Q&A: The article on a fortiori reasoning in light of the appendix to the article on Ockham’s Razor
The article on a fortiori reasoning in light of the appendix to the article on Ockham’s Razor.
Question
A. At the end of the pair of articles on a fortiori reasoning, you qualified your position and said that the model you presented describes only the way human thought operates, not reality itself. If a flaw is found in the relation between the model and reality, then it is a flaw in human thinking and not in the model. According to the appendix to the article on Ockham’s Razor, human thinking is very successful, statistically speaking.
If so, one can 1. examine how well this model matches human thinking—whether it too is statistically successful like human thinking. 2. let statistics detach this model from human thinking and improve it until it becomes even more successful than human thinking!
B. You wrote, following Husserl, that our intuition has a quasi-mystical ability to see the law itself through the phenomena. Could it be that this is connected to what Rabbi HaNazir said about “prophetic” logic?
C. And does the model of a fortiori reasoning in fact allow us to understand and touch, at least a little, this wondrous phenomenon?
Answer
A. I didn’t understand the question.
B. Indeed. And I wrote this in several places (Truth and Stability, Two Wagons). And there I also connected it to Maimonides’ “eyes of the intellect” at the beginning of the Guide.
C. Which phenomenon?
Discussion on Answer
People use this term in different senses, so there is no point in asking what the term means in general. To each person his own view and definition. I use it in a certain sense (the capacity to perceive things beyond the senses).
As for your question, I didn’t understand it, and I’m also not well versed in phenomenological philosophy.
Thank you.
As for question A: what I meant was that contrary to the qualification and evasion of objective criticism at the end of the article on a fortiori reasoning, in fact the model can be examined through objective eyes—by means of statistics. It can also be better than the human being at grasping reality, or less good… .
As for question C: those quasi-mystical “eyes of the intellect”—the model has in fact advanced their investigation, which is certainly an impressive scientific achievement worth noting!
A. Indeed, נכון. The fact that the model describes how people think means that it probably also describes reality not badly. I wasn’t trying to evade criticism, but to explain what the purpose of the model is.
C. I also think that this is interesting. In the book Truth and Stability I presented this model as a logic of synthetic thought.
Regarding section B—intuition is also mentioned in connection with rationalist thought. Is it possible to explain in a few words what the difference is between intuition (as the capacity to see the law) according to rationalism and intuition according to phenomenology?
I’m not quite getting phenomenology—what is it adding? Does it simply skip, as it were, the stage of “thinking” and go straight to what it calls “cognition”?
It may be that the question is completely off. It would help if you could explain in a few words… thanks in advance