You can read “human condition” as a poetic remark, but choosing a phrase such as that to open a scientific paper is imprecise and vague and that they chose this phrase reveals something of the authors’ bias I think.
No, Tversky and Kahneman have not specifically said here whether the heuristics in question are genetic or not. Don’t you think that’s odd? They’re just saying we do reasoning using heuristics, but not explaining anything. Yet explanations are important; from these everything else follows.
That they think the heuristics are genetic is an inference and googling around I see that researchers in this field talk about “evolved mental behaviour” so I think the inference is correct. It means that some ideas we hold can’t be changed, only worked around, and that these ideas are part of us even though we did not voluntarily take them onboard. So we involuntarily hold unchangeable ideas that we may or may not agree with and that may be false. It’s leading towards the idea we are not autonomous agents in the world, not fully human. The idea that we are universal knowledge creators means that all our our ideas can be changed and improved on. If there are flaws in our ideas, we discard them once the flaws are discovered.
With regard to induction, epistemology tells us that it is impossible, therefore no creature can use it. Yes, I disagree with the experimental evidence on philosophical grounds; the philosophy is saying the evidence is wrong, that the researchers made mistakes. curi has given some theories about the mistakes the researchers made, so it does indeed seem as though the evidence is wrong.
I have no problem with the idea that probabilities help solve problems. Probabilities arise as predictions of theories, so are important. But probability has nothing to do with the uncertainty of theories, which can’t be quantified, and no role in epistemology whatsoever. It’s taking an objective physical concept and applying it in a domain it doesn’t belong. I could go on, but you mention LSD, so I presume you know some of these ideas right? Have you read Conjectures and Refutations or Deutsch?
Well said. And btw about “human condition” at first I thought you might be overreacting to the phrase, from your previous comments here, but I found your email very convincing and I think you have it right. I think “poetic remark” is a terrible excuse—it’s merely a generic denial that they meant what they said. With the implicit claim that: this is unrepresentative, and they were right the rest of the time. The apologist doesn’t argue this claim, or even state it plainly; it’s just the subtext.
How you explain how their work pushes in the direction of denying we’re fully human, via attacking our autonomy (and free will, I’d add) is nice.
One thing I disagree with is the presumption that an LScD reader would know what you mean. You’re so much more advanced than just the content of LScD. You can’t expect someone to fill in the blanks just from that.
You can read “human condition” as a poetic remark, but choosing a phrase such as that to open a scientific paper is imprecise and vague and that they chose this phrase reveals something of the authors’ bias I think.
No, Tversky and Kahneman have not specifically said here whether the heuristics in question are genetic or not. Don’t you think that’s odd? They’re just saying we do reasoning using heuristics, but not explaining anything. Yet explanations are important; from these everything else follows.
That they think the heuristics are genetic is an inference and googling around I see that researchers in this field talk about “evolved mental behaviour” so I think the inference is correct. It means that some ideas we hold can’t be changed, only worked around, and that these ideas are part of us even though we did not voluntarily take them onboard. So we involuntarily hold unchangeable ideas that we may or may not agree with and that may be false. It’s leading towards the idea we are not autonomous agents in the world, not fully human. The idea that we are universal knowledge creators means that all our our ideas can be changed and improved on. If there are flaws in our ideas, we discard them once the flaws are discovered.
With regard to induction, epistemology tells us that it is impossible, therefore no creature can use it. Yes, I disagree with the experimental evidence on philosophical grounds; the philosophy is saying the evidence is wrong, that the researchers made mistakes. curi has given some theories about the mistakes the researchers made, so it does indeed seem as though the evidence is wrong.
I have no problem with the idea that probabilities help solve problems. Probabilities arise as predictions of theories, so are important. But probability has nothing to do with the uncertainty of theories, which can’t be quantified, and no role in epistemology whatsoever. It’s taking an objective physical concept and applying it in a domain it doesn’t belong. I could go on, but you mention LSD, so I presume you know some of these ideas right? Have you read Conjectures and Refutations or Deutsch?
Well said. And btw about “human condition” at first I thought you might be overreacting to the phrase, from your previous comments here, but I found your email very convincing and I think you have it right. I think “poetic remark” is a terrible excuse—it’s merely a generic denial that they meant what they said. With the implicit claim that: this is unrepresentative, and they were right the rest of the time. The apologist doesn’t argue this claim, or even state it plainly; it’s just the subtext.
How you explain how their work pushes in the direction of denying we’re fully human, via attacking our autonomy (and free will, I’d add) is nice.
One thing I disagree with is the presumption that an LScD reader would know what you mean. You’re so much more advanced than just the content of LScD. You can’t expect someone to fill in the blanks just from that.