A Reason-ABLE process

The term reasonable is an interesting one because it depends on the individual and has within itself logical contradiction. On this site, articles aim to be reason-ABLE, which basically means that if there is new information or principles discovered they can be used to revise a past view in favor of one that is more complete, though not absolute. The principle, as a friend once said, is this: show me your strength, and I will show you your weakness.

This strength/weakness concept applies to ideologies which are ultimately based on a REASON-able process each of which seems to have its own inherent weaknesses that adherents are largely blind to until they grow. This concept is further illustrated with triangle with two principles at its base and one generalized principle or harmonization at its peak.

A similar principle is at work when considering an event and the facts which help shape the narrative of that event. Consider that two children with the same set of parents may have a vastly different views of those parents as well as outcomes. In the same way, it is seen that an event is based upon a description or recollection of smaller events that happened - which contain information about the location of objects during each of the smaller events as well as the actors that participated in the event. If one's view of the full picture is obscured by either one's own limitations or some other reality that prevents capturing the whole story, then we find that one small detail, if overlooked, can often result in a dramatically different understanding of that event.

Stated simply, until one knows everything, one knows nothing - but until one knows everything, one can try to do the best he can with what he has. Consider the following: A Compilation of I-did-not-know-thats (IDNKT)

Is Reasoning itself, Reason-able?

Spock said, paraphrasing, logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end. Perhaps we must apply some reasoning to our reasoning. Eventually, we may come to realize that reasoning itself becomes defeated as the sole mechanism for obtaining Truth and getting beyond our individual divided perspectives.

A Survey of Types of Reasoning

Defeasible Reasoning

Reasoning is defeasible when the corresponding argument is rationally compelling but not deductively valid. The truth of the premises of a good defeasible argument provide support for the conclusion, even though it is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. In other words, the relationship of support between premises and conclusion is a tentative one, potentially defeated by additional information.

According to Aristotle, deductive logic (especially in the form of the syllogism) plays a central role in the articulation of scientific understanding, deducing observable phenomena from definitions of natures that hold universally and without exception. See [1]

The Wheeler Experiment

todo: revise Wheeler's delayed choice experiment is actually several thought experiments in quantum physics, proposed by John Archibald Wheeler, with the most prominent among them appearing in 1978 and 1984.[1] These experiments are attempts to decide whether light somehow "senses" the experimental apparatus in the double-slit experiment it will travel through and adjusts its behavior to fit by assuming the appropriate determinate state for it, or whether light remains in an indeterminate state, neither wave nor particle."[2]

The common intention of these several types of experiments is to first do something that some interpretations of theory say would make each photon "decide" whether it was going to behave as a particle or behave as a wave, and then, before the photon had time to reach the detection device, create another change in the system that would make it seem that the photon had "chosen" to behave in the opposite way. Some interpreters of these experiments contend that a photon either is a wave or is a particle, and that it cannot be both at the same time. Wheeler's intent was to investigate the time-related conditions under which a photon makes this transition between alleged states of being. His work has been productive of many revealing experiments. He may not have anticipated the possibility that other researchers would tend toward the conclusion that a photon retains both its "wave nature" and "particle nature" until the time it ends its life, e.g., by being absorbed by an electron which acquires its energy and therefore rises to a higher-energy orbital in its atom. However, he himself seems to be very clear on this point. He says:

The thing that causes people to argue about when and how the photon learns that the experimental apparatus is in a certain configuration and then changes from wave to particle to fit the demands of the experiment's configuration is the assumption that a photon had some physical form before the astronomers observed it. Either it was a wave or a particle; either it went both ways around the galaxy or only one way. Actually, quantum phenomena are neither waves nor particles but are intrinsically undefined until the moment they are measured. In a sense, the British philosopher Bishop Berkeley was right when he asserted two centuries ago "to be is to be perceived.