Do you also not understand how it is possible for the hare to catch the tortoise, for arrows to move, to learn anything one did not already know, or to do good of one’s own volition? One can prove, with impeccable logic, that all of these things are impossible. Yet they happen. The logic is wrong, and the wrongness is not in the deductive system but in the ontology, the verbal categories that embody assumptions one does not know one is making.
You can prove with impeccable logic that there is no such thing as will power. Either you want to do something or you do not; you do what you want and not what you don’t. Yet everyday experience tells us all (except those who have philosophised themselves into ignoring what they have proved cannot exist) that it is not as simple. We do, in fact, experience conflicts. That our verbal formulations of what is going on may fail us does not make the reality go away.
BTW, in your comment that Eugine_Nier linked, you say:
My father warns me that not working now will greatly reduce my future employment prospects, and that I’ll eventually have to find work or starve after they retire and can no longer support me. (So I guess I’ll starve, then?)
That’s some rather steep temporal discounting. Does that happen in the short term as well? E.g. do you leave something undone because you don’t feel like it, and later the very same day, wish your earlier self had done it?
The logic is wrong, and the wrongness is not in the deductive system but in the ontology, the verbal categories that embody assumptions one does not know one is making.
Yes, I’ve seen it happen. I just don’t understand it.
That’s some rather steep temporal discounting. Does that happen in the short term as well? E.g. do you leave something undone because you don’t feel like it, and later the very same day, wish your earlier self had done it?
Well, sort of. I do have a tendency to let stuff go undone and be inconvenienced by the fact that it’s not done (for example, I might run out of clean laundry, or put off getting a haircut for several months) but I rarely think of not doing them as mistakes to be regretted. I’ve learned all kinds of “bad” lessons that seem to amount to “putting things off never has consequences”. For example, I once skipped a midterm exam in college so I could play Final Fantasy X, and in hindsight it turned out to be the right decision. (I hadn’t studied—too much playing Final Fantasy X—so I would have done terribly. As it turned out, the professor accepted my excuse, I ended up passing the course.) Also, there’s all that time spent playing JRPGs, in which you want to explore every side path before reaching the main goal and nothing ever happens until you, the player, take an action to cause it to happen.
Do you also not understand how it is possible for the hare to catch the tortoise, for arrows to move, to learn anything one did not already know, or to do good of one’s own volition? One can prove, with impeccable logic, that all of these things are impossible. Yet they happen. The logic is wrong, and the wrongness is not in the deductive system but in the ontology, the verbal categories that embody assumptions one does not know one is making.
You can prove with impeccable logic that there is no such thing as will power. Either you want to do something or you do not; you do what you want and not what you don’t. Yet everyday experience tells us all (except those who have philosophised themselves into ignoring what they have proved cannot exist) that it is not as simple. We do, in fact, experience conflicts. That our verbal formulations of what is going on may fail us does not make the reality go away.
BTW, in your comment that Eugine_Nier linked, you say:
That’s some rather steep temporal discounting. Does that happen in the short term as well? E.g. do you leave something undone because you don’t feel like it, and later the very same day, wish your earlier self had done it?
Yes, I’ve seen it happen. I just don’t understand it.
Well, sort of. I do have a tendency to let stuff go undone and be inconvenienced by the fact that it’s not done (for example, I might run out of clean laundry, or put off getting a haircut for several months) but I rarely think of not doing them as mistakes to be regretted. I’ve learned all kinds of “bad” lessons that seem to amount to “putting things off never has consequences”. For example, I once skipped a midterm exam in college so I could play Final Fantasy X, and in hindsight it turned out to be the right decision. (I hadn’t studied—too much playing Final Fantasy X—so I would have done terribly. As it turned out, the professor accepted my excuse, I ended up passing the course.) Also, there’s all that time spent playing JRPGs, in which you want to explore every side path before reaching the main goal and nothing ever happens until you, the player, take an action to cause it to happen.