Thinking that We Know and the Science of Thinking

by Gary Berg-Cross

2002 Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman delivers the free 12th Annual Sackler Lecture tonight at 6 at the National Academy of Sciences Building - 2101 Constitution Avenue NW - Auditorium (Washington). The talk is called "Thinking that We Know". Kahneman got the Nobel Prize for research that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making. Steven Pinker, who I hope is know to this group, called him "one of the most influential psychologists in history and certainly the most important psychologist alive today."

For those who have not read his recent book (“Thinking, Fast and Slow”) the talk should covers some of his ideas on different modes of thinking and the search for the truth. Here is the abstract for the talk:

Truth is a philosophical concept, and the shared search for agreed and objective truth is the central mission of science. But the sense of truth is a subjective experience, which falls in the domain of psychology. Carefully reasoned argument is one way to induce a sense of truth, but it is not the only way, or indeed the most common. The distinction between different modes of thinking – fast and automatic vs. slow and controlled – provides a framework for understanding the variety of experiences of truth.

The New York Times review of “Thinking, Fast and Slow” noted this:

Human irrationality is Kahneman’s great theme. There are essentially three phases to his career. In the first, he and Tversky did a series of ingenious experiments that revealed twenty or so “cognitive biases” — unconscious errors of reasoning that distort our judgment of the world. Typical of these is the “anchoring effect”: our tendency to be influenced by irrelevant numbers that we happen to be exposed to. (In one experiment, for instance, experienced German judges were inclined to give a shoplifter a longer sentence if they had just rolled a pair of dice loaded to give a high number.) In the second phase, Kahneman and Tversky showed that people making decisions under uncertain conditions do not behave in the way that economic models have traditionally assumed; they do not “maximize utility.” The two then developed an alternative account of decision making, one more faithful to human psychology, which they called “prospect theory.” (It was for this achievement that Kahneman was awarded the Nobel.) In the third phase of his career, mainly after the death of Tversky, Kahneman has delved into “hedonic psychology”: the science of happiness, its nature and its causes. His findings in this area have proved disquieting — and not just because one of the key experiments involved a deliberately prolonged colonoscopy.
“Thinking, Fast and Slow” spans all three of these phases. It is an astonishingly rich book: lucid, profound, full of intellectual surprises and self-help value. It is consistently entertaining and frequently touching, especially when Kahneman is recounting his collaboration with Tversky. (“The pleasure we found in working together made us exceptionally patient; it is much easier to strive for perfection when you are never bored.”) So impressive is its vision of flawed human reason that the New York Times columnist David Brooks recently declared that Kahneman and Tversky’s work “will be remembered hundreds of years from now,” and that it is “a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves.” They are, Brooks said, “like the Lewis and Clark of the mind.”

Daniel Kahneman, P.h.D., is a Senior Scholar and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs, Emeritus, at Princeton University. His bestselling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, was selected by The New York Times as one of its Best Books of 2011. A 2002 Nobel Prize winner in economic sciences, Dr. Kahneman has laid the foundation for a new field of research, called behavioral economics.

Epistemological Styles

by Gary Berg-Cross

I see that recent Blog posts, such as The incomprehensible, everything good, god, explore some theist-revised god-concepts:

• "What if there were concepts of God that had something to offer or add to the fulfilled?
• What if we had concepts of God based on creativity?
• On a positive definition of incomprehensible peace?
• On imaginative joy?

This subverts some Greek-old questions about existence and dresses it up in new clothes. The Greeks were the first we know of to develop elaborate reasoning on the nature of existence and reality. But this was more on an exploration of naturalist concepts of what we see existing as part of a continuous fabric of reality. Parmenides put it this way:

“We can speak and think only of what exists. And what exists is uncreated and imperishable for it is whole and unchanging and complete. It was not or nor shall be different since it is now, all at once, one and continuous...”

He wasn’t speaking about god’s existence, so much as about his world, but people push the discussions that way with an unseen spirit in back of everything. Some call it metaphysical, but in his Metaphysics Aristotle defined the scope as 2 important philosophical questions:

‘What exists?' and ‘How do I know?'

They are separate questions, but related. The first question he discussed as Ontology - the meta-philosophy or world view of reality. The seminal ontological question wasn’t so religious as psychological - ‘Is there a "real" world out there that is independent of our knowledge of it?'

Naturalist assume a natural world out there existing on its own one, not invented by our conceptions. Theists say reality isn’t a human invention, but a godly one. God must exist to explain the complex ontology of things we find in nature. Discussions about god as an existing object are therefore ontological too. The argument is that god is as real as a tree and maybe more so.

People whose ontology posits a god, angels, devils, miracles etc, want to talk about these concepts, while Naturalists, such as Dawkins aren't so interested. When Dawkins dismisses these subjects, such as in revealed text, he is criticized as not knowing anything about Religion. That is, he knows nothing about the ontological entities that religion believes exist and have value. True enough because an atheist's ontology doesn’t include them. Why talk about what an enormous list of ancient writers might have invented as part of their psychology a long time ago?

Others may be willing to talk about God as a “scientific hypothesis. ” But looked at this way shouldn't it be tested? But even that moderate position is a divisive questions to some...

"He who is not with Me is against Me;
and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad."

—Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew, xii, 30

It's clear that there are big differences between religious believers and non-believer's ontology. This is often discussed in detail, at least by theists. But how do believers know that god exists? This brings in the 2^nd questions and Epistemology, which is the philosophy of how we come to knowledge and how we justify arriving at something as known. The epistemological positions that brings people to a particular ontology is also important, but less discussed. Unlike the clarity of the question it’s complicated, at least in part because people aren't pure philosophers and their "knowing" gets intertwined with personality and values as they grow up in a culture which has implicit positions on styles of knowing and believing.

Even science has different investigatory styles/paradigms that can lead to alternative views. Scientific historian Alistair C. Crombie described several main styles in the Western tradition of scientific thinking:

• the simple method of postulation exemplified by classic Greek sciences
• the deployment of experiment to explore postulation with controlled observation and measurement,
• hypothetical construction of analogical models
• ordering of variety by comparison and taxonomy,
• statistical analysis of regularities of populations etc.
  

To these styles, philosopher Ian Hacking added a contemporary laboratory scientific style in “Statistical Language, Statistical Truth and Statistical Reason:The Self-Authentification of a Style of Scientific Reasoning" (Hacking’s thesis is that ontological truth conditions for certain kinds of propositions are given by a style of scientific reasoning – that is the method of inquiry constructs the truth of a proposition.)

One might argue that people in general are like this in that they approach the question of truth and reality through styles of inquiry. Some come to a style by reflection, experience and reason, but most of us are strongly influenced by existing patterns of inquiry which may come from groups we identify with. These styles might be thought of as composed from many, mutually supporting parts, engineered to work together over time. But for social transmission they often get packaged as meme-like labels such as realist, skeptic, theists, atheists, liberals, conservatives etc.

For example, at a broad level a theist may have an approach to knowledge as revealed and they take that on faith and they take faith as supported by group belief. An alternative approach to knowledge relies on evidence proof and reason.

But there are finer aspects to people’s style of thinking epistemologically and people’s preferences for things that is more like what psychologists call styles of personality . For example, there is familiar thinking versus open ended thinking. We accept something if it is familiar and described in commonsense terms. This is often part of a layman's style of knowing.

When talking about personality styles some use binary, common sense distinctions about reasoning and investigation styles. So some people are curious while others are intellectually lazy – George Bush comes to find for the latter category. We might build a better model by adding a scale along which people fall from lazy at one end and curious at the other. That’s better, but there are other dimensions of reasoning to consider. Some people are skeptical while others are not. Now we have 2 dimensions and we could add a 3^rd of critical thinking. These dimensions seem somewhat related but not identical. We can add more orthogonal dimensions like simplicity vs. appreciation of complexity. John Wayne illustrates simplicity when he was reported to have said in an interview, "They tell me that things aren't always black and white. I say, 'Why the hell not?'" This is a simple, common sense view that affects how much energy we might bring to investigating a topic. It speaks in a common language and thus has popular appeal and has the advantage of being able to spread meme-like.

But people’s epistemological styles are even more complex than that and can be thought of as existing in epistemological layers and frameworks. The framework includes, and is influenced by, people's ontology and pre-existing assumptions about such things as diverse as:

• objectivity,
  
• what is real and
  
• group values.

These serve as broad guides for reasoning. Other factors include the nature of evidence and the value of observation, the role of theory (what is a theory?), what are acceptable method to test ideas, and what they define as logical or reasonable.

People and groups are stunningly different in attitudes towards such things as to what constitutes truth. As Hacking noted for scientific styles the approaches are put together and maintained by networks of people to answer their needs, interests and ideology. This is illustrated by the work of Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, for example, who studied on liberal-conservative differences in style and arguments. The style supports and is maintained by people who share a strong desire for unity and group membership which is guided by ideas of truth, rightness etc. This is a light, morality based epistemological stance. “Conservatives”, for example, quickly get disgusted with ideas that violate their ideas of reality and means of determining it. At the political level Republicans, more than Democrats, tap into universal moral passions to foster in-group solidarity. This goes along with concerns about being contaminated by outgroups and their thinking.

A related style is seen in people who value the idea of ancient, private wisdom existing inside people or available via divine revelation. These are believed to give access to a body of eternal truth independent of scientific investigation. To protect this stance it helps to distrust experts - at least some types of experts whose opinions may challenge existing social bonds. Better to keep hold of an ancient view, wrapped up and supported by your own justification. With defenses like these it is hard to have a conversation on why people believe as they do. Thus a reasoning style with its ontological beliefs has mutually supporting factors that provide a defense against foreign reasoning styles.

A natural science orientation, in contrast, views truth as derived from a method of public, empirical observations. One needs some methodological expertise to qualify to achieve knowledge. This is challenging to some who like to attack it by characterizing it as dogmatic. The dogma here is one of method and a testable one that can lead to what seems closer to the true.

The Charm of Understanding Reality: Captured in a Children's Book Written by Richard Dawkins – Part 1

by Gary Berg-Cross

Pioneering Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget spent a professional lifetime observing children to understand their thinking. It sounds strange today to say that what he found was revolutionary. But it certainly was and contrary to much of the learning thinking holding sway in his time 50 -80 years ago. A prevailing, simple assumption was that learning is just a unitary process and children start “empty”. Learning pumps in more knowledge over time so the quantity of their intelligence grows to be that of an adult. But there were few studies with actual children & toddlers to test this idea.

After thousands of interactions with young people some barely old enough to talk, Piaget began to see a developmental pattern to children’s actions, utterances and perceptions. Like most parents he could see that infants are active explorers from birth and prefer to look at novel objects. By 6 months infants seem to understand that objects continue to exist even if hidden under something. After many studies Piaget concluded that the differences weren’t so much quantitative, but qualitative and process driven. Young children don't think like grownups. From infancy they employ schema, a kind of mental structure to guide interacts with the outside world. As schemas develop their thought processes take on their own kind of order and have their own special “logic”. It’s not a linear accretion of knowledge. Instead using a child actively constructs different models about reality using their own reasoning “logic”. Early reasoning may include magical explanations, but it evolves over time as different ideas are tested out and more abstract thought is supported. In a phrase the young child is like a junior scientist who constructs their own knowledge from experimenting on the world. They struggle to understand why things happen. This ranges from why is the sky blue, why the moon doesn’t get smaller as we travel around and why do people die. Einstein, a friend of Piaget, provided the right sort of praise for the discovery - "so simple that only a genius could have thought of it."

Piaget's insight opened not only a new window into the inner workings of the mind, but like any other pioneer it’s not the last word on the topic. By the 1970s there was neo-Piagetian work. And there are grand fusions of Piagetian thought with more social theory. Such syntheses are driven in part by breakthroughs in other fields as is still happening to evolutionary theory.
One of Piaget’s lasting contributions was to educational applications. Schools of education have housed many of Piaget’s disciples. The obvious idea is that educational material should be structured to help the advance children’s understanding and answer questions of interest things according to their logic. It also provides insights into higher order and critical thinking where we reflect not only on a problem to solve but our own thinking to solve a problem.

Now a new book The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins helps fill a need for book geared towards critical thinking. It provides a nice spark for adolescent, rational and scientific minds taking first steps in hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Susan Jacoby wrote a glowing review in WaPO on Dawkins teaches children how, not what, to think, noting its intellectual merits.
Dawkin’s motivation for book is something Piaget would have loved with broad sections, such as “What is reality? What is magic?” Each chapter starts with a clear interesting questions such as – “Why is there a sun? What is an earthquake? What is a rainbows? Why is there night and day, winter and summer? Why do bad things happen? Are we alone?” He then describes a myth which tries to answer the question. This is contrasted with scientific explanations of reality. This is an exciting aspect of the book partly because Dawkins is the first of the prominent member of the “new atheist” generation to take on the task of helping children distinguish between (ancient) mythical & magical view of reality and how it is understood by science.
To do this Dawkins uses some proven literary techniques. Each chapter begins with different versions of myths from different cultures. So the Sumerian creation stories and desert religion miracle tales are not a central feature elbowing out other ideas. In the 2^nd chapter titled, “Who Was the First Person?” we get a Tasmanian aboriginal story, with a god injured in a star-god battle who is dying. The god decided to create humans as his parting gift but in haste forgets to give people knees and instead tacks on a kangaroo tail. The rival god from the sky, seeing that the new race of people is unhappy with limited mobility, descendes to earth to cut off their tails and replace them with knees. Juxtaposed with such stores Dawkins will employ evolutionary explanations and cites philosophers, such as Hume, to present the ideas of magical explanations and myths in a fair light. Myths aren’t so much silly or stupid, since the may capture the magical and informal thinking young minds. They are, instead, just early attempts to understand the world using an immature logic, just as young children have been doing in their own lives. By showing the weaknesses of magical explanations and myths we are lead to more satisfying ones.

Along the way Dawkins provides clear, clever and uncluttered rational answers with base definitions. “Reality,” Dawkins describes simply as, “ everything that exists.” This juxtaposed with a fuzzier idea of Magic which he notes “is a slippery word.” To claify Dawkins proposed 3 kinds of magic:

· Supernatural - what we experience in myth stories, fairy tales and, miracles

· stage - pulling rabbits out of hats

· poetic magic - such as the oceanic experience of music, sunrise and double rainbows.

In Dawkins' able hands children can experience a bit of this poetic magic in understanding reality. It comes not from tricks or supernatural infusions, but as a coming together of a deep, relational pattern of ideas.

Piaget would have appreciated the message and also the approach. Facts aren’t piled up in a heap to say what they should believe. Instead Dawkins leads a young reader along a logical chain of thinking to logical conclusions.

Something that reviewers also appreciate about this volume is the enchanting illustrations provided by Dave McKean that help grasp topics showing both myths and science in graphical form. Again this fits with Piaget’s notions that younger children need concrete examples to supplement more abstract concepts and processes.

Not everyone is happy with this book and Dawkins' gentle debunking of myths which seem like rants to some true believers and this a topic for Part 2 of this blog.