My latest blog post is a case study in how we decide what's true -- an important topic these days. It's based on the work of former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose book "Doing Justice" examines how prosecutors uncover the facts in situations that can literally involve life and death. What struck me on reading the book was the interplay between formal logic and intuitive processes, both of which help prosecutors to be confident in their conclusions even when others are actively trying to deceive them.
https://sites.google.com/view/two-minds/blog
Yes, the interplay of human creativity and methodical logic is a good mix for scientific research work.
http://meehl.umn.edu/talks/philosophical-psychology-1989
Your BLOG reminded me of two great reads: Gladwell's 'Blink' and Kahneman's 'Thinking, Fast and Slow'. The question for me is what are the similarities and differences between knowledge, truth and understanding in the legal profession and the findings and conclusions drawn from what is more formally known as 'research'?
Truth, in terms of human decision-making and uncertainty, definitely depends on the interplay of dominant narratives and intuitive logic.
Brouwer https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism/ was early to detect these
cognitive/emotional principles, with reference to mathematical problem-solving.
M.Eysenck should also ne noted here https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Attention_and_Arousal_Cognition_and_Performance?id=tOxVBgAAQBAJ
concerning the multiple cognitive/emotional interplay of human performances.
Thank you both for the comments. When I got my PhD in the mid-90s, cognitive therapy was ascendant (it still is, but the term "cognitive-behavioral" has now been broadened so much that it includes almost everything). At the time, "cognitive" still meant mostly Beck and Ellis: an Activating event triggers Beliefs, which result in behavior as a Consequence (A-B-C). There was basically no role for emotion in decision-making, except as a "cognitive error." In response to Dr. Ternyik, I think that the role of emotion has been recognized much more in the past 2 decades, (e.g., the 2005 special issue of Health Psychology on the role of emotions in cancer-related decisions was something of a milestone: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/special/2252404). Leventhal was another early proponent of dual-process models in studies of health behavior ( Article The common-sense model of self-regulation of health and illness
), but even his work got distorted into "attitude" studies that were more cognitively focused. The Illness Perception Questionnaire is how people tend to study Leventhal's model, focusing on the cognitive branch and almost wholly neglecting the emotional branch, even though they were originally supposed to be equal.It seems like Kahneman is the psychologist who brought these ideas back to the mainstream in the mid-2000s, particularly due to the publicity surrounding his Nobel prize in economics. And in response to Dr. Twissell, I acknowledge Kahneman as a major influence: My paper on two minds theory ( Article Temporal Immediacy: A Two-System Theory of Mind for Understa...
) is really a minor modification of Kahneman that replaces the "lazy" narrative mind with an "absent" one in almost all everyday decisions. Gladwell's "Blink" also generated useful examples for that paper, especially for showing how intuitive thinking produces superior results in domains like chess or golf. Kahneman tends to paint intuitive thinking as the enemy, something we want to overcome by using our rational minds more often. Gladwell's book would suggest that's not always desirable, and my theory suggests that it's actually impossible.A final thought for Dr. Twissell: I would argue that scientific research is just as much an interplay of the two mental systems as legal thinking. Whether that's a matter of why we say p = .05 matters and p = .06 does not (it's just a convention), or a matter of how scientific revolutions occur (by generational replacement of the previous scientists), there are a lot of ways in which the scientific process is not wholly rational. But at its best it is a combination of imaginative insights and formal checking, a back-and-forth between the intuitive mind and the more analytic and methodical narrative mind. Paul Meehl gave what I think is the best description of scientific work: "think Yiddish, write British." That's the interplay between intuition and analysis in a nutshell.
Yes, the interplay of human creativity and methodical logic is a good mix for scientific research work.
http://meehl.umn.edu/talks/philosophical-psychology-1989
I agree that the development of new knowledge must be similar across the legal/scientific domains involving both intuitive and more methodical modes of cognition. However, (and I am no legal expert), philosophically the consensus on truth must be derived differently across these domains, since although similar methods may have been used to generate the knowledge the audiences are very different.
'Scientific' knowledge tends to be reviewed by peers who have a reasonable background in the subject concerned. Is it not the case that the outcomes of legal exchanges are generated at least in part by lay persons, who additionally have often been subjected to a considerable dramatic performance? This consensus of opinion must be quite different to that derived through the 'scientific' process. The interplay must also apply to the rational/intuitive receiver of knowledge, particularly in high-stakes situations.
Many thanks for citing the articles. I look forward to looking at them in due course. Regards, Adrian.
On the legal side of things, my reading of Mr. Bharara's book is that he wasn't talking so much about a verdict by a jury, but findings of fact by law enforcement professionals. The idea is that they are working very hard (using tools from both the narrative and intuitive mind) to establish _truth_. Once these "findings of fact" are known, they (a) decide whether to prosecute, and (b) try to persuade a jury that a person should be punished based on those facts. I am certain that other factor come into play during the trial, like juror beliefs and biases, performance by the attorneys, and various social influences. I was more interested by the way the prosecutors work to convince _themselves_ of whether or not something is true before it even gets to that point. It does seem to me a great deal like the back-and-forth involved in peer-reviewed scientific knowledge development, at least during that first stage of the process.
Yes I agree, and perhaps this interplay is all the more intense given the immediacy of the task (I would imagine anyway). I wonder how new knowledge is held by the prosecutors you mention Paul F Cook ? In the disciplines of 'research' new knowledge emerges over time and often between several researchers. Prosecutors must, on the other hand, rely on the eventual verdicts to 'officially' confirm or dis-confirm their findings. How do they feel about their knowledge claims when the eventual outcome is rejection? Does this align with the peer review process? I wonder if the prosecutors knowledge claim is more compartmentalised, in that it relates 'case-by-case', rather than within a continuum of disciplinary knowledge as is usually the case across academic fields.
Very often the environment in which the human finds themselves is detrimental to ones mental health. This TLU (Truth, Lie, Uncertainty) environment in which the human is immersed is a topic that is of concern to the social scientist and as such discussed in the September 2019 issue of Scientific American. This special issue provides the reader with an rudimentary WKDB (World Knowledge DataBase) for systems governed by:
o Truth,
o Lies, and
o Uncertainties
In order to provide a possible additional understanding by discerning the analytical difference between absolute TRUTH and the relative LIES of the TRUTH
the video on the subject was created and posted on YouTube. This video can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2LaWQ-h9PU&t=25s
B programming the human 1 sec heart beat response when stimulated by static values of:
o Truth = 3.14159265358979 , and
o Lie = - 3.14159265354411
The response of the 1 sec heart is illustrated in the video Design and development of a forensic simulator from which this motion/emotion was obtained satisfies Newton's Laws of motion/emotion. Additional details are
attached
This was a great discussion, and inspired a second blog post. This week‘s is about Narrative and Intuitive thinking in the process that scientists use to establish truth! https://sites.google.com/view/two-minds/blog
Thank you Paul F Cook . I will look forward to reading the blog post.
Many thanks for the link Paul F Cook I enjoyed the article. I have been a big fan of the Consensus Theory of Truth for a long time and your two modes of thinking, I believe, both operationalise and align nicely with it. Best regards...
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