Q&A: How Everyday Inference Is Structured
How Everyday Inference Is Structured
Question
Hi,
I wanted to ask: on the basis of what principles of logical inference do we make simple inferences in everyday life?
For example, when we walk down the street and hear sounds that resemble drilling or chiseling, we assume that somewhere behind it there is some drilling device that caused them. Theoretically, one could imagine that there is some other object, unfamiliar to us, that produces these sounds.
A. If so, what principles actually underlie this kind of simple everyday inference?
B. How does the Rabbi understand the fact that it is so hard for us (or at least for me) to analyze the principles and assumptions behind such everyday inferences, and the reasons for them, while the brain performs them smoothly and simply, unconsciously?
As for A, I thought of a few things and would be happy to hear what you think:
- Analogy — if we have heard that a certain object produces a type-A sound, then when we hear A we think it was caused by a similar object.
- Probabilistic — the likelihood of such a vocal pattern occurring on its own is small, so insofar as O1 could have done it, we attribute it to O1.
- Occam’s razor — we do not assume that there exists an additional object like O2 that could cause it, for example one with similar properties, without further information to that effect.
Thank you very much!
Answer
The three explanations you suggested are not really explanations. After all, the same questions could be asked about them as well. This is basically Hume’s problem of induction, and I have written about it in at least two books: Two Carts and Unstable Truth.
Human beings have unconscious capacities for analysis and thought (what Kahneman calls System A, as opposed to System B). In many cases, our conceptualizations come afterward, and they also work less well. Evolution built some of these capacities into us.
My claim is that our intuition is the collection of those non-conceptualized and unconscious capacities (including the three explanations you presented here).
Discussion on Answer
Checking validity is itself an act of conscious thought. There is no real meaning to checking the validity of an intuition, because it is not built out of logical arguments that can be valid or invalid. It is certainly important to examine it from different angles, because sometimes it misleads us (like the three forms of thinking you described. They too are useful, but definitely not absolute and may mislead).
If you are looking for certainties, you are in the wrong world. In our world there are no certainties.
Begging your pardon, Your Honor, I thought God was not above logic, but the intellect’s eye is…? 🙂
If it is not built from logical arguments, then from what is it built?
Nothing is above logic. Meaning: a logical contradiction is not true, not in this world and not with the Holy One, blessed be He. But that does not mean that our insights and information arrive only through logical tools. There is direct perception of reality, from which we learn our foundational insights. I elaborated on this in the above-mentioned books.
This does not belong to logic but to a system that learned over the years to connect one thing to another.
These are not inferences but associations that you either have or don’t have.
Wow! Thank you, I had indeed thought of asking about those too.
Is intuition basically reflecting a single process of something unconscious, so that all these conceptualizations are part of one unified thing? Or are these really processes more like an ordinary computational process, except that they happen in the back of the brain and I simply haven’t described all of them?
In any case, if this whole process is unconscious to us, doesn’t that create further problems? For example, how can one examine the validity of the argument when it is not accessible to us? And if so, how can we be justified at all in believing something that we can’t really examine?