules of that theory) it behooves him to do so.

The point of the above paragraph is to make it clear that, in examining the abstract nature of an explanation, one needs to keep in mind the possibility of two very different components of what is presumed to be known. In order to make these two components easy to refer to, I will call those elements which are actually part of A "knowable data" in the sense that they must exist in every possible reliable theory of A. I will call those elements which are created by the theory "unknowable data" in the sense that it is possible that there exists a reliable theory which does not require them. Notice that I am requiring the rules of any reliable theory to apply as well to that "unknowable data" as to the "knowable data" so that no experimental mechanism (consistent with that reliable theory) can differentiate between them. This difference exists only in the abstract representation of C in that we are free to change one but not the other in our abstract analysis of all possible theories.

I know that the import of "unknowable data" is hard to comprehend and I hope you all take the time to consider it carefully as it has some profound logical consequences.

Have fun -- Dick

Knowledge is Power
and the most common abuse of that power is to use it to hide stupidity

[cwes99_03]

I'm sorry, but I believe you yourself did not fully understand my post so I will re-explain.

1) our first logical decisions are made at a very young age (when I can't say, and is different for every person)
2) these logic decisions are made based upon what we are taught to be logical (i.e. we learn from others' examples)
3) at some point we begin to make logical decisions based upon our own experiences (though we still include the experiences learned earlier in life as they apply) In this case, I may say that someone else failed at doing this, but having examined their attempt I can logically find a few ways to try it differently and succeed based upon other logical events I have examined in my life.
4) All of these describe a logical process of evaluation of a problem. 1) identify the problem 2) compare the problem to a knowledge-base, to discover similar situations 3) if identical to a previous situation, make decision based upon success failure of previous situation 4) if not make gut logical decision on whether it is similar enough in nature to a previous situation 5) if not, gather more information and test again, 6) once the knowledge base has been exhausted, it may be possible to string together several similar situations to form a logical conclusion
5) If there exists no other similar or identical situation then we have a completely new phenomena. (how many times have you ever encountered a completely new phenomena?)

Your definition of "squirrel" logic is saying that squirrels are incapable of remembering any prior or learned event. I.E. they can never watch another squirrel attempt a feat, and make a decision from that attempt as to whether they themselves can accomplish this feat.


By the way, it is considered bad form to do the following as an answer.

Originally Posted by doctordick

, as a matter of fact it isn't!

Why? Because you aren't providing a counter point. Rules of engagement and argument.

[Doctordick]

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

I'm sorry, but I believe you yourself did not fully understand my post so I will re-explain.

No explanation is necessicary as you totally misunderstood the crux of what I was doing. Nothing you had to say even bears on the issue I was trying to communicate.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Your definition of "squirrel" logic is saying that squirrels are incapable of remembering any prior or learned event.

No, I am not saying that at all. What I am doing is setting up some definitions of terms I wish to use to make what I am trying to communicate down the line easier to accomplish. I am telling you what I will mean when I use the term "squirrel" as an adjective. You are confusing my aside as to why I chose to use the word "squirrel" with my intended use of the term. If one takes my definition as a given then any conclusion reach by any method which is not formal deductive logic is to be categorized as "squirrel".

In every dictionary I have ever looked at, the word "squirrel" is listed as a noun or, on occasions, a verb. To my knowledge it is not formally defined as an adjective anywhere so I am free to define it (as an adjective) anyway I choose and, as such, it implies nothing beyond the definition I give it. If this kind of formal logic is beyond your ability to follow, I don't think you could understand where I am going anyway so the difficulty you are having becomes rather moot.

With regard to squirrel and their thought processes, I think you would be overestimating the abstract reasoning powers of squirrels if you were to contend that they make decisions via formal deductive logic as understood by the scientific community.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

By the way, it is considered bad form ... Bcause you aren't providing a counter point. Rules of engagement and argument.

Again, you don't seem to be comprehending what I am saying. K99 is simply making an unsupported assertion as to what I am doing; an assertion which I just happen to deny.

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

If you aren't going to claim you have a self explaining truth regarding the world, its probably some form of coherentism (belief sets which contain enough linked information that they seem to relieve any feeling of doubt) which suffers from the problem of not being uniquely capable of explaining events.

There is no "argument" here as he has absolutely no idea of what I am doing.

If you want to complain about something, point out the inconsistencies in my logic not my chosen vocabulary. I have already made a number of very significant steps; if you believe those steps to be inconsistent with my explicit definitions, then point out exactly where you think the discrepancy lies. (But do a little better job than what you have so far.)

Have fun -- Dick

Knowledge is Power
and the most common abuse of that power is to use it to hide stupidity

[cwes99_03]

Quote:
Originally Posted by cwes99_03
By the way, it is considered bad form ... Bcause you aren't providing a counter point. Rules of engagement and argument.

Again, you don't seem to be comprehending what I am saying. K99 is simply making an unsupported assertion as to what I am doing; an assertion which I just happen to deny.

What do you think you are doing? Maing unsupported claims that he is wrong. Thus, bad form.

And since you seem bent on putting everyone who has a reply to your post down, I won't take it personally that you talk this way to me as well.

My post was an answer to your post. What you describe as squirrel logic, I redefine. I point out that squirrels are making judgements based off of information from their own previous experience, or learned experience. That is to say, you believe that they use some other type of "non-logical" reasoning, and I'm saying that they don't. If you do not agree to this statement, then what is your basis for using the word squirrel as an adjective to define this type of "non-logical" reasoning.

By the way, look up squirrelish. It is an adjective, used to define squirrel-like behavior.

If you were not referring to the actual action of the squirrel as "squirrel logic" then it would be an awfully poor adjective to describe it. An adjective should be descriptive of the object. Otherwise I could say the fish swam aviarily through the water, but aviarily would have some meaning like flapping of wings, which has nothing to do with how fish swim.