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Fallacy of Logical Omniscience

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Eiuol

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38 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

I mean the denial of facts after having already come to the conclusion that "Socrates is mortal".

I thought, by evasion,  you had meant a "not knowing (as in missed knowledge) that you should know".

So you mean a reversing of a conclusion with the intention to do so.

I make the distinction because "being in denial" is usually associated with a semi-conscious (hidden) denial.

Rand's description can also mean: a "refusal to identify" before the "knowing, rather than an identification that is refused after the knowing/concluding. Mainly because of the phrase "blank out". "Blank-out", can mean a blindness toward an area of knowledge too. The idea of it meaning an awareness that is turned into unawareness is interesting and new.

I was thinking of an example where A and B are having a discussion and B brings up a fact that could prove A completely wrong. A decides to refuse the truth of what B said evading the humiliation. In this case, A knows the truth. Although evading B, he knows the truth. (He has NOT evaded the knowledge although he evades declaring to another).

Although the next day, he forgets it somehow. Then it would be seen as willful evasion.

What about when someone sees your point but says something like "I will have to tell you my objection tomorrow, I am not too clear on it today". The awareness (I suppose context) that they have today they agree with you, or does their doubt mean that they didn't, in fact, agree with you?

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As I thought about it more, I believe that evasion, as in revising the fact, is a subspecies of dishonesty.

 

Edited by Easy Truth
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52 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

So you mean a reversing of a conclusion with the intention to do so.

Should know, in the sense that they deny knowing despite knowing, or refuse to integrate their knowledge despite the knowledge that they could. I don't mean should, as in "you should know how to do calculus, it's too bad no one taught you ". What you should take the time to learn is a separate issue.

54 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

Rand's description can also mean: a "refusal to identify" before the "knowing, rather than an identification that is refused after the knowing/concluding.

Fair enough. I fixed up my explanation to reflect my agreement.

53 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

I make the distinction because "being in denial" is usually associated with a semi-conscious (hidden) denial.

I think that happens because a lot of people still think in Freudian terms. There is no reason to think that there is a type of hidden denial, hiding away from our awareness. You could have muddled thinking, or don't take the time to focus, but neither is hidden.

55 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

The awareness (I suppose context) that they have today they agree with you, or does their doubt mean that they didn't, in fact, agree with you?

Or it means they have doubts because they don't know how you integrated that into a new idea. There's a reason that professors teach classes even in PhD programs. It's one thing to learn a whole lot of facts from a lot of books on your own, but you need to go to school to learn the standards necessary to be an expert. If someone has doubts, it's safe to say that they really do. You might just need to elaborate, or ask them what they're confused about.

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

Should know, in the sense that they deny knowing despite knowing, or refuse to integrate their knowledge despite the knowledge that they could.

 

I suppose I would need more examples. Perhaps there is one in her novels?

I tend to think that "to know that it can be integrated" is to try to integrate, see that it can be done. And then reverse the effect. But it is too late to refuse to integrate it, it already got integrated. You can only revise/replace it with "unknown" which I don't know how that happens. 

The only time that I know of evasion, I have seen it, I have done etc. is due to major emotional duress. When one encounters a very difficult truth. A mother does not want to identify a dead child, or when one can't admit the truth or their whole view of life falls apart (the idea of starting all over can be intolerable). It can happen with admitting a deep disappointment, loss, or paralyzing terror.

I would go as far as saying that some kinds of evasion have survival value. A wounded person in war who represses the pain of being shot has a better chance of survival than one who feels the pain and goes into shock and dies. Also, paralyzing terror can cause an inability to take action, and a temporary illusion of safety can be the best way forward.

I suspect this (the OP's) is a type of evasion with a different characteristic. It must be a type of dishonesty to oneself. What is hard to believe is that it can happen without an emotional impetus (a strong fear of the truth). What other motives can there be?

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10 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

You can only revise/replace it with "unknown" which I don't know how that happens. 

It can be anything, even the old belief.

11 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

A wounded person in war who represses the pain of being shot has a better chance of survival than one who feels the pain and goes into shock and dies.

That's not evasion. To be exact, it's probably not repression, but acknowledging the fact they were shot but then focusing on more important things at the moment.

11 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

I suspect this (the OP's) is a type of evasion with a different characteristic.

The fallacy of logical omniscience is not a type of evasion. It's accusing someone of evasion or bad reasoning, but wrongly. Just because we both know that Socrates is a man, doesn't mean we both know that Socrates is mortal. The fallacy would be that I say you're evading because you claim you don't know that Socrates is mortal, despite knowing Socrates is a man. It might make more sense actually to call it a cognitive bias.

Logical omniscience is the idea that if you know A, it also implies that you know everything that follows from A.

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Evasion is knowing that 2+2=4 and then refusing to accept one's own conclusion. 

I see a man who I admire take something from a store, actively concealing it from the store clerk.  Because I admire the person, I refuse to see that he is a thief. 

I see a politician advocate for something completely antithetical to his stated principles. Because he is of my party, I invent wildly implausible excuses for his behavior, instead of accepting that he is hypocritical or worse.

I see all the instances where socialism has failed and, because I believe wholly in socialism, repeat loudly to myself that those things were not "real" socialism, so socialism has never actually been tried, much less failed.

See the pattern?

A fact enters my consciousness.  I don't want the fact to be true.  So I do something to deny the fact. This something might actually prevent me from having full conscious awareness of the fact or it might be some form of rationalization.  But either way I take active measure, to deny what some part of me knows is true or, having reason to think something might be true, to refuse to investigate what I know so as to avoid the possibility of knowing the truth.

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