From inside it may even look similar to cyclical reasoning, after all you can only learn about evolution that justifies your learning ability, by using the learning ability created by evolution. But this is just a map-territory confusion. The actual causal process in the reality that makes our cognition engines work is straightforward and non-paradoxical. The cognition engine works even if it’s not certain about it.
I don’t think it is just a confusion between the map and the territory to claim that this is circular reasoning.
It is circular reasoning to think ” My map tells me that the territory is likely to have given me a map which describes it accurately, which justifies me using it to conclude that my map describes the territory”. The reason why this circular reasoning process is somewhat justified is a combination of Occam’s razor and the fact that the conclusion is a ‘fixed point’ , while assuming that your map is inaccurate does not produce a similarly self-affirming reasoning loop. So there is an asymmetry which seems to suggest that your map is likely to be somewhat accurate. But this is not an obviously true conclusion. I don’t actually know how well I could defend it.
I think it’s not so much a circle as a spiral (not in the LLM sense, I don’t think). Each level of justification pushes just a little deeper than the last, even though in words you keep asking some of the same fundamental questions.
The argument I referred to is indeed circular. A spiral is topologically just a line which terminates. It doesn’t have the structure you’re referring to. Maybe if you want to think of your progress as measured on a vertical axis and the steps used to get there as represented on a plane, then the curve plotted above the circle representing the circular argument on that plane would be helical, which has a spiral like shape. However, this is not the same as saying that the argument is a spiral.
I don’t think it is just a confusion between the map and the territory to claim that this is circular reasoning.
It is circular reasoning to think ” My map tells me that the territory is likely to have given me a map which describes it accurately, which justifies me using it to conclude that my map describes the territory”. The reason why this circular reasoning process is somewhat justified is a combination of Occam’s razor and the fact that the conclusion is a ‘fixed point’ , while assuming that your map is inaccurate does not produce a similarly self-affirming reasoning loop. So there is an asymmetry which seems to suggest that your map is likely to be somewhat accurate. But this is not an obviously true conclusion. I don’t actually know how well I could defend it.
I think it’s not so much a circle as a spiral (not in the LLM sense, I don’t think). Each level of justification pushes just a little deeper than the last, even though in words you keep asking some of the same fundamental questions.
The argument I referred to is indeed circular. A spiral is topologically just a line which terminates. It doesn’t have the structure you’re referring to. Maybe if you want to think of your progress as measured on a vertical axis and the steps used to get there as represented on a plane, then the curve plotted above the circle representing the circular argument on that plane would be helical, which has a spiral like shape. However, this is not the same as saying that the argument is a spiral.
Thank you, both for the clarification and for reminding me that ‘helical’ was the word I was looking for.
Thanks for responding, sometimes it seems like my comments ‘fall into a black hole’.