Once one accounting fraud surfaced, multiple others were discovered. Once a few accounting frauds at Enron were exposed, multiple other accounting frauds surfaced not only at Enron but also at multiple p. 34 other companies. Investors became more alert to the problem or were able to read between the lines in the cash-flow statements or something similar, turning over other rocks and finding slimy things beneath.
The Security Exchange Commission started investigating not only Enron but also Global Crossing and ImClone and companies of that ilk. They found an epidemic of frauds. Congress held special inquiries and acted as if it didn’t know anything about these accounting sleights of hand, and in many cases it didn’t. Now we seem to have a plague of accounting fiascos bursting all over.
The point is that a little discovery of a little nugget of truth often opens the way to a big discovery of a big truth or even truths. In the case of multiple American businesses, the bitter truth is that multiple corrupt practices are rampant.
But what’s all this about? Why are we spending so much time and energy discussing generalizations? What’s the point? The point is that once the general rule is established, it can be applied to particular situations to make correct predictions or reach correct conclusions about reality. This can become a useful guide helping us decide what action to take. Furthermore, the deduction from the general to the particular generates predictions that one can verify (show to be true) or falsify (show to be false). Verification might tend to confirm the general principle, but falsification refutes the general principle absolutely. In the philosophy of science, this process is known as the hypothetico-deductive method. More than a few philosophers have observed that no matter how many confirming examples you produce, you can’t prove any open, universal proposition or generalization with decisive finality. This observation led Francis Bacon (1561-1626) to conclude, “The force of the negative instance is greater.” T. H. Huxley (1826-1895) added (probably with tongue in cheek) that “The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”[2] Thus, science is, and must only be, a matter of endless striving and of endless inquiry.
For example, let’s apply what we have learned to the airplane fuel problem of the introduction.
All jet planes need fuel (general rule). My jet is running low on fuel (particular situation). Therefore, I must fuel the plane (reality-based conclusion derived from and based on the application of the general principle to the particular instance). (Note that the application has the protective effect of preventing disaster.)
The event of going from the general to the particular (that is, the p. 35 process of applying the general rule to the particular situation at hand) is a deduction, and the process is deductive logic. In a way, deductive logic is the opposite of inductive logic because deductive logic goes from the general to the particular, and inductive logic goes from the particular to the general.
If I were still laboring under my false belief about women smoking and wearing glasses, I would conclude that any woman wearing glasses would not be a smoker and that some woman not wearing glasses could be a smoker. The conclusion would follow from my generalization that all women who wear glasses don’t smoke.
Principle: Deduction goes from the general to the particular.
Principle: Deductive logic is the process of applying a general rule to a particular situation.
Principle: Induction goes from the particular to the general.
Principle: Inductive logic is the process of making a general rule from an analysis of particular instances.
Technical terms: a priori equals deduction; a posteriori equals induction. Therefore, a priori reasoning goes from the general to the particular, and a posteriori reasoning goes from the particular to the general.
Let’s work out on these concepts to be sure we have them firmly fixed in our brains. Although they are fundamental, they are fundamentally simple. If you master them, you will know more about the foundation of our knowledge than most of the people on your block and 99.99 percent of people on this planet.
Consider the following illustrative case study: The discovery of the importance of L-DOPA in the production of Parkinson’s disease was made on both sides of the Atlantic almost simultaneously. The American group working at Brookhaven National Laboratory learned from treating Parkinson’s patients with L-DOPA that they became enormously better. That group therefore postulated that L-DOPA was deficient in the brains of patients with the disease. What type of reasoning did the American group use to arrive at their conclusion?
p. 36 Induction or a posteriori reasoning. This group went from particular observations to a generalization about the relation of L-DOPA to the disease.
Another case study: The Austrian group measured L-DOPA in the brains of patients who died of Parkinson’s disease and concluded that L-DOPA was deficient in relation to control brains from people dying of other diseases. What type of reasoning did the Austrian group use to arrive at their conclusion?
Induction or a posteriori reasoning. This group went from particular observations to a generalization about the relation of L-DOPA to the disease.
The American group members then said that the next patient they saw with Parkinson’s should be treated with L-DOPA. They predicted that that patient would also improve. What kind of reasoning was involved?
Deduction or a priori reasoning. This group went from a generalization based on their previous studies to a conclusion about a particular patient.
The Austrian group then said that the next brain from a Parkinson’s patient that would come to them for measurement would also show a deficiency of L-DOPA. What kind of reasoning was involved?
Deduction or a priori reasoning. This group went from a generalization based on their previous studies to a conclusion about a particular patient’s brain.
Do cows think? And if so, do cows think by logical induction followed by logical deduction?
The distinctions between induction and deduction and inductive logic and deductive logic are important. So let’s try to understand them with another particular example that leads to the generalization that animals seem to think and to the deduction that cows seem to think by logical induction followed by logical deduction.
Cows newly arrived in a field that has an electric fence will touch the wires several times. Then, they will stay away from the wires. Since this happens every time that cows enter a new field and touch the electric fence, we feel inclined to generalize about their behavior. We might even conclude that the cows are using inductive followed by deductive logic. Their induction would conclude that it is not good to touch the fence because it hurts, and their deduction would be that since it is not good to touch the fence, the next time they touch the electric fence, it will hurt. That being the case, they will adjust their behavior, if they p. 37 don’t want to spend the rest of their lives getting shocked, so as to not touch the electric fence.
Although we have no idea how (or if) cows think, their action does look an awful lot like a rational inference, which could be formulated as follows: “Every time I touched that dang wire, I got shocked. If I don’t wish to spend the rest of my life getting shocked, I should stop touching it. I, Bessy the Cow, will therefore construct a general rule derived from the particular observation that for each and every time I touched the wire I got shocked. That rule will be stated as follows: Touching wire fences is always painful. The pain may be avoided by not touching the wire. I, Bessy the Cow, will prove the general rule by not touching the wire and not getting shocked. Occasionally, I may touch the wire just to test that the rule is still reasonable, and, when I do so, I shall expect to get shocked.”
No question about it: Cows and other animals modify their behavior and probably achieve their generalizations by some kind of instinct or paired association of two items that are connected together in their consciousness.
Paired association is the neuropsychological mechanism underlying thought.
As with the cows,
once two items are associated in the consciousness, each item tends to help recall the other. This is the basic neuropsychological element of associative thought, and it relates to brain function. The brain consists of billions of responding units called neurons. One item—such as an electric fence—activates a group of neurons, and another—such as pain—activates another group. When the items share a significant number of activated neurons, the shared neurons will facilitate the recall of both items by tending to discharge both neuron networks. Repeated activation changes the probability of reactivation by restraining inhibitory connections and facilitating excitatory connections. Repeated re-reactivations will cause actual alteration of the structure of the brain, making the association firmer. This is the fundamental neuropsychological mechanism underlying long-term memory. This mechanism explains why overly learned tasks are so difficult to damage or erase—the memory of the overlearned association is delocalized and stored diffusely in the very structure of neuronal networks and in the neuronal connections (synapses) themselves.
Association is both the blessing and the bane of conscious thought.
Two items once associated in the consciousness tend to each recall the other. Fine! That is, was, and will always be an important mechanism that helped, helps, and will help animals survive by learning. The p. 38 problem is that the mere association of items does not necessarily reflect the reality situation because the two items might be associated by chance and not as cause and effect. In other words, the psychological association may not reflect an actual association in the real world. In our mental lives we are dealing with both the world (the reality) and the representation of the world (our internal mental view of the world, which may or may not correspond with reality).
Pairing items in the consciousness—such as electric wire and shock—might be OK for cows in a field, but humans face much more complicated situations and, therefore, paired association is not enough.
As external situations in the real world become more complex, other mental devices may be needed to correctly interpret which associations are important and which are not important. These mental processes, designed to assure correct and reality-based correspondences (truth determinations and truth preservations) between the real world and the perception of the real world, are multiple and varied and include the rules of clear thinking, the rules of formal and informal logic, symbolic logic, law, common sense (the mass of “Pattened Principles” in this book), the scientific method, and so on.
A general theory to organize and explain these rules and procedures, arrived at by induction after examination of particular examples of clear and crooked thinking, is offered at the end of this book under the highly ambitious rubric the uniform field theory (chap. 9). At this point, it is sufficient to understand that cows and humans share the same fundamental mechanism of thought: They both make paired associations. Humans are further equipped to test the truth value of their associations to more reliably understand reality. Part of that further equipment involves language and the correct use and control of language.
Human language reflects the basic element of human thought.
In school you may have heard that a simple sentence is the expression of one complete thought. Whether that statement is true or not would depend on the definition of thought and the definition of complete. In my view, a sentence reflects the conjunction of two items and therefore expresses the association of two thoughts. For instance, the sentence “Socrates is bald” actually links two thoughts, the concept of Socrates and the concept of baldness. So it is possible to view sentences as simple reflections of the basic associative mechanism by which the brain links items. In neuropsychological terms, the items that are linked are called ideas, concepts, thoughts, and so forth; in linguistic terms, p. 39 they are called subject and predicate; in logical terms, they are called the reference and the characterizing phrase. By whatever names we choose to call them, they still reflect the same underlying basic mechanism of associative thought. It is no accident that the fundamental element of language mirrors the fundamental element of conscious thought because language is both a tool and a product of thought and directly relates to the fundamental way that the brain operates.
Principle: Association is not enough to understand complex human situations. Further consideration and clear, intelligent thinking are often needed to fully understand the reality and the truth.
Cows probably do not arrive at their conclusions (the rules for their actions) by any kind of strict logic or coherent thinking but rather by conjunction of two items, each of which will tend to suggest the other. In this case, the conjunctive statement would be: wire + shock = shock + wire, with shock reminding the cow of wire and wire reminding the cow of shock. With enough reminders, especially those that are painful, the conjunction becomes fixed in the cow’s memory by the facilitation of synapses common to both items. (I think that’s true. But until we can actually talk with the animals and find out if and how they think, who knows?)
Conclusion: Cows appear to think by associating items, and this process resembles inductive and deductive logic.
Do cats think? And if so, do cats think the same way cows do?
Ho, ho, ho. That’s very funny. Anyone who has ever kept a cat would know that cats have their own cognitive style. Cats are unlikely to view the world the way cows do. But, in a larger sense, the two species do share certain aspects of thought and behavior.
Take my cat. No, don’t take my cat. You can’t have her. I love her dearly and will not part with her. Instead, consider my cat’s behavior. My cat, PJ Patten, has little knowledge or understanding of the English language. Nor has PJ evinced any great interest in learning English. Yet when I call out, “Cat food!” she comes running.
PJ must have constructed in her little cat brain a general inference that followed from the first three times that I shouted, “Cat food!” Because PJ knows that each and every time I said, “Cat food,” I fed her, she believes (there is no other word, unless we use the word concludes) that every time I say those words, food is on the way. Although we have p. 40 no idea how (or if) cats think, PJ’s behavior does look an awful lot like a rational inference. PJ’s inductive logic probably goes like this: “Every time that fool shouts, ‘Cat food,’ he opens a can and puts food in my dish. Therefore, the next time he says, ‘Cat food,’ he will open a can and put food in my dish.” Conclusion: Cats think.
Conclusion: Cows think by associating items in the consciousness. They appear to form hypotheses by induction, and they appear to apply the hypothesis to particular situations by deduction. Ditto for cats.
Speaking of cats reminds me of Charles Darwin. Perhaps you have heard of him. After multiple observations, Darwin concluded that all white cats with blue eyes are deaf. This is a subtle generalization that arose from a series of hundreds of observations from which he ascertained that in every known case, white cats with blue eyes just can’t hear a blessed thing. If he had contented himself with the results of his own observations and what he could discover from the observations of others related to this issue, the most that could have been said was that many white cats with blue eyes were deaf. Darwin was prepared, however, to go beyond his own experience and say that he had discovered a condition that was true of all blue-eyed white cats, past, present, and future, which incidentally, it is.
Conclusion: Scientists, like Darwin; cows, like the ones described; cats, like PJ; and by extrapolation, all animals seem to think by associating items in the consciousness. They appear to formulate general rules by induction and then by deduction apply the rules to particular situations.
Notice that with Darwin’s discovery and with other so-called scientific generalizations, the finding of one exception would defeat it. Since Darwin said all white cats with blue eyes are deaf, I can refute his statement by proving that one white cat with blue eyes can hear. So far no such cat has been found.
The tentative nature of science is the reason that the general public is so con
fused when a new medical study comes out and concludes something different from the study reported the year before. Last year, hormone replacement for women was good; this year, it is not. Twenty years ago, radical mastectomy was the surgical standard for the treatment of breast cancer. Now lumpectomy is considered better. Last year, the medical authorities were keen on mammography, and this year, they are not keen about it because a new study showed data that indicated that the old study was wrong. If the old study was wrong, then the recommendation on mammography had to change.
p. 41 Unlike most normal human beings, scientists like to have their laws questioned and disproved. They know that upon that process all progress depends. Thus, science looks at its own laws rather dispassionately. If a law is proved wrong, a new law is established to take its place. The new law will be a generalization that will have greater accuracy in telling us the real situation and the truth.
This type of thinking not only applies to scientific understanding of gravity and deaf blue-eyed cats; it can apply to our personal lives as well.
As I said, in my youth, I believed that women who wore glasses never smoked. That idea has been proven wrong. Now I know that what I thought was true was not true and that smoking and wearing glasses probably have nothing to do with each other. The association, my mental conjunction “glasses and not-smoking,” did not reflect the reality situation. So much for my erroneous idea about smoking and glasses. That is one personal generalization that doesn’t work. But what about all the other erroneous ideas I hold that I don’t know are wrong? Ouch! Those are the things that can hurt.
Truth, Knowledge, or Just Plain Bull: How to tell the difference Page 4
