Ursula,
I'll violate the 2-posts-per-thread guideline this time because you seem to
have directly invited me to respond. :-)

I agree with your conclusions, but I have some concerns about how you got
to them.
A conclusion arrived at via a faulty argument is of unknown validity,
regardless of whether the conclusion is actually true.
If one depends on a faulty argument, then one opens oneself up to many more
errors than one might commit using a more robust argument.

We are all limited reasoners (Simon's bounded rationality and all that), so
making mistakes is unavoidable. It's how we learn. The problem is that some
people will tend to accept the form of an argument because it justifies a
claim they already believed was true. One would prefer to avoid that.

On 4 July 2016 at 04:56, Ursula Tischner <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> dear Filippo,
>
> I understand your point and agree to most of it,
> but I was going somewhere else with my argumentation
>
> from modern brain science, neurological studies and perception psychology
> (is that the proper English term? Wahrnehmungspsychology in Gerrnan)
> we know that our brains construct our reality.
> there are at least two filters.
> a) our senses that perceive the outer world
> b) our brain that interprets (subconsciously and consciously) what these
> perceptions mean.
>

Yes, there are at least those two filtering layers.
But no, that doesn't mean "our brains construct our reality" because
reality is, by definition what actually exists vs what our mental models of
that reality might be. Insofar as "our reality" is only a model, then it
must be incomplete and/or partially incorrect; otherwise it wouldn't be a
model. The notion of "one's own reality" encourages an equality of
perspectives that isn't necessarily so. The notion of "false balance" in
Western journalism is an instance of that. Instead, by starting with a
single objective reality, which we model mentally, we arrive at the same
final result but without the implied equality of everyone's different
models. We can also, at least in principle, rank-order those models with
respect to what we "know" about objective reality.
These aren't value judgements or evaluations of individuals; they're just a
determination of which models are more accurate. Value judgements are
something else altogether.

I leave to philosophers to argue about the "true nature" of that objective
reality; I am satisfied with what science tells us about it via the models
it creates.


> this whole process is different in each person and influenced by so many
> different factors, e.g. your previous experiences, the culture you grew up
> in, your brain capacity and function etc etc
>

> so of course there are facts in the outside world such as gravity exists,
> but otherwise I would be very careful to state that there is an objective
> truth or reality hat is the same for everybody .
>

Well, it's not *that* different. Barring "mechanical" problems (e.g., poor
eyesight, mis-wired neurological networks, and everything in between), we
will to a relatively fine level of granularity have low-level responses
that are quite uniform between people. However, due to the brain's ability
to create recursive and very richly interconnected processing networks, the
more abstract the mental content is, the more variability in responses we
get. I perceive a spider directly just as my wife does; she will, however,
have an altogether different and more... animated?... high-level response
than I will. The differences in those responses arise from the cumulative
life experience we bring to bear on a *common set* in initial inputs, but
they change nothing about the spider.

It's one thing to say "we react differently to the same situation." It's
quite another, however, to say that both reactions are equally valid.
Recognizing that since the basic inputs are the same, then our reaction is
fundamentally about us and not about the situation. One is now in a
position to examine alternative reactions and try to determine
*objectively* which is better suited to the context. And because we can
reason, we can over time learn to alter our responses to attain some
preferred state (which, at least in principle, we've also reasoned out).

So, there is an objective truth that is the same for everyone, and that
underlies all our mental models of what we *think* we're experiencing. We
just can't experience that objective truth directly. Instead, we build
imperfect models biased by our own past. Recognizing this is an important
step in recognizing that "everything is wrong - it just depends on *how*
wrong," and that being "less wrong" generally leads to significant,
widespread, and long-term benefits.


>
> between those judgements of right or wrong. true or false there are many
> shades of gray.
>

Yes, there are many shades of grey, but without knowing about the black and
the white, "grey" becomes meaningless. Knowing about the black and the
white lets us put the greys into a preference order.

Also, I would be careful about possibly conflating "judgements of right and
wrong" with truth and falsehood. These are two entirely different things.
The earth is (roughly) spherical. This is true. Anyone who disagrees is
incorrect. (One of the saddest things about English, imho, is how "wrong"
is so often taken as a synonym for "incorrect" - but that's another story.)
Judgements of right and wrong are moral claims, which have little to do
with truth and falsehood, except that no morality can exist without being
able to distinguish between truth and falsehood.
Claims like "The earth is beautiful" aren't really about the Earth at all,
but about mental phenomena that are purely internal to each of us.
Silicon-based lifeforms from desert planets would probably think the Earth
as horrible. These perceptions have nothing whatsoever to do with the
reality of what is perceived. The first step in avoiding the otherwise
inevitable interplanetary war between the Terrans defending their "lovely"
homeworld and that Silicon-based desert-dwellers who need to eradicate the
"abhorrent" Earth is to recognize that the Earth is *neither* beautiful nor
abhorrent. That is, it's not that both the Terrans and aliens are "correct"
- it's that they're both *incorrect.*  This requires both parties to
disengage from the subjective "shades of grey" thing.

This is ultimately why sexism and misogyny are incorrect[*] - there is no
*objective* sense in which men and women are different when measured on any
sensible characteristic of value (e.g., honesty, intelligence, kindness,
etc.), where "being of value" here relates to maximal well-being, which
itself can be measured (at least partially) in an objective way.

* and also wrong, but I'm intentionally trying to avoid issues of morality.


>
> and yes of course societies need to agree on conventions and need to judge
> right or wrong behavior otherwise they would not work.
> however, if you have ever been sitting in a court room for a while you
> will have experienced how the same situation has been perceived and
> interpreted in very different ways by different people
>

You don't need a courtroom to see that. Just try talking to any sports fan
about who the best football team is. :-)


> that is ESPECIALLY true for non direct conversation like in emails or
> internet fora etc
>
> or in relationships :-)
>
> that's what I meant
> I think we need an extra portion of emphathy and mindfulness when getting
> involved in these kinds of discussions online
>
> and this is the same in a good relationship :-)
>
> what do you think?
>

I agree, but I'll go even further. Empathy works both ways. I see so many
cases these days of persons being described as lacking empathy only when
those persons are accused of having "offended" someone else. This is, as
far as I can tell, a double standard - where the person offended is not
obliged at all to even consider the possibility that no actual offense
happened - i.e., to show empathy for the offender. It's not a question of
"revictimizing" people; that's not what I mean at all.

Here's an example that actually happened. There was once a teaching
assistant who said something to a student that *sounded like* the TA was
claiming that the student's mother had not raised the student well.
You can easily imagine how that went over.
And though the student's initial reaction was one of predictable offense,
he didn't actually follow up on it as such. Instead, he raised the issue
with administrators, indicating that he believed there was some kind of
mismatch between him and the TA.
It took quite a while, but it eventually became quite clear that - between
language difficulties (the TA was not a native english-speaker) and
cultural differences between the TA and the student - the TA had
*absolutely no idea* that he'd crossed an uncrossable line.
The student was correct to resist the instinctive response. Instead of
being offended, he reasoned that despite appearances, there just might be a
reasonable explanation for what he'd experienced - he showed empathy toward
the offender. And it turned out that he was correct. The matter was settled
amicably and very quickly, compared to the alternative. Literally everyone
involved benefited from what happened. Furthermore, if it had turned out
that the TA really did intend to demean the student and his mother, the
evidence of it would have been that much stronger and would have put the
administration in a correspondingly stronger position to deal with it quite
definitively.

Hmm. This was more of a ramble than I would have liked. Sorry about that.
Anyways, I hope I've clarified my position on this.

If you want to continue the discussion, Ursula, I propose we take the
matter offline so as not to clog the mailing list.


\V/_  /fas

*Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.*
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
ORCID: 0000-0002-3689-5112 <http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3689-5112>
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."


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