The Art of Comparing Thoughts
Foremost in the practice of reason is the intentional comparative selection of thoughts for truth and quality.
Deductive reasoning is a classic tool of detective work, and a fundamental practice in the proper application of the scientific method. The core tool of effective deductive reasoning is calculating the consequences of an assumption, or series of assumptions that cooperate together. If a piece of evidence, a mechanism, an idea or a logical premise is true... What is then likely to also be true in relationship to and following on from that premise?
To begin - run and expand upon the consequences in your mind, calculate the implications within your imagination. Its quite possible to do this with many parallel examples based on the same original premise, but with variations where unknowns might lie. This imaginative practice is the foundation of formulating a hypothesis.
The other classical tool of reasoning is to pursue knowledge Inductively. Inductive Reasoning is working from the bottom up. Observing the world, and drawing conclusions about what is likely to happen, or is likely happening, or likely true. This method draws conclusions about the world, based on the habits of the world, so to speak. The Inductive approach doesn’t generally draw conclusions about the why of things, instead building a model of what is happening. Observing the ‘is happening’ of the universe.
What aspects of the world closely associate with each other? What causal patterns can be seen in the world — what is likely to happen, after a certain first thing happens — because you have seen it happen in sequence many times before? An example to consider: “I see the leaves shake when the wind blows.”
The classic example inductive reasoning is perhaps that of the sun. “The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west.” We moderns have a complex model of orbital dynamics to explain why the sun rises in the east, given the orbit, axial angle and spin of our Mother Earth, but without even a glimmer of that scientific theory, it is possible to conclude, inductively, that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, in the east, just as it has every day before this one. This method of observing and drawing practical conclusions about the patterns of the world is the foundation of the experimental component of the scientific method.
Combine these two methods of reasoning together and the process is to imagine a model of how the world works, what is true about that model, and the consequences of that model — then to compare that model with what is known, observable or experienced. Challenge comes in developing quality expectations towards what is legitimately known, observable or experiential. Its easy to be deceived by evidence, to be mislead by expectations and by observations and inferences. The trick of proper reasoning is never blindly following either a model of deduction, or the evidence and implications of induction. But rather to balance the weighting of the two with clear awareness.
My rubric of choice for managing this balance is that good theories or good hypothesis, as in good premises — bringing explanatory power to old knowledge. Good Theories take knowledge deeper and more revealatory when that knowledge is recompiled with the assumption that the premise is true.
What Even is a Tree?
An illustrative example for me was the realization that trees aren't an ever more giant living organism, in the way that we grow where even bones are alive. But rather, trees, the living creature, are in essence the skin. Each year depositing cellulose that becomes the trunk and wood. The tree is then growing on itself, growing on its past.
All knowledge comes together and with sudden revelation, it makes sense. This skinness is what deposits annular rings, as the fluctuations in how effectively the living skin of the tree can grow directly impacts the rate of depositing cellulose, and how dense the cellulose becomes. This is also the way in which a tree creates branches. Buy changing the growth pattern of the skin, into say a spiral instead of as a sheet, that area of growth begins to strengthen and embed. That spiral then becomes a well grafted branch buried deep in the truck as successive layers of growth surround and bind into it. Next, cutting the bark, the living part of the tree, all around a truck kills the tree, disconnecting the roots from the leaves. Then of course the merge into broader theory, a coherent evolutionary story. It is easy to see how a tree could evolve from a primordial moss like organism. Just start depositing cellulose and the rest of adaptation takes care of itself over time.
All the knowledge I've collected about trees made sudden and integrated sense, explaining itself elegantly with one piece of understanding that brings together seemingly disparate pieces of knowledge elegantly. This is explanatory power, and it is absolutely something to look for, a powerful intuition about what is true.
Furthermore, facts that I had been told and thought I'd known were true became clearly questionable. Such as that sap flowed up from a hole in the center wood of the tree. This takes us back into deduction, or rededuction, recalculating our premises or in this case the conclusions drawn from hearsay, observations and other ideas.
Seeing trees as living skin was a adolescent discovery for me, but taught me a lot about scientific discovery, because I came to the realization about how trees work by my own thinking, not a textbook.
There's a whole series of experiments that I could run to more thoroughly demonstrate the robustness of the Living Skin hypothesis. Such as grafting a set of tree skin onto a a support structure, or examining the wood of a tree to see if it was alive under the microscope, or more closely observing all the processes of a tree to see if anything disputes the living skin explanatory model. Other people have done many of the experiments I would do, so with some research skills I can confirm many predictions of my hypothesis, to the extent I trust their prior work. The idea is to compare the mental model with evidence and observations of reality, and to balance the weighting of trust and robustness for each. This can be done quickly and with low robustness and precision, or extreme rigor depending on how important various accuracy, effort and speed tradeoffs are on the subject in question.
For me right now, I am satisfied with the degree of certainty I currently have, nothing yet disputes it, and I am not a tree scientist.
The tools of classic reasoning are not a abstract and dry step by step mechanistic process as they are often taught. But rather a dance, a continuous interplay between facets of the mind in the attempt to develop more thorough understanding.
Thus, we conclude ourselves!
The basic method is as follows. Observe the world, generate a premise as to what is happening in the world and why. Calculate the consequences of that model of what is happening, compare the consequences of that model with specific observations of the world. To the extent that the model and observation line up, and expand together, your confidence in the model can grow.
That is the fundamental process of finding Truth.