Tools of Wit Blog

I have been thinking about a defect of our thinking noted by Edward de Bono among others. We classify things by using a representative example. We tend to include things in the class by their resemblance to the representative example.

This runs into problems with the logical NOT operation. We need to find a representative element for everything that is not something, which is not in practice possible. What is "not a blackbird?" A bluejay? A spider? A pebble? A blue giant star? This representative example of the "NOT X" set is presumably what we mean by "the opposite of X."

It gets us into trouble especially when we construct popular versions of scientific understandings. In the past century, we have discovered limitations on knowledge in both physics and mathematics with names like "relativity," "uncertainty," "chaos," "incompleteness," and "incomputability." This is easily popularized to "there is no truth, hence all ideas are equally valid."

Of course, they don't mean that at all. Indeed, the mathematical limitations on knowledge are themselves provable and true. The physical limitations have passed the tests performed on them by the experimentalists. Things that have been proven false are false.

posted by TC @ 5:05 PM