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felipec  unbelief  1yr ago (felipec.substack.com)   3238 thread views

2+2 = not what you think

felipec.substack.com

Changing someone's mind is very difficult, that's why I like puzzles most people get wrong: to try to open their mind. Challenging the claim that 2+2 is unequivocally 4 is one of my favorites to get people to reconsider what they think is true with 100% certainty.

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This one. I'm the participant not making any assumptions about what you mean.

I suppose (not assume) that your question was rhetorical, and you actually believe I cannot answer it in truth, because you believe in every conversation all participants have to make assumptions all the time. But this is tentative, I do not actually know that, therefore I do not assume that's the case.

And this is a fallacy I have pointed out already. The fact that somebody appears to be making an assumption doesn't necessarily means that he is. All that glitters is not gold. You are likely going to comb through my statement and try to find a point where I made an assumption, but all you are going to find is the appearance of an assumption, without reading my mind you can't actually tell.

Once again: I do not know what you mean though, but I'm guessing, and that's all rational agents can do when communicating.

I suppose (not assume) that your question was rhetorical, and you actually believe I cannot answer it in truth, because you believe in every conversation all participants have to make assumptions all the time. But this is tentative, I do not actually know that, therefore I do not assume that's the case.

My main intent was to elucidate what you don't consider to be an assumption, to determine whether I've been misunderstanding your meaning of the term. Your separation of suppositions from assumptions appears to answer this question in the positive.

The fact that somebody appears to be making an assumption doesn't necessarily means that he is.

How does one distinguish between someone making an assumption, and someone only appearing to be making an assumption? You have claimed that some statements by others contain assumptions, and you have claimed that some statements only contain suppositions that appear like assumptions. But I don't understand exactly how you're evaluating statements to determine this.

How does one distinguish between someone making an assumption, and someone only appearing to be making an assumption?

By checking whether or not the person considers the possibility of the claim being not necessarily true. And if not, whether or not the claim is substantiated by evidence or reason.

Or the other way: if the person considers the claim to be 100% certain to be true without any evidence or reason to substantiate it (it just is).

By checking whether or not the person considers the possibility of the claim being not necessarily true. And if not, whether or not the claim is substantiated by evidence or reason.

By "the claim being not necessarily true", are you referring to the possibility that the claim's originator is expressing a belief contrary to truth, or the possibility that the claim's recipient is interpreting the claim differently in such a way as to make it the received belief incorrect? The examples in your original post are of the latter, but I'd usually understand substantiation as a property of a belief having already been shared and correctly interpreted.

It would also seem that the former is far easier than the latter. If you know that you're correctly understanding the belief being expressed by a claim, then you can simply compare the belief to your own worldview, and doubt it according to how likely the alternatives appear to be true. But evaluating how much you may be misinterpreting a claim is a far different challenge: you have to map out the space of possible beliefs in the originator's mind that could have plausibly led to that particular claim, accounting for how the originator's thoughts might look far different from your own.

By "the claim being not necessarily true", are you referring to the possibility that the claim's originator is expressing a belief contrary to truth, or the possibility that the claim's recipient is interpreting the claim differently in such a way as to make it the received belief incorrect?

Neither. I said the claim's originator considers the possibility that the claim might not be necessarily true. This is expressed in modal logic as ◇⊥ (possibly false), or ¬□⊤ (not necessarily true).

It's not about whether or not the claim is really true or not, or if it has been substantiated... It's about you believing it might be false.

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