Are our cognitive faculties reliable?

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;142637 wrote:

Who has ever argued for absolute skepticism? I've never met anyone skeptical of 2+2=4. They are usually skeptical of things like not being a brain in a vat. If they were skeptical of 2+2=4 then your argument would have weight. As it stands, one can be skeptical about knowledge of the world while not being skeptical about one's reasoning abilities.

There is some controversy over the limits, if any, of the skepticism advocated by some:

Philosophical skepticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pyrrho - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arcesilaus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for 2 + 2 = 4, if you want to find people who doubt it, just post a thread, preferably on a variety of philosophy and religious forums, and ask if it is certain, or if there is any doubt about it. You will likely find several people who claim to doubt it.

@Pyrrho,

Pyrrho;142649 wrote:

There is some controversy over the limits, if any, of the skepticism advocated by some:

Philosophical skepticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pyrrho - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arcesilaus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for 2 + 2 = 4, if you want to find people who doubt it, just post a thread, preferably on a variety of philosophy and religious forums, and ask if it is certain, or if there is any doubt about it. You will likely find several people who claim to doubt it.

It was a rhetorical question. I'm sure you can find at least one person willing to affirm or deny anything. During a tour of a mental hospital I saw a guy that thought he was truck. He even made beeping noises when he backed up.

My point was, you've defeated absolute skepticism but radical skepticism about knowledge of the world is still possible. That seems to be the bigger issue.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;142652 wrote:

It was a rhetorical question. I'm sure you can find at least one person willing to affirm or deny anything. During a tour of a mental hospital I saw a guy that thought he was truck. He even made beeping noises when he backed up.

My point was, you've defeated absolute skepticism but radical skepticism about knowledge of the world is still possible. That seems to be the bigger issue.

[CENTER]:bigsmile:
2 apples & 2 pears = 4 fruits

With a little help I can bake a cake Donna Summer can cry a'bout till St. Juttemis

I just think we need to be carefully formulating; I take the Blame:whoa-dude:
[/CENTER]

@Pepijn Sweep,

generally yes

when has an obstacle to our physical movement not been ?

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;142637 wrote:

Who has ever argued for absolute skepticism? I've never met anyone skeptical of 2+2=4. They are usually skeptical of things like not being a brain in a vat. If they were skeptical of 2+2=4 then your argument would have weight. As it stands, one can be skeptical about knowledge of the world while not being skeptical about one's reasoning abilities.

Both Descartes and Hume were skeptical about reasoning, but I don't suppose you ever met them.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;142511 wrote:

According to a post on a different forum:

Our cognitive facilities are rather notoriously NOT reliable.

Is that true? It sounds false to me.

If they're not, then wtf cares about anything, and htf do we care?

Normative axioms do have their place over positivist deduction at times. The only reasons someone would believe in the contrary (here) is because they're either trying to make you crazy or they've been made crazy by someone else who spread the same idea.

@kennethamy,

Night Ripper wrote:

I've never met anyone skeptical of 2+2=4.

kennethamy;143188 wrote:

Both Descartes and Hume were skeptical about reasoning, but I don't suppose you ever met them.

They were skeptical of 2+2=4? Can you provide a citation?

@Akeron,

Akeron;144135 wrote:

If they're not, then wtf cares about anything, and htf do we care?

Normative axioms do have their place over positivist deduction at times. The only reasons someone would believe in the contrary (here) is because they're either trying to make you crazy or they've been made crazy by someone else who spread the same idea.

[CENTER]:bigsmile:
I think badly organized, make mistakes, make more mistakes trying to do good. We All make mistakes of Judgement. This has little to do with craziness, just Human im-perfection.

The pleasure of Living is to learn not make the same mistakes over again. As long as Humanity goes on she will make mistakes. Hopefully yust minor one's.

Dhr. Pepijn Sweep
[/CENTER]

@Pepijn Sweep,

How is a stubborn or obsessive compulsive individual who refuses to rigorously analyze presumptions not crazy? What Dr. Sweep says about learning not to make mistakes is exactly what I'm talking about. People who "believe" that cognitive facilities are not reliable are rejecting the very cognitive facility required to think (AKA Descartes' cogito). Therefore, if they're rejecting their very essence, there is no potential for them not to be crazy.

Considered another way, craziness is the mind being usurped by chaos such that it can no longer be constructive, even according to internal benchmarks (because the mind becomes no longer capable of constructing internal benchmarks nevermind employing them). Therefore, an individual who rejects cognitive facilities being reliable is either manipulative or naive. If manipulative, that individual should not be listened to because of deceit. If naive, that person doesn't realize that the very foundation of thought is being cannibalized like an auto-immune disease.

@wayne,

wayne;142535 wrote:

There is an exercise that involves blind folding some one, convincing them you are holding something hot, then touching them with an ice cube.
Just last week I walked by a note on the board at work, addressed to someone else, several times before it was addressed to me. etc etc etc.

And who knows what I've failed to correct.

I wonder what that would show. AFAIK it is because the brain does not distinguish between feelings of cold and of hotness at first. Isn't it something to do with the different nerves being used? I read about it before when I did a project on neurology, specifically nerves, but I don't recall specifically.

I did a quick search.

Sense of Touch

It seems that it is because the pain receptors report the temperature change first as pain, and that this may be either hotness or coldness, the pain receptor cannot tell. Later however the temperature receptor reports accurately whether it is cold or hot.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;144138 wrote:

They were skeptical of 2+2=4? Can you provide a citation?

But Descartes, in the Meditations, argues that an Evil Genie may tinker with our minds, and lead us to think (and he gave an arithmetical equation (I forget which one) And make us think that X+Y=Z is wrong when it is right. That's illustrated in Orwell's 1984, where the protagonist is scared into believing that 2+2=5. As for Hume, he believed that inductive reasoning could not be justified. He believed that arithmetical propositions were analytic, but that no reason that a person cannot be mistaken about them, and so, might be wrong.

@kennethamy,

People are always saying things like "I swear I heard you say Gray!" and "No, I definitely said Pray, I know what I said" , "well, I know what I heard"

Clearly someone is wrong. Clearly, our faculties are imperfect in some way.
Therefore, it's evident that our faculties are not entirely trustworthy.

@Mentally Ill,

Mentally Ill;151983 wrote:

People are always saying things like "I swear I heard you say Gray!" and "No, I definitely said Pray, I know what I said" , "well, I know what I heard"

Clearly someone is wrong. Clearly, our faculties are imperfect in some way.
Therefore, it's evident that our faculties are not entirely trustworthy.

But do our faculties have to be entirely trustworthy to be reliable. Does "entirely trustworthy" mean, cannot make any mistakes at all? Perfection?

@kennethamy,

Oh, of course not.
My senses and cognitive faculties are definitely reliable, but imperfect.
I rely on them every moment of my life and they haven't let me down yet.

@Mentally Ill,

Mentally Ill;151988 wrote:

Oh, of course not.
My senses and cognitive faculties are definitely reliable, but imperfect.
I rely on them every moment of my life and they haven't let me down yet.

So, I guess there is the answer. Our faculties are reliable.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;151990 wrote:

So, I guess there is the answer. Our faculties are reliable.

Reliable as they are, I still don't entirely trust 'em :shifty:

@HexHammer,

answer revoked, will make new answer.

@Mentally Ill,

Mentally Ill;152039 wrote:

Reliable as they are, I still don't entirely trust 'em :shifty:

If by that, you mean that they might go wrong, I thought we have already agreed about that. They might, indeed, go wrong. But that does not mean they are not reliable. I consider my car reliable, but I don't think it is impossible that something might go wrong.

@kennethamy,

Yeah I agree, I'm just sayin...
Keep your eyes open, but not too open

@Mentally Ill,

From my courses in computer-science I remember one thing very clearly: garbage in, garbage out my professor used to say. I think this also is valid for humans. The cognitive faculties might work fine, but if information is corrupted there is little change of a good out-put.

On the other hand I think our cognitive faculties can manage pretty well in general. Even in really new circumstances they seem to cope. On top of that we have intuition to support our thinking if facts are not sufficient. Next to ratio I mean.

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Are our cognitive faculties reliable?

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