Why did you call it “exhaustive free association”? I would lean towards something more like “arguing from (falsely complete) exhaustion”.
Re it being almost good reasoning, a main thing making it good reasoning rather than bad reasoning is having a good model of the domain so that you actually have good reasons to think that your hypothesis space is exhaustive.
If you don’t have a systematic way of iterating your ideas, your method of generating ideas is just free-association. So making an argument from “exhaustive free-association” means you’re arguing that your free association is exhaustive. Which it never is.
An argument in favor of it is, “free association” is inherently a fuzzy human thing, where the process is just thinking for a bit and seeing what you come up with and at some point declaring victory; there is nothing in it that could possibly guarantee correctness. Arguably, anyone who encounters the term should be conscious of this, and therefore notice that it’s an inappropriate step in a logical argument that purports to establish high certainty. Perhaps even notice that the term itself is paradoxical: in a logical context, “exhaustion” must be a rigorous process, but “free association” is inherently unrigorous.
I’m not sure if I buy the argument. The author of “The Design of Everyday Things” warns against being too clever with names and assuming that normal people will get the reference you intend. But… I dunno.
Good post!
Why did you call it “exhaustive free association”? I would lean towards something more like “arguing from (falsely complete) exhaustion”.
Re it being almost good reasoning, a main thing making it good reasoning rather than bad reasoning is having a good model of the domain so that you actually have good reasons to think that your hypothesis space is exhaustive.
If you don’t have a systematic way of iterating your ideas, your method of generating ideas is just free-association. So making an argument from “exhaustive free-association” means you’re arguing that your free association is exhaustive. Which it never is.
An argument in favor of it is, “free association” is inherently a fuzzy human thing, where the process is just thinking for a bit and seeing what you come up with and at some point declaring victory; there is nothing in it that could possibly guarantee correctness. Arguably, anyone who encounters the term should be conscious of this, and therefore notice that it’s an inappropriate step in a logical argument that purports to establish high certainty. Perhaps even notice that the term itself is paradoxical: in a logical context, “exhaustion” must be a rigorous process, but “free association” is inherently unrigorous.
I’m not sure if I buy the argument. The author of “The Design of Everyday Things” warns against being too clever with names and assuming that normal people will get the reference you intend. But… I dunno.