Up at seven – the sun for a change – picked up papers, breakfast, the paper, tidy up the kitchen. Mid-morning. You spent part of yesterday updating both iPads and wondering if you were ever going to continue book four, which you are doing through thinking things out in advance. Last night you got re-interested in the purpose of the reasoning process through a timely Internet article from EDGE 342, The Third Culture, “The Argumentative Theory”, a conversation with Hugo Mercier. You did some googling and found this:
The argumentative theory of reasoning
By Hugo Mercier
At least since Descartes, reasoning is generally seen as a tool of individual cognition. It should lead to new beliefs, improve the epistemic status of existing beliefs or help us make better decisions. The argumentative theory of reasoning opposes this classical view and suggests that the real function of reasoning is to argue. More precisely, reasoning is designed to find and evaluate reasons so that we can try to convince others and evaluate the arguments that aim at convincing us. In a couple of papers, Dan Sperber has suggested that the key to understanding the evolution of reasoning was to be found in the evolution of communication. The stability of communication generally requires receivers to check communicated information in order not to be lied to or misled. On the other hand, senders have an incentive to get their messages across successfully. This could have created selective pressure for an ability to give and to evaluate reasons. Senders would provide reasons in order to convince receivers and receivers would examine these reasons in order to decide whether they should accept the argument. . . .
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Following this article you re-read Sharon Begley’s science article in the 16 August 2010 Newsweek titled “The Limits of Reason”. also found online.
I am mostly bothered by this:
“The argumentative theory of reasoning opposes this classical view and suggests that the real function of reasoning is to argue. More precisely, reasoning is designed to find and evaluate reasons so that we can try to convince others and evaluate the arguments that aim at convincing us.”
I was brought up thinking:
“At least since Descartes, reasoning is generally seen as a tool of individual cognition. It should lead to new beliefs, improve the epistemic status of existing beliefs or help us make better decisions.”
To simplify Logic (from World Book):
Logic is a branch of philosophy that deals with the rules of correct reasoning. Most work in the field of logic deals with a form of reasoning called an argument. An argument consists of a set of statements called premises, followed by another statement called the conclusion. If the premises support the conclusion, the argument is correct. If the premises do not support the conclusion, the argument is incorrect.
There are two types of arguments, deductive and inductive. A deductive argument is valid when the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. When the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises, a deductive argument is invalid. In an inductive argument, the conclusion is more or less probably true on the basis of the premises. Because the conclusion does not follow necessarily from the premises, an inductive argument is not usually deductively valid. An inductive argument may be correct or incorrect. . . .
Logic tells us whether a deductive argument is valid or invalid. The validity of such an argument depends on the form of the argument, not on the truth of its premises. As a result, an argument that depends on false premises could be valid, and an argument based on true premises could be invalid.
The categorical syllogism is the most common form of argument in traditional deductive logic. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was one of the first scholars to carry out a systematic study of the categorical syllogism.
A syllogism consists of two premises and a conclusion. A categorical syllogism is one in which every statement has one of the four forms: (1) All A are B. (2) No A are B. (3) Some A are B. (4) Some A are not B. The letters A and B, or any other letters that might be used, are terms that represent various classes of things, such as numbers, people, yellow objects, unpleasant sounds, or brown cows. The following argument is an example of a valid categorical syllogism: "All mammals are warm-blooded. All brown cows are mammals. Therefore, all brown cows are warm-blooded." The form of this syllogism is: "All A are B. All C are A. Therefore, all C are B."
Modern logic extends far beyond the work of Aristotle. Modern logicians (scholars who study logic) have developed theories and techniques to deal with deductive arguments other than categorical syllogisms. Notable modern logicians include the British mathematicians George Boole and Alfred North Whitehead and the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. These logicians, unlike traditional ones, have used mathematical methods, as well as techniques that involve symbols.
Today, logic is used mainly to test the validity of arguments. It also has important uses in working with such devices as computers and electric switching circuits.
To test an argument, a logician first analyzes its statements and expresses them as symbols. In many cases, a letter or other character in an argument stands for a whole word or phrase. For example, logicians would write the sentence "Socrates is wise" as "Ws." The sentence "Every Greek is wise" would be written as a formula: "(x) (Gx→Wx)." The → means if___, then___. Next, the logician uses rules of derivation, also called inference rules, to determine what new formulas may be derived from the original premises. For example, one rule enables the statement "Q" to be derived from the statements "P" and "(P→Q)." Thus, the statement "The picnic is canceled" may be derived from "It is raining" and "If it is raining, then the picnic is canceled." The logician continues to derive formulas until a conclusion has been reached.
Special uses of logic. Special branches of logic guide much reasoning in science, law, and certain other fields. Various branches of logic guide reasoning involved in obligations, promises, commands, questions, preferences, and beliefs.
Much of the reasoning that people do in everyday life is nondeductive--that is, it produces probable conclusions rather than definite ones. For example, physicians use nondeductive reasoning in diagnosing the probable cause of a patient's symptoms. Legal scholars often use nondeductive methods to determine what law governs a particular case.
From: World Book (software) 2009.
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What you are attempting to show here is that you disagree with the argumentative theory because although that may be how many people use logic, that is not your purpose for it in the blog and the novels. – Amorella.
Yes, I suppose this is correct. I agree with Hugo Mercier in principle, but I would hope that is not my purpose. First, I would need to convince myself. And, I have not. I cannot fully argue something for which I have no proof other than the novels themselves. This reminds me of the Shakespeare book just read. Hugo’s argumentative theory works quite well within that context.
The above is an example of why you have to write out your thoughts – clarity of mind, at least for yourself. After all, this blog business is partially a journal of personal thought. Post. - Amorella
You had a short piece on your Aunt Patsy as it was her ninetieth birthday last week; however you just erased it, now with some regret.
The sentiment no longer seemed to fit. Thoughts are so fleeting, once lost, hardly ever re-gathered, and if so, hardly ever in context. Once I have a photo on the both I will work something up.
Dusk. Once you brought the cat from having her nails trimmed you slept the late afternoon away on the living room floor.
The length of the nap caught me by surprise. “The joints are out of time,” to paraphrase the master.
You sent Doug a NASA article yesterday on a generation or so old time experiment. Drop it in here as I have something to say about it. – Amorella.
“NASA Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment”
May 4, 2011: Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity.
Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).
"The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts," says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.
"This is an epic result," adds Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis. An expert in Einstein's theories, Will chairs an independent panel of the National Research Council set up by NASA in 1998 to monitor and review the results of Gravity Probe B. "One day," he predicts, "this will be written up in textbooks as one of the classic experiments in the history of physics."
Time and space, according to Einstein's theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called "space-time." The mass of Earth dimples this fabric, much like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a trampoline. Gravity, says Einstein, is simply the motion of objects following the curvaceous lines of the dimple.
If Earth were stationary, that would be the end of the story. But Earth is not stationary. Our planet spins, and the spin should twist the dimple, slightly, pulling it around into a 4-dimensional swirl. This is what GP-B went to space in 2004 to check.
The idea behind the experiment is simple:
Put a spinning gyroscope into orbit around the Earth, with the spin axis pointed toward some distant star as a fixed reference point. Free from external forces, the gyroscope's axis should continue pointing at the star--forever. But if space is twisted, the direction of the gyroscope's axis should drift over time. By noting this change in direction relative to the star, the twists of space-time could be measured. In practice, the experiment is tremendously difficult.
The four gyroscopes in GP-B are the most perfect spheres ever made by humans. These ping pong-sized balls of fused quartz and silicon are 1.5 inches across and never vary from a perfect sphere by more than 40 atomic layers. If the gyroscopes weren't so spherical, their spin axes would wobble even without the effects of relativity.
According to calculations, the twisted space-time around Earth should cause the axes of the gyros to drift merely 0.041 arcseconds over a year. An arcsecond is 1/3600th of a degree. To measure this angle reasonably well, GP-B needed a fantastic precision of 0.0005 arcseconds. It's like measuring the thickness of a sheet of paper held edge-on 100 miles away.
"GP-B researchers had to invent whole new technologies to make this possible," notes Will.
They developed a "drag free" satellite that could brush against the outer layers of Earth's atmosphere without disturbing the gyros. They figured out how to keep Earth's magnetic field from penetrating the spacecraft. And they created a device to measure the spin of a gyro--without touching the gyro.
Pulling off the experiment was an exceptional challenge. But after a year of data-taking and nearly five years of analysis, the GP-B scientists appear to have done it.
"We measured a geodetic precession of 6.600 plus or minus 0.017 arcseconds and a frame dragging effect of 0.039 plus or minus 0.007 arcseconds," says Everitt.
For readers who are not experts in relativity: Geodetic precession is the amount of wobble caused by the static mass of the Earth (the dimple in spacetime) and the frame dragging effect is the amount of wobble caused by the spin of the Earth (the twist in spacetime). Both values are in precise accord with Einstein's predictions.
"In the opinion of the committee that I chair, this effort was truly heroic. We were just blown away," says Will.
The results of Gravity Probe B give physicists renewed confidence that the strange predictions of Einstein's theory are indeed correct, and that these predictions may be applied elsewhere. The type of spacetime vortex that exists around Earth is duplicated and magnified elsewhere in the cosmos--around massive neutron stars, black holes, and active galactic nuclei.
"If you tried to spin a gyroscope in the severely twisted space-time around a black hole," says Will, "it wouldn't just gently precess by a fraction of a degree. It would wobble crazily and possibly even flip over."
In binary black hole systems--that is, where one black hole orbits another black hole--the black holes themselves are spinning and thus behave like gyroscopes. Imagine a system of orbiting, spinning, wobbling, flipping black holes! That's the sort of thing general relativity predicts and which GP-B tells us can really be true.
The scientific legacy of GP-B isn't limited to general relativity. The project also touched the lives of hundreds of young scientists:
"Because it was based at a university many students were able to work on the project," says Everitt. "More than 86 PhD theses at Stanford plus 14 more at other Universities were granted to students working on GP-B. Several hundred undergraduates and 55 high-school students also participated, including astronaut Sally Ride and eventual Nobel Laureate Eric Cornell."
NASA funding for Gravity Probe B began in the fall of 1963. That means Everitt and some colleagues have been planning, promoting, building, operating, and analyzing data from the experiment for more than 47 years—truly, an epic effort.
What's next?
Everitt recalls some advice given to him by his thesis advisor and Nobel Laureate Patrick M.S. Blackett: "If you can't think of what physics to do next, invent some new technology, and it will lead to new physics."
"Well," says Everitt, "we invented 13 new technologies for Gravity Probe B. Who knows where they will take us?"
This epic might just be getting started, after all….
From: science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/
Also see: einstein.stanford.edu/SPACETIME/spacetime4.html
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In our initial post correspondence Doug and I found we came up with the same question: “How can Einstein be right on this and yet wrong on quantum mechanics?”
The above is real world stuff, but for the fiction all we need is this: Time and space, according to Einstein's theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called "space-time."
The analogies are as a fabric or a tightrope. How about space-time as a needle on the arm of an old fashioned record player? Why not make it something useful within itself. Something with a sense of purpose beyond mortar. Something that solidifies seemingly little else for a sound purpose? What do you think of that, boy?
I think my mind has been opened a bit too far and my thoughts scatter like open range cattle. The sound purpose becomes a far away concept of a herd wishing to be well needled in for the night. I’m done.
Tomorrow, dude, we do some chapter writing. Post. – Amorella.
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