Q&A: Questions about the book Truth and Unstable
Questions about the book Truth and Unstable
Question
A number of questions following the book Truth and Unstable
1. The Rabbi writes in the book that one of the measures of the complexity of a graph is the number of changes in the direction of the arrows. About that I wanted to ask: the graph, if I understood correctly, is created in order to examine the complexity of the proposed theories. But the complexity that determines the probability of the theory is real complexity — the one according to which the reality it points to is simpler (for example, requiring the assumption of fewer talents). I understand how the number of vertices or the number of subgraphs is a sign (!) of real complexity, but is the complexity of the progression of the arrows also a sign? I also didn’t quite understand how one chooses from which letter to proceed to which letter.
2. In the book the Rabbi sees Occam’s razor as a criterion for truth. Why doesn’t this principle contradict the ideational view — does the Rabbi think that any worldview that does not assume the existence of abstract ideas cannot explain the world (and then the above principle is irrelevant anyway)?
3. Regarding the ideational view — aside from the claim about the idea of morality (where the Rabbi also brought examples of intuitive universal human agreements, and even about those I’m somewhat doubtful whether they are true for every society), which one could say is something imprinted in the human soul, what does it even mean to claim that there exists an idea of a frog in reality? According to this theory, our inductive intuition should not have been affected by the number of objects we encountered, but I’m not sure that a person who saw only two frogs in his life would assume that all frogs are green and have two eyes (the second piece of information he would probably assume by induction based on the other animals he saw in his life, and that only strengthens the question).
Thanks in advance
Answer
Hello.
1. Changes in direction express the fact that there is no simple hierarchy in the picture presented by the graph. That is, if there are no changes in direction, it means that if A is more severe than B and B is more severe than C, then A is more severe than C. When there are changes in direction, this expresses non-transitive hierarchical relations, and therefore it is less simple. The progression is determined from easier to more severe, that is, from the vertex whose vector is lower in all its components to the vector that is higher than it in all its components.
2. Why should it contradict? I didn’t understand the question.
A theoretical explanation of the world is given in terms of abstract entities. Therefore, a worldview that does not recognize the existence of abstract ideas does not believe in explanations at all. It is not correct to say that it does not succeed in explaining. It does not try to explain. From its perspective, explanation is only description in another form, not explanation.
3. I didn’t understand the question. In general, I do not assume that all human beings must agree about something. Agreement is some kind of indication, but not a necessary condition.
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Questioner:
I’ll try to explain the third question again.
Is the existence of the ideational view supposed to cause it so that we would not need to examine many objects in order to make an induction? That is, if when I look at a frog I also see the idea of the frog, why should my assumptions regarding the next frog be less certain if I saw 20 frogs or one frog? After all, my conclusion regarding the next frog came from looking at the idea of the frog (and in that respect there is no difference between one frog and 20). But intuitively there certainly is a difference in a person’s degree of certainty between the two cases. That difference seemingly indicates that what brings me to conclusions is not contemplation of something external (the idea of the thing), but some internal occurrence instead (if I understood correctly from the description in the book, this is what Husserl describes). Likewise, when we assume that there are certain ideas that we look at while looking at reality, how is it that Reuven does not see the idea that Shimon sees?
Koren
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Rabbi:
As I explained in my book, this is not “looking” in the ordinary sense. It is a borrowed expression, intended to say that this is a process that also has a cognitive dimension and is not purely a matter of reasoning. If induction were a purely rational process as is usually thought, it would have no justification at all, because it would only reflect the structure of my brain/intellect. The world owes nothing to that subjective structure. This is the root of the problem that Hume found in induction. As an alternative to this, I argue that this is a mechanism that also has a cognitive dimension and is not only rational. I contemplate the world (with the eyes of the intellect), and thus I “see” the ideas. As stated, this contemplation is a process that has both rational and cognitive components, and therefore the more examples you see, the better you will “see” the idea. If only because this is something “blurred” that is hard to see (even in physical vision, if something is blurred, prolonged observation will often improve your ability to see it).
This is also the reason that we do not all “see” the same thing, because our rational dimension is different. Still, this is not a purely subjective process, and that is the contribution of the alternative I proposed there.
By the way, theoretically you could ask the same thing about the regular conception of induction (as pure reasoning). Why is there a difference between seeing one frog and twenty frogs? There are still infinitely many forms of generalization (as I explained there).