musing on "sanity" and "being right"

[kengr]

While reading something I got to thinking.

An old description some author had came to mind. "Reasoning psychotic" was his term for someone who used reason and logic, but to attain insane goals.

Which lead me to consider that just because someone is using reason and logic doesn't mean that their conclusions are correct. Nor does the *lack* of reason or logic in an argument mean that the conclusion is automatically wrong.

Both are things that people need to keep in mind.

Comments

Well, the purpose...

[seawasp]

... can't affect the logic. It may affect what you're choosing to logically prove, but not the logic itself. That is where you have to look at the "selected domain" problem. People who have a strong axe to grind may reason logically, but very carefully select the "truths" (postulates) that they accept so as to be able to prove the thing they want proven.

People who freqently arrive at correct answers from incorrect premises? The only ones I knew appeared, to me, to simply be disjoint in their thinking; their EXTERNAL processes were incorrect, but somewhere in their gut they seem to understand what was really going on. (this is most common in the physical and financial arenas)