Category Archives: Philosophy

“How to Solve the Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever” BY BRIAN GALLAGHER

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While a doctoral student at Princeton University in 1957, studying under a founder of theoretical computer science, Raymond Smullyan would occasionally visit New York City. On one of these visits, he met a “very charming lady musician” and, on their first date, Smullyan, an incorrigible flirt, proceeded very logically—and sneakily.

“Would you please do me a favor?” he asked her. “I am to make a statement. If the statement is true, would you give me your autograph?”

Content to play along, she replied, “I don’t see why not.”

“If the statement is false,” he went on, “you don’t give me your autograph.”

“Alright …

His statement was: “You’ll give me neither your autograph nor a kiss.”

It takes a moment, but the cleverness of Smullyan’s ploy eventually becomes clear.

A truthful statement gets him her autograph, as they agreed. But Smullyan’s statement, supposing it’s true, leads to contradiction: It rules out giving an autograph. That makes Smullyan’s statement false. And if Smullyan’s statement is false, then the charming lady musician will give him either an autograph or a kiss. Now you see the trap: She has already agreed not to reward a false statement with an autograph.

With logic, Smullyan turned a false statement into a kiss. (And into a beautiful romance: The two would eventually marry.)

It is this sort of logical playfulness that Smullyan loves, and that everyone seems to love him for. His books on the subjects of recreational math and logic, with titles like What Is the Name of This Book? and To Mock a Mockingbird, not only encouraged people to pursue careers in these topics but also changed how math and logic are taught. Over his near century of life, Smullyan, 96, became an accomplished pianist and magician, made fundamental contributions to modern logic, and wrote about Taoist philosophy and chess. “He is the undisputed master of logical puzzles,” Bruce Horowitz, one of his former Ph.D. students, has said.

Click here for full article

posted by f. sheikh

Western Logic & Contradictions

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Since Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Western philosophers and logicians have with few exceptions viewed contradictions as unacceptable, simply incapable of being true. But certain logical paradoxes demonstrate that some contradictions aren’t so easily dismissed as merely false, an idea that some Eastern philosophical traditions have grappled with more successfully. In this instalment of Aeon In Sight, the US-based British philosopher Graham Priest explains how the Liar Paradox – debated since antiquity – can upend the traditional Western view that all contradictions must be false.

https://youtu.be/-3-eGiSVCks

https://aeon.co/videos/western-logic-has-held-contradictions-as-false-for-centuries-is-that-wrong

posted by f.sheikh

 

More evidence that you’re a mindless robot with no free will

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( If we are rationalizing a decision after the fact, then what good is reasoning ? What are its implications on religious or atheist believes? Interesting article.f. sheikh) 

The results of two Yale University psychology experiments suggest that what we believe to be a conscious choice may actually be constructed, or confabulated, unconsciously after we act — to rationalize our decisions. A trick of the mind.

“Our minds may be rewriting history,” said Adam Bear, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology and lead author of a paper published April 28 in the journal Psychological Science.

Tricks of the mind

A model of “postdictive” choice. Although choice of a circle is not actually completed until after a circle has turned red, the choice may seem to have occurred before that event because the participant has not yet become conscious of the circle’s turning red. The circle’s turning red can therefore unconsciously bias a participant’s choice when the delay is sufficiently short. (credit: Adam Bear and Paul Bloom/Psychological Science)

Bear and Paul Bloom performed two simple experiments to test how we experience choices. In one experiment, participants were told that five white circles would appear on the computer screen in front of them and, in rapid-fire sequence, one would turn red. They were asked to predict which one would turn red and mentally note this. After a circle turned red, participants then recorded by keystroke whether they had chosen correctly, had chosen incorrectly, or had not had time to complete their choice.

The circle that turned red was always selected by the system randomly, so probability dictates that participants should predict the correct circle 20% of the time. But when they only had a fraction of a second to make a prediction, these participants were likely to report that they correctly predicted which circle would change color more than 20% of the time.

In contrast, when participants had more time to make their guess — approaching a full second — the reported number of accurate predictions dropped back to expected levels of 20% success, suggesting that participants were not simply lying about their accuracy to impress the experimenters.

(In a second experiment to eliminate artifacts, participants chose one of two different-colored circles, with similar results.)

Confabulating reality

What happened, Bear suggests, is that events were rearranged in subjects’ minds: People unconsciously perceived the color red from the screen image before they predicted it would appear, but then right after that, consciouslyexperienced these two things in the opposite order. Click here for full article.

Is Polite Philosophical Discussion Possible? By Nomy Arpaly

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I’ll never forget the old guy who asked me, at an APA interview: “suppose I wanted to slap you, and suppose I wanted to slap you because I thought you were giving us really bad answers, and I mistakenly believed that by slapping you I’ll bring out the best in you. Am I blameworthy?”.

When he said “suppose I wanted to slap you”, his butt actually left his chair for a moment and his hand was mimicking a slap in the air.

Since that event – which happened back when I was a frightened youngster with all the social skills of a large rock – I have thought many times about the connection between philosophy and rudeness – especially the connection between philosophical debating and rudeness. It seems to me that the connection between philosophical argument and rudeness is similar to the connection between fighting a war and immorality. Surprisingly precise analogies can be drawn between the soldier in a just war and the philosophical arguer in pursuit of the truth. Let me explain.

It is a big part of moral behavior in ordinary situations not to kill people. Yet the morally healthy inhibition against killing people has to be lost, of necessity, in war – even in a morally justified war.It is a big part of politeness – not in the sense of using the right fork, but in the sense of civility – in ordinary situations not to tell another person that she is wrong and misguided about something she cares a lot about, or that she cares about being right about. For brevity’s sake, let’s just say it’s a big part of politeness or civility not to correct people. Yet the civilized inhibition against correcting people has to be lost, of necessity, in a philosophical argument.

A soldier who is fighting, even for a just cause, is in a precarious situation, with regard to morality, because he has lost, of necessity, the basic moral inhibition against killing people.

A philosopher who is arguing with another, even in pursuit of truth, is in a precarious situation with regard to politeness, because she has lost, of necessity, the basic civil inhibition against correcting people.

Having lost, of necessity, the inhibition against killing people, some soldiers find themselves shedding other moral inhibitions – and committing war crimes.

Having lost, of necessity, the inhibition against correcting people, some philosophers find themselves shedding other social inhibitions – and being terribly, terribly rude.

That’s just the nature of inhibition loss.

I do not wish to be a philosophical pacifist. I think arguing – including, naturally, correcting and being corrected – is something for which there is no substitute in philosophy. I remember it whenever a beginner graduate student asks me how to anticipate objections or simply how to “see” the arguments for the other side of one’s view, which, as per Mill, is important if we want to understand our own view at all. I tell her that we humans are pretty bad at imagining what having the opposite view would be like (more on the badness of our imagination some other time), and thus there is no substitute for talking to someone who disagrees with you and who can “pressure” you hard to come up with answers to her arguments. Someone who pretends to disagree is not enough, as the same lack of imagination makes us bad at the pretending. You need the real thing. Argue for the opposite view if you wish – and see how much your writing, even as you do so, even as you do so casually, is guided and improved by imagining an interlocutor who deeply disagrees. For real philosophical writing, as opposed to a post like this one, nothing short of talking to a real disagreeing interlocutor will do (note: I am not going to argue from the ambiguity of the words “argument” and “disagreement” because I’m not monolingual).

http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/2016/04/is-polite-philosophical-discussion-possible.html

posted by f.sheikh