Recursive definitions are possible, but they must still be founded on a base level that does not reference itself. Each other level can then be defined in a way that is not self-referential.
Annoyance
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The One That Isn’t There
“The definition of a mammal is simple: descent from the most recent common ancestor of all mammals.”
Valid definitions cannot reference themselves.
″.--but we admit to the category of mammals many animals that fail one or more of these criteria.”
No, we don’t. Dolphins have all of the required attributes to be considered mammals. If they didn’t, we couldn’t call them mammals any longer.
That is an absolutely charming interpretation, and one that makes a lot of sense. However, in my experience, it’s not how the riddle is commonly used.
That would be a great way to show off your knowledge of jeweler’s weights, though.
There’s more to it, of course. Ask the question with substances that don’t produce strong associations regarding “weight” (really, density), and people tend not to get it wrong no matter how much time pressure is involved.
Pound of Feathers, Pound of Gold
The biological category of ‘mammal’ is quite well-defined, thank you.
And fuzzy definitions are fine until you’re dealing with a case that lies in the penumbra, at which time it becomes a massive problem.
In other words, we have to learn logic, we’re not born with it.
No.
Electric charge doesn’t spontaneously do arithmetic either.
No. It does nothing but mathematics.
This looks sincere to me, and given that it’s sincere, people really ought to be allowed more chance than this to recover from their mistakes.
I say that depends entirely on the nature of the mistake. Gross negligence should not be forgiven, although the proper response is not necessarily retributive.
If these points about psychology were actually as commonly known as the composition of water then you wouldn’t need an analogy- you would just sarcastically remark “A citation? Really?”.
Nope, ’cause you people know virtually nothing about psychology. Which is why I so frequently see statements of boggling ignorance made here about how and why human minds do stuff.
If a person wants citations to support a statement about the composition of water, my reaction is to tell them to go find a schoolchild and ask them about chemistry. Or pick up a brightly-colored children’s book about science and learn something. Maybe watch a little 3-2-1 Contact or Bill Nye.
Not in the way that ‘rationalization’ is used in natural language. That refers to a non-rational statement that is used in place of rationality in order to satisfy the desire to present an argument as rational without having to go through the trouble of actually constructing and adopting a rational position.
The biggest functional difference: when a reason is abolished, the behavior goes away. When a rationalization is abolished, the behavior remains.
And the recognition that the process that ordinary people went though had pretty much NOTHING in common with “necessary and sufficient conditions” was not made by philosophers.
Ordinary people struggle to decide whether dolphins are fish or penguins are birds. And they often get it wrong if they haven’t been explicitly taught otherwise; even then, some still screw up their answers.
Your final conclusion is like saying that [blah blah blah]
No, it’s not. Associational processing can emulate logical thinking, but it’s not restricted to it and will not normally produce it. Restrictions have to be added for logic to arise out of the sea of associations.
Common knowledge, thomblake. Do you need citations to know that water is composed of one atom of oxygen and two of hydrogen?
These points are to psychology what the composition of water is to chemistry: widely known and non-controversial.
The Featherless Biped
If I had a dollar for every brainy person who’d been gulled because they thought they were “too smart” to require being skeptical...
and if I had a dollar for every average idiot who sleepwalked straight into an obvious scam I would make a lot more money.
Those sets are not disjoint.
Most “rationalists” are quite smart people, so tricks that are designed by a trickster to fool the masses rarely work on us.
Wrong. Tricksters rely on people making stupid assumptions and failing to check assertions. People with a lot of brainpower can do those things just as easily as people without.
Physicists asked to evaluate paranormal claims do very poorly, yet they are clearly very brainy. It takes more than just brains to be intelligent—you have to use the brains properly.
If I had a dollar for every brainy person who’d been gulled because they thought they were “too smart” to require being skeptical...
That traditional anecdote (and its modified forms) only illustrate how little the pro-qualia advocates understand the arguments against the idea.
Dismissing ‘qualia’ does not, as many people frequently imply, require dismissing the idea that sensory stimuli can be distinguish and grouped into categories. That would be utterly absurd—it would render the senses useless and such a system would never have evolved.
All that’s needed to is reject the idea that there are some mysterious properties to sensation which somehow violate basic logic and the principles of information theory.
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Alcohol is an just example. It’s well-known that crude global brain impairment reduces self-monitoring first.