Philosophia Polymathematica

In the previous blog, by taking a comparative approach, we discussed how reasoning differs from rationalizing. When examining the structural components of reasoning, we, of course, considered cogent reasoning that would likely yield conclusions different from those yielded by rationalizing. Cogent reasoning is reasoning that is based on good reasons; it is based on objective measures such as facts, data, statistics, and evidence. Cogent reasoning is not based on arbitrary, capricious, or whimsical notions such as wishful thinking or rash appeals to emotion. During our immediately preceding comparative study, a natural question that suggested itself was whether rationalizing is the same thing as erroneous, as opposed to cogent, reasoning or, better yet, whether all erroneous reasoning is necessarily rationalizing. As we will explore in this blog, rationalizing and erroneous reasoning are also two altogether different modes of thought, albeit with a distinction much finer than the one ...

Though in common parlance the words reasoning and rationalization are often used interchangeably, there exist subtle but nonetheless highly important distinctions between them. Merely understanding the distinguishing criteria can enable one to become a better thinker, debater, advocate, and arbiter. To my mind, this is due to at least the following reasons: the correct usage of a word backed by an accurate understanding of its etymological denotation and semantic connotation allows for a level of precision of thought that would not be possible otherwise; he who can delineate the contours of these two separate entities is better equipped to parse one’s interlocutor’s rationalizations from reasoning and then proceed to discredit the rationalizations; and most importantly (and probably a most difficult thing to do), one can identify instances of one’s own rationalizing and attempt to resist the temptation to base one’s beliefs upon rationalizations. The importance of having a technica...

The scientific method, at its core, is the formulation and testing of hypotheses to discern their veracity and accuracy. This description, though comically simple, is sufficient for purposes of this blog. Scientists often attempt to differentiate science from other human endeavors. In my direct personal experience, scientists also resist, oftentimes very fiercely, the idea of science being likened to philosophy in any way. Perhaps this may account for, at least in some small measure, the fact that the logical/epistemological frameworks devised for purposes of advancing scientific discoveries do not resemble (at least not conveniently) the logical/epistemological frameworks utilized by philosophers. While the scientific method’s framework is generally not juxtaposed with the syllogistic framework devised by philosophers for purposes of studying logical reasoning and argumentation, in my opinion even a cursory examination reveals that the scientific method is merely an extension of it. F...

I recently had a fascinating epiphany while studying surrealist art during my last visit to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. An art museum was undoubtedly a most unlikely venue for the sort of realization I had as it was one which led me to consciously understand something about legal analysis, a considerable preoccupation of mine due to my profession as an international tax practitioner, that I hitherto only intuited: the conceit of many legal/tax practitioners to classify claims as facts and circumstances , particularly in the rendition of certain forms of written advice.   In the formulation of advice, practitioners invariably initially engage in a fact-finding exercise whereby they raise empirical questions to understand their client’s facts and circumstances. Once the relevant facts and circumstances are ascertained, the practitioner must judge how the law applies thereon. Any conclusion or advice necessarily proceeds therefrom. In legal analysis, gathering the complete se...

I have noticed two major schools of thought with respect to those who claim to foresee the future. The adherents of one school dismiss such claimants out of hand, decry the impossibility of their claims, and swiftly label them as frauds and charlatans. The adherents of the other school may dismiss some such claimants as snake oil salesmen but nonetheless superstitiously believe in the supernatural phenomena of prescient and psychic abilities of genuine soothsayers. Though I loosely fall into the former school of thought, I do reject the rigidity of many of my schoolmates’ position because their absolutist dismissal precludes them from considering the issue from a nuanced, philosophical perspective. While the view through the philosophical lens certainly does not lend credence to the latter school’s beliefs of an extraordinary nature, it does nonetheless reveal that the claims regarding the abject impossibility of foreseeing the future by the dogmatists in my midst are arbitrary and err...

The central implication of one of psychoanalysis’ most startling discoveries is that the unconscious is the source analog for psychic investment into reality. This psychic investment is a sine qua non of our sensory experience of reality. No one experiences noumenal reality without some irreducible phantasmic investment. What we see is to some extent a consequence of what we imagine we see. Though fantasy is opposed to reality, it nonetheless provides an underlying support for our sense of reality, the absence of which threatens the dissolution of our sense of meaningfulness of reality. Interestingly, within the meaning of strict psychoanalytic tradition, the “normal” subject maintains an incompatible divide between reality and fantasy and knows how to distinguish one from the other. In Freudian terms this is the external-internal divide according to which what is unreal, merely subjective, is only internal and what is real is apart from the subjective, it is outside (Sigmund Freud,...

Disclaimer: References to postmodernists herein should be construed to mean laypersons whose thinking is influenced by postmodernism, not postmodernists in the strict sense. One of the basic tenets of good thinking is that one must base their reasoning on how things are rather than how one wishes things to be. The greatest challenge that postmodernity has hurled at us is that the conception of how things are has been so thoroughly blended with how one wishes things to be that the two constructs have been rendered inextricable. Postmodernism’s consistent messaging about the purely subjective nature of truth and the impossibility of objective truths can have the undesirable effect of orienting one to believe that how one wishes things to be is actually how those things are. This misguided understanding can then be used as the basis for further misguided reasoning. I encounter my fair share of truth relativists (often very obstinate ones) at my weekly philosophy club meetings. Despit...