Because picturing "nothing" is scary, because death is scary? Also about the meaning of life, there isn't any, why don't we all commit mass suicide?

That's a rumour that appeared after his death... Even if it's true, we would have discovered the structure of DNA at that time anyway because they already had X-Ray images of DNA, that could be done thanks to Wilkins who also got the nobel prize for it... So really no need for an extraordinary imagination or anything crazy.

Freud was said to be a regular cocaine user. — Jackson

Okay, well that explains a lot :lol:

Wouldn't it be an error to ascribe privileged status to the sober state of mind? Aren't both the sober and high states, both simply states, and so coequal? — hypericin

The human body is used to the sober state, so naturally it functions best in that state. When you're high, it's a drastic change into an environment you're not adapted to, and the chances that you will thrive in that new environment are very low. You grew up sober, your brain developed in that state, produces certain neurotransmitters in certain situations, and drugs disrupt it "randomly", it's like randomly miswiring your neurons. The chances that something productive comes out of it are extremely low... And it's tricky because drugs release certain neurotransmitters that can make you feel like you've made the greatest discovery of the human race...

Also, given the amount of people who do drugs, if it had a positive effect on the thinking process, we'd probably have a lot of great inventions/discoveries from high people, which is not the case.

The insights I've heard about (from hallucinogens) are either metaphysical/spiritual (which cannot be proven anyway so we can't judge the accuracy) or people who suddenly find motivation in their life, maybe because it unblocked an emotional blockage or something like that, but then it's not really an insight.

The concept of cognitive bias exists and is well supported by research even if people can't use it as a tool on themselves alone — Bylaw

I never disagreed with that.

If you want perfect and 100% certainty then apply to be something simpler like a toaster. — Bylaw

It's really funny cause I created another thread to try and name this kind of behaviour. Wanting more certainty doesn't mean wanting 100% certainty. It's foolish to even think 100% certainty is possible to reach... Of course I never meant to reach 100% certainty in that topic...

Oh, and of course it is falsifiable. You can easily test to see if someone's poltical position affects what they notice in articles. — Bylaw

It's falsifiable as a general concept, I don't have anything against the experiments. But the thing is, detecting it personally in someone at a specific time is much more tricky. An experiment with one person being both the control and test subject is kind of crappy... Say you read two articles, one contradicting your point of view and the other supporting it. What if you remember several info about the supporting one because it reminded you of something that has shocked you in the past? Say you're scared of dolphins, and the supporting one has an analogy with dolphins... You wouldn't remember it because of the confirmation bias, although the result is the same. My point is, you can remember something in one specific article rather than another one for many reasons, even unconscious ones, maybe you just liked the layout of one article more than the other, or something stupid like that...

They can point out when you contradict yourself. And this kind of dialogue (which hopefully is mutual) can and does reduce people's biases — Bylaw

You don't need the cognitive bias theory for that. If a person ignores some data because it contradicts their opinion, you could ask them how they take these data into account in their ways of thinking, and if they can't answer/don't want to, you know they have some emotional blockage with that. I find it much more efficient to lay all the data on the table, link it logically, and ask the person how they reached another conclusion, discussing the logical link. And if some data are ignored (because of the survivorship bias, because of the confirmation bias, or because unicorns are white), it's going to be visible and you can point it out to the person. Like this technique mentioned by @jgill. But who cares about the cause in the end? Who cares if you act like this because of some trauma from your past or whatever? Point is, if you force yourself to lay everything on the table, you're going to be more objective anyway, you're going to mitigate these "biases", even if you have no idea they even exist.

I honestly don't think psychoanalysis is a good tool for improving yourself and trying to detect cognitive biases in someone seems to have a lot of common grounds with it.

I'd call it "equivocation" -- because you both mean different things by "selfish" — Moliere

Yes, thanks, I guess this would include what I'm talking about, although equivocation is not specific to the binary vs non binary problem caused by simplification of language.

Suppressed correlative fallacy. — DingoJones

Ah that's much better, thanks! I'm going to be greedy but there is still something that's different from what I meant. From my understanding, in the suppressed correlative, one kills the meaning of a word by making two categories into one. Like saying "this product is not natural", and the other person would be like "nature is everything that surrounds us, including us and what we do to nature, so everything is natural". That makes the adjective natural completely useless. But what I meant is really about the non binary nature of things. What I mean is more about the debate "this product is more natural than that product" (who could be phrased as "this is natural and that's not" as simplification) and the other saying "but a product that's 100% natural is impossible because we manufacture it anyway". They don't destroy the meaning of natural but they fail to see it on a scale. So it's not X or not X in the first place but like aX with "a" ranging from 0 to 1, and the other person would see it as X or not X and use proofs that X is not possible if your position is 0.9X. In my example, actually they both agree that 1X is impossible, but the person who can only see it as X or not X doesn't understand the 0.9X (or doesn't want to); Do you know what I mean? Did I understand the meaning of suppressed correlative fallacy correctly?

That's bosiness — baker

You mean bossiness?

Anti-difference-of-degree-ism — emancipate

Did you just make that up?

they have a specific contextual reason for making that statement at that time to that person — Joshs

Oh okay, that works too, but not in all cases. It would be like a deliberate change of context, if one is trying to insult and the other goes all philosophical about the nature of selfishness in humans. But if you're arguing about whether sciences are more "objective" than human sciences, and that the person says that nothing can be objective anyway, it's still the same context, it's an epistemological context in both cases.

they were choosing to ignore the specific contextual sense of the phrase in favor of a generic meaning — Joshs

Mmmm I don't know, it doesn't seem context related to me. I believe anyone (who likes questioning things) could say "you're selfish" and mean "you're more selfish than average" in any context. Actually I don't like the word selfish as it is, in its meaning it's already simplified as if it was black and white (" lacking consideration for other people; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure.") anyone tends to do that to some extend...

Everything's closer. — bongo fury

Everything is closer than everything? :sweat:

Possibly hyperbole - deliberate exaggeration — RussellA

Yes, it's getting closer. The only problem I have is that saying "you're selfish" or "how can you be sure" isn't a deliberate exaggeration, they're actually very common statements, it's more of a simplification.

Context insensitivity — Joshs

Context-insensitive expressions are governed by linguistic rules that determine their contents (semantic values), which remain invariant in all contexts of utterance.

Is that what you meant?

It's not really a phenomenon but a type of fallacy maybe? It's not just skepticism, because both persons could be skeptics, one is just using a simplification of language, which the other deliberately ignores to be right about something...

Or maybe there is name to describe people who refuse to see things as non binary?

certainty brings insanity”, Certainty is not possible. — ArielAssante

So you shouldn't try to work with things that are more certain than others? You shouldn't try to maximise the certainty? When I said "how can you be sure", I obviously didn't see certainty as something binary, it has shades. I was referring to the falsifiable principle of Popper.

excessive thinking not good. Tends toward narcissism — ArielAssante

Um... This is a very extreme opinion. Some people who overthink actually have very low self esteem and aren't narcissistic at all...

But don't get me wrong, I actually agree that knowing yourself is the best thing you could do to be more critical, I just don't think naming biases and trying to detect it in yourself or others is going to help.

. It is a useful concept, I think, AND people can use it terribly. — Bylaw

Yeah sure but how do you prevent yourself from using it terribly? For guns you can have a license, also check if you're stable mentally, but what about cognitive bias? My point is you can never know for sure if you're biased, so I don't see the point trying to figure out if you are, it's nonsense, not falsifiable. Maybe in some cases it would help someone get some distance from themselves, because they would question their opinions, but I really don't think the detection of cognitive bias are the best questions to ask, I think they lead to a lot of confusion. And I also think it can quickly escalade to some kind of superiority.

How does anything of what you sent me answer any of my questions?
If you're implying it's excessive to push the bias theory as far as having bias in the process of mitigating other biases, why do you think it is excessive?

You showed the theory, that's great, but I'm saying it's impossible to apply it and be aware of cognitive biases. I didn't make this thread to know more about the theory, I made it to get an actual debate about its application.

Work to make the unconscious conscious. The few who attempt to do so find it is a long, painful process. — ArielAssante

What if you’re biased with another bias when you conclude you’re biased? What if you like the cognitive bias theory so much that it’s the confirmation bias to think you’re biased? How would you know which one is true? How can you be sure you consciously realised what was in your unconscious mind?

remediating it (by whatever amount) is better than not, don't you think? — Pantagruel

But how do you plan to do that if you can't even know for sure if it's there or not? At a given moment for a given opinion, we have no tools to detect it...

I'm not sure I understand how you are connecting cognitive bias theory with critical thinking. In what sense are you proposing they are connected? — Tom Storm

Well, having cognitive biases would lead to a more "subjective" vision of reality, so cognitive bias mitigation would naturally lead to a more "objective" one, and that would imply to be more critical about yourself or others in order to do that.

Actually that is exactly what it means. It seems you are coming from some kind of radically anti-scientific bias. All in good fun I guess, but not a good use of my time. — Pantagruel

With experiments, we can conclude a lot of people have cognitive bias (or whatever you want to call it actually), but that doesn't mean that we have tools to measure it quantitively in someone at a given moment. You have no way of measuring how much someone's opinion is biased. What did you have in mind? That we have some kind of cognitive bias detector that tells you how biased you are?

but by drawing pictures on the board and describing the underlying concept students could see through the complications and comprehend a rational argument that implied the result — jgill

Oh yeah I think that method could actually help a lot, it would be harder to ignore one element due to strong emotions if it's in front of your eyes and logically connected to all the others.

But I was talking about trying to figure out if you are experiencing a cognitive bias, like simply asking yourself "do I take this decision because of the survivorship bias?". I think that approach is not efficient at all.

But I think this thread is more about political biases. — jgill

Political? No not necessarily, it could be all kinds of bias really.

Experimentation requires quantifiable results. Statistical are quantitative. — Pantagruel

Just because we use numbers for interpretations doesn't mean the phenomenon is quantitatively measurable...

Another weird thread that starts with a slightly off OP and gets worse as it proceeds. — Banno

Um... I'm going to ignore that, I don't want to start a war. I only meant to share my thoughts and understand a concept that's trendy nowadays.

Cognitive bias is not one thing — Banno

Yeah okay, use the plural if you prefer that, it's a concept that has a lot of subcategories.

The example in the OP is not an instance of cognitive bias. — Banno

How is it not the survivorship bias?

We can adjust for Cognitive bias by being aware of them, giving consideration to what justifies our beliefs and by subjecting our beliefs to public critique. — Banno

How can you be aware of something that's unconscious?

You are denying accepted psychology. — Banno

Heresy, burn him! No one shall go against the opinion of the great masters of psychology.

confirmation bias distorts news all the time and is a threat to democracy. — jgill

. . .

This has gone terribly wrong, I wanted to argue about HOW and WHY people think it helps with critical thinking and no defenders of that theory actually explained it... Can anyone tell me how you can detect something that's unconscious? Doesn't this cognitive bias theory has the same problem as psychoanalysis, that's it's not falsifiable?

Many of these biases have been tested in experimental conditions, — Pantagruel

That doesn't mean that it's measurable quantitatively...

Consider the law of small numbers bias. If you are aware of the tendency to make judgements based on unreasonably small sample sizes, then you can suspend judgment pending more data — Pantagruel

That works for experiments, not personal opinions... You could have a lot of well-grounded reasons to believe in something, even though there aren't direct experiments about it, or even though you've only observed it in some people for example. It's not necessarily a bias to have an opinion based on a small number of cases. But to go back to the survivorship bias, in the example I gave, realising there is a bias doesn't really help you make a "less emotional" decision, it leads to confusion. Regarding knowledge, it's going to be the same thing, every time there is room for a grey area, your feelings might make you see it completely white (or black), and I don't see how the cognitive bias theory could help you.

Wouldn't it be much more efficient to think in terms of feelings? At least you can consciously realise how you're feeling, and know that it might influence your opinion. It gets even better as you can think about the same thing once you've calmed down and see if your opinion is the same. At least it's falsifiable as you don't feel the same things all the time, unlike cognitive biases that have no way of being detected consciously.

Cognitive biases are quantitatively measurable — Pantagruel

I would very much like to see your sources for that info.

Brains are survival machines, not truth machines! — Agent Smith

More objective truth helps with survival though...

Yet, some people are more biased to accept the word of God, than others. — Gnomon

I didn't get that...

I just thought of something else. Do you think someone who spends a lot of time understanding people will be able to grasp one's opinion better? You talked about exposing believes and goals, but then don't people need to have knowledge in psychology as well? Don't we need a strong basis about how our goals and believes interact with our opinions to be able to make use of it?

Because someone might be good at detecting flaws in logic but clueless about these things, right?

Here are examples of questions that I think have very, very little meaning or interest, because of what I have outlined above.

Is God existent?
Is morality objective?
Is [insert literally anything] true?
Is [insert literally anything] moral?
Is life/ humanity inherently good/ bad? — SatmBopd

The way I see it: if a person defines both terms, and ask one of these questions on this forum, they probably want to challenge the logic behind it. If you define a category X and a category Y, and if you're trying to figure out how these categories are connected to each other (completely included, partially,...), it could be interesting to ask people their opinion. They might point out something in your X category that makes it impossible to be related to Y, and you might not have thought about it.
Even if you wouldn't define X as they define it, it could still be productive for both parties to debate using one's point of view.

What is generally understood, and what do I specifically understand, by the concept of God, and why? — SatmBopd

This would be ideal but do you really think it's realistic? Can you really tell why you believe in something? Most of the time, the way you reached a specific opinion has a lot of unconscious steps, so how could you go back and explain how you got there? What if you're wrong? What if you think you got there because of X reasons, while it's actually not at all because of that? That would make it even more confusing for others. And they couldn't prove you wrong, because only you could answer that. Do you know what I mean?

mind boy dualism is by many considered to be untenable. What he did (possibly, I wasn't there of course) was show you how this assumption, which is deeply problematic, was made in your argument. — Tobias

In other words :
Question : Is the mind separated from the body?
Philosophical answer : Probably not, because it would cause a lot of problems if it was.

Assumptions : a lot of assumptions about what the mind and the body actually mean.
Problem : the scientists and philosophers have totally different definition of these.

You, a couple of lines later :

Philosophy questions, it does not give answers but puts those on the spot that would like to provide an answer. — Tobias

How's that not an answer to say the mind is probably not separated from the body?
Philosophy of sciences studies the assumptions of science, and I believe epistemology can study the assumptions of philosophy. But philosophy isn't just about criticising knowledge, is it? What about Ontology, doesn't it study what reality is? How is that a critique of knowledge provided by other disciplines?

Well, you can of course, but you will run into problems because you have unwittingly accepted a whole lot of assumptions that they carry around with them. — Tobias

Oh and philosophical concepts don't have assumptions?
And by the way, this hypothetical science-based philosophy could still take "advice" from a philosophy of sciences.

But I can understand your frustration cause though I find it necessary ,sometimes the overanalysis ends up ridiculous. — dimosthenis9

You know what's funny? If you set the limits of the analysis, it's impossible to overanalyse, you would end up saying "this matter is out of the limit of this discipline".

How do you imagine that method? — dimosthenis9

Well, I actually believe some clarity could be gained if we made the assumptions explicit rather than implicit. To visualise, we could build a mind map with all the underlying scientific concepts that lead to an understanding of the abstract one that we study, and detail the logical links we made between them. And this would include the uncertainties of the links we made. For example you could say this concept is partly related but not totally because of x and y, which can't be measured. To make it perfect, we would need this concept, which isn't proven by science. Do you know what I mean?

There could be several mind maps, with different underlying concepts but the idea would be to build the one that has the least uncertainties.

wasn't he doing what philosophy ought to do? — Tobias

Well, if this is what philosophy does, it becomes even clearer to me that it's impossible for science and philosophy to collaborate... What do you think?

On the questions that were left.... he had no opinion. Of course not, because probably they were questions best left to science and he is no scientist. In one of my classes (not in uni but at a private course) a student exclaimed "are we getting any answers!". I answered "no, only better questions". — Tobias

I have no problem if someone doesn't have an opinion, but he could have said so from the beginning. Instead, he just explained how my point of view did not fit in his philosophical one... (and I'm not a philosophy student so that was even more irrelevant). If you want more details, my question was whether he thinks there are other causes than psychological ones for Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (yeah I know, weird topic). And he spent his time telling me how we cannot separate the mind and the body. The problem is, there are a lot of philosophical concepts, and a lot of them contradict each other, so how can you even say that a question is wrong if it doesn't fit a concept (which here I think is more of an opinion)? What would be the "better questions"? Questions that challenge the logic of the concepts? Okay fine, but what if I want to start from scientific concepts? How does that make it "wrong"? What makes philosophical concepts stronger than scientific ones in your opinion?

Thank you! I think you understood my point.

The counter argument of course is that in many philosophical theories (of any kind of field) science plays a crucial role indeed — dimosthenis9

Could you give me an example?

Maybe he wants to suggest a science based philosophy that would unify all fields or something like that — dimosthenis9

I don't see it as it would unify all fields, but rather use some scientific theories (not all!) when it seems relevant to a "philosophical" issue. Maybe it is already done by some but there are a lot of concepts for which it isn't done and if we had such a discipline, we wouldn't miss out on so many concepts. As I gave the example earlier, scientists don't define the term "individual" or "organism". When I'm searching for such definitions, I mostly find debates about whether it is useful to define it, whether it belongs to philosophy or biology, or whether it should be studied by philosophy of biology, and I just find this incredibly inefficient. I saw that philosophy of biology aims to clarify such concepts but I'm still wondering : where is it at? Where is their consensus?

There seems to be a huge problem for philosophers and scientists to communicate with each other and maybe that's why it doesn't lead to some kind of encyclopedia where they would define such concepts (also giving the uncertainties on the definition they created). My point being, this interdisciplinary approach is clearly not working, so maybe we should forget everything we know about philosophy (only for that purpose, not remove it from the society), start with just science and slowly create a method on how to maximize logical reasoning leading to these concepts.

but the style in which it is presented is insulting. 'All these philo profs have gotten it all wrong, they are not wise, instead we should be 'independent thinker' (essentially like me! me! me!). — Tobias

I'm sorry you felt insulted, it did not mean to insult philosophy. I did mean to criticise it though. Maybe I haven't spent enough time with philosophers to say all of this with certainty, but my experience has been pretty bad, and not just with philosophers, but also when I read philosophical articles in general. I once spent 15 mins trying to get a philosophy professor to answer one of my question, which simply was "what's your opinion on that matter?". It lead to a lot of side talking, where he explained to me how my questions were "wrong", how we could not see it the way I see it. And, to be honest this is the kind of behaviour that makes quite upset, as I wouldn't want to see philosophy as some kind of religion with rules where only certain opinions are accepted because they do not contradict other philosophical concepts. The funniest thing is that, in the end, he said he doesn't have an opinion, he doesn't know... I really don't know how science and philosophy can collaborate if philosophy doesn't accept to see the world other than with philosophical concepts...

I excepted this to be more funny, disappointed.

Oh but by the way, I thought you said you didn't want to argue anymore, what happened to that?

Respectively, please state the thesis you are arguing for. — Jackson

I did, in the OP, but if you think some parts are unclear, do tell.

You are asking everyone to read your OP and accusing them of not reading well. when your readers do not know what you are on about, probably the writing sucks. — Tobias

Well have you thought about asking more questions instead of jumping into criticism?

but it does not use scientific concepts to examine themselves. — Tobias

What... This is such a twisted idea, why would anyone want to do that? To make things clearer, you could have another discipline, even a branch of philosophy which studies the method of this "science-based philosophy", just like there is a philosophy of science, why not? But this science-based philosophy wouldn't study the method of any discipline.

I do not think you yourself understand what you mean and I do not think you are able to. — Tobias

My conclusion as well. — Jackson

This is a forum for f sake... Why would you say that to someone who wants to have a productive debate? What do you hope to achieve with that? If you really think I don't have a point, ask more questions to prove it instead of telling everyone how stupid they are based on a few messages. Is that also part of the great set of methods philosophy has? Is that how you challenge the logic of your ideas?

Well go ahead study cultural sociology, or macro economics or big history — Tobias

Again, can you please read my OP? I said science based: chemistry, biology and physics.

The emergence of science is a moment in men's becoming self aware. That can never be refuted or proven by scientific theory, the picture is actually too big. — Tobias

You didn't understand what I meant, and I don't think you want to.

Why would you want to use the object of enquiry to examine the object of enquiry? — Tobias

Well that's what philosophy of science does, not everything in philosophy is about that.

The "science-based Philosophy" is the study of a subject that is done through the scientific method that renders verifiable findings by observation or experience rather than theory or subjective approach via logic. — Rocco Rosano

Wait I'm confused : "is"? Like it actually exists?

Because science pretends to search for truth, while in reality it's objective is far more obscure — Hillary

Yeah careful, we're coming, be prepared.

Another thing is that maybe God does not want to be proven — chiknsld

Yep that works too!

Why would that be? — Jackson

Because it's in the concept itself ;)

Science can't pull itself up by it's bootstraps. That's the thing, one of the things, that philosophy is needed for. — T Clark

I think you understood that I wanted to remove philosophy and do sciences only, which is absolutely not what I meant.

If you want to explain everything there is simply no way to do it through science. — chiknsld

I suggest you read again my OP where I explicitly say that it wouldn't try to explain everything, and that some topics would be left for philosophy.

you really seem to want is to limit philosophy to the scientific method — Tobias

No, I want to create something else that is restricted to scientific theories as the basis of the reasoning, not the scientific method. Did everyone miss the part where I said I don't want to replace philosophy? That I'm only comparing the topics these two would have in common?

You also neglect the fact that such a jump requires a lot of interpretation but how that is done remains unclear — Tobias

No, in the example, I talk about the uncertainties, and about why it lead to poor theories when they tried something like that with evolutionnary psychology. And yes, how it is done is probably unclear for you, so you're saying it's impossible to do it well?

Your plea for independence in fact comes down to a plea for reductionism and dependence, limiting rather than expanding our avenues of thought — Tobias

You totally misunderstood what I meant. Just because there would be a discipline that's dependent on scientific theories doesn't mean I encourage reductionism. Again, I DO NOT WANT TO DESTROY PHILOSOPHY. Or even believes, keep all that, the point of comparison does not apply to these.

It would do away with Popper 's methodology! — Hillary

Absolutely not, Popper is talking about science, about the method, about what qualifies as science, so this is philosophy of science, not a science-based philosophy. Unless I'm missing another part of his work that I'm not aware of?

If you really have no idea what philosophers of science do then you need to find out. I mean, this is extremely elementary — Jackson

If you could give me an example, I could show you how it is different from what I mean. But you won't do it so I assume you're not interested in debating anymore, or you have no idea what you're talking about.

The philosophy of science does nothing but discuss scientific concepts. — Jackson

Then it really shouldn't be too hard for you to find an example, right? Why don't you give one?

Defining basic concepts is what the philosophy of science does. You seemed to reject this idea but I did not understand why. — Jackson

I didn't reject the idea, I asked for an example, which you never gave. Can you please give me a concept in philosophy of science that is defined with scientific concepts?

It seems that you're interested in science and not philosophy. Hard to get much more than that from your explanation. — Jackson

No, I can tell you scientists aren't interested in that. It's not the role of science to try to paint a bigger picture of the reality, that's philosophy.
For example, I came up to a biology professor who was "debating" the notion of an individual, then I tried to get a definition out of him, which he couldn't produce, because he said it's too "complex". And there isn't any research on how to define that term, why? Because it's useless for biologists to define an individual, the use of that term isn't really important in their work. Why do I care about defining what an individual is? Because I care about the bigger picture, the representation of the world, that is a philosophical essence to me.

Please do. — Jackson

Okay, I will make another thread because I don't think this is really relevant to the main question anymore.

I'm trying my best to explain the method I would use, which would be based on scientific theories, but you do not seem to want to know more about it. Shall I explain it in more details? Would you actually want to debate a method that's been found by an independent thinker who does not want to practice philosophy as you know it?

"Can there be a proof of God?"

This is an interesting question, but even if we can find a proof that God exists, can we also find a proof of how God was created? What if another God created God? Can we find proofs for all the Gods? What if there is an infinite number of Gods?

I think if we find a proof, we wouldn't call it God anymore. And another thing we call God would appear, because the fact that it cannot be proven is part of the God concept...