Reasoning (in human choice)

The accurate method

        There are many many factors that can cause faulty reasoning. We can let social factors influence us, such as when we buy an item because we find the seller attractive. We may use irrelevant or incomplete statistics. We may just have faulty reasoning in general.
        Reason-lines are a way to overcome all of the above. They totally circumvent all problems with non-physical statements and common "bias" words (which I will discuss on the next page). It's important to understand that I do not propose that reason-lines are time efficient for all choices.

       Now let's look at a few topics where most people have a tendency to disagree in their choosing.
  • How to vote in a political election
  • Which verdict to choose as a jury member
  • How much money to donate to charity
  • Whether or not to get an abortion
  • Whether or not to be a vegetarian
        These are all practical applications of philosophical questions. I will now show how to apply my philosophical points to these issues.

        The first step is to determine what we are asking. The most common question asked in practice is "What should I do?" (e.g. "Should I vote for this candidate or that candidate?"). This question, in common usage at least, is non-physical. This means that, as proven on the first page, the answer to the question will not be relevant to anybody's choice.
        With that question aside we can then ask "What would a perfectly logical creature do when presented with the above choices?" As mentioned on the motivation page, logic is only a technique for improving the efficiency of how we get the things we desire. So the answer would depend entirely on the desires of the individual. Which brings us to the final question then of "How can I most efficiently get what I desire when presented with the scenarios described above?" And to answer this we simply use very complete logical reasoning.

        To completely logically establish the optimality of a choice one would have to account for his/her highly variable personal situation often. Therefore, on this site I will focus on only universal techniques. The most useful universal technique for checking the logic in one of the above scenarios is by breaking up all the consequences separately and calculating the significance of each separately. For abbreviation purposes I call this process making a reason-line.

        A reason-line is a set of statements which logically establishes a consequence and which calculates its severity for a person's desire set. If one cannot make a reason-line then he/she cannot logically show that a statement is important. Whenever an argument is made for you to make a certain choice you must be able to find a reason-line, or that argument is not logical or is not relevant.
        I have never encountered anybody who used full reason-lines. Often though, there exists a valid reason-line even if not all the points are always stated aloud. On the other hand, often there is no possible reason line. Let's take a quick example of an argument that lacks a reason-line:
Checking for a reason-line
        I've heard more than one person say "Homosexuality is unnatural therefore it should not be practiced." Well this argument will be sound only if all unnatural things have negative consequences*. Of course we can already see that many unnatural things (e.g. cars) are useful. It is also apparent that this is not a complete reason-line because no quantity has been shown.
* Technically it doesn't need to show that ALL unnatural things do. It only needs to show that homosexuality does. For example showing that all unnatural physical behaviors have more negative consequences than positive would be adequate.

       The above example did not have a reason-line. Below is an example of a reason-line.
Reason-Line for one consequence of putting murderers in jail
  1. Many people understand and consider the consequences of their actions.(would be supported by a statistic)
  2. Of the above people, many of them realize that there is a chance that they will get caught and convicted if they murder.(would be supported by a statistic)
  3. Many of the above people relatively care more about not being in prison than murdering. (would be supported by a statistic)
  4. Fewer of the above people will commit murders if murder is illegal. (Approximated from combining the above)
  5. On average those people who get murdered become overall satisfy fewer desires than had they lived. (self-apparent)
  6. If fewer murders occur (assuming somewhat random distribution) then any individual has an increased odds of happiness on average. (combining the above)
  7. Therefore one consequence to any voter [who may be murdered] of outlawing of murder is a gain in desires that could be estimated through the above. (combining the above)
        The above shows, with certainty equal to that of the premises (i.e. the statements supported by statistics), that there will be one positive consequence to any given individual from making murder illegal. As logical reasoning, we know that if any one of the premises turned out to be false then the conclusion would be false (in fact this can be a good way to show something is a necessary premise). For example, if it turned out that most criminals liked being in jail then the conclusion weight calculation would be inaccurate, it might not be such a smart idea to punish murder with jail. You may have spotted a few inaccuracies I let exist in the above reason-line for simplicity purposes. A person in government making policies would ideally consider a much more comprehensive version of the above. Also, I am well aware that this particular example is obvious and such a proof isn't necessary. I'll later show less obvious example.
      An important thing to note is that the above does not prove, even if every premise is accurate, that putting murderers in jail is in any person's interest. This only shows a single consequence. If I had actual statistics then the above reason-line would show the change in probability that one is murdered which could be used to calculate the weight of that consequence. There are a number of other consequences that would need to be weighed and the sum of all of these would determine how such a person would choose.

Proceed to: Language and common "biased" ideas