Reddit reviews The Enigma of Reason

The biggest collection of Philosophy of Cognitive Science is probably in the PhilPapers collection.

A couple of my favorite books in this area:

• The Enigma of Reason
  
• The Centered Mind: What the Science of Working Memory Shows Us
  
• Attention (New Problems of Philosophy)

My rebuttal to phrase (B) in your thesis:

>To say that degrees are the reason for a depressed middle class in the States is reductionistic. It's the fallacy of the single cause. If we take this literally, all we need is one other argument for the depression of the middle class to disconfirm this in its entirety. Here's one: the flow of goods and services in America disproportionately distributes wealth between the middle class and upper class in favor the upper class and contributes to rising inequality, depressing the middle class.

Your response:

>Not bad. But there's a flaw in your logic.
>
>I said that degrees are the underlying reason. Which implies that there may be other reasons above it, but distillation will get you to degrees. To do that, you have to understand how Lean works and do it as a step analysis starting with the abstract problem: depressed middle class income. And I share this as a person who once managed people and was directly connected with Human Resources on multiple occasions.
>
>Why is the middle class depressed? Because middle class people aren't making enough money.
>
>Why aren't people making enough money? Because employers aren't paying high enough wages.
>
>Why aren't employers paying high enough wages? Because wages are fair market and determined based on the role. The role isn't worth paying more.
>
>Why isn't the role worth paying more? Because it's low skill labor.
>
>Why is it low skill labor? Because it doesn't require advanced education.
>
>If you sat in front of an executive and asked that exact set of questions, or at least some derivation thereof, you'd end at up the same conclusion. But wait...it then opens up an obvious contradiction.
>
>If the labor doesn't require advanced education, then why does your job posting require or even desire a college degree?
>
>To which you'll get one of two answers: "It's the company standard policy to require everyone have a college education" (most likely) or "we do it to help weed out applicants".
>
>If it's standard policy to require something that isn't the standard (and it isn't by all statistics available), you are acknowledging, by correlation using the step process above, that this "something" is depressing the middle class.
>
>Your example:
>
>the flow of goods and services in America disproportionately distributes wealth between the middle class and upper class in favor the upper class and contributes to rising inequality, depressing the middle class.
>
>Is then debunked by the same step process. Why is the upper class able to disproportionately do that? Because middle class people aren't making enough money (which is the first step above, and leads you to...where?
>
>Goods and services and disproportion are a byproduct of the issue, far displaced from the root cause.

I know I shouldn't, but I'll play the "he said, she said" game for just a moment here, as you did say, and I quote, "(B) Degrees are the reason for a depressed middle class in the States". However, this is a bit different than the title, "They are the true underlying cause of the depressed middle class in the States"... so, I digress.

The epistemological claim that a proper step analysis reveals the true causal chain of events in a complex system is a bit specious, although a good step analysis absolutely has its benefits, and your line of reasoning is absolutely correct. However, it is also a literal exercise in repetitive reductionism, as each step could be explained by more than one cause. It causes us to fall prey to the availability heuristic, as well as confirmation bias, to some degree:

• Consider a hypothetical, to answer your first-level abstraction: why is middle class depressed? Well, because middle class people aren't making enough money... or, perhaps, the upper class is making too much money. Why is the upper class making too much money? Well, [insert answer here]
  
• Another hypothetical: why is the middle class depressed? Maybe, perhaps, the middle class is depressed because the costs of goods, as measured by the consumer price index, are rising disproportionately to the rise in middle class income (which seems to be a more economically accurate estimation of the situation). Why is this happening? Well, [insert answer here]
  
• One more hypothetical (that I hear often where I am from): Why is the middle class depressed? The middle class is depressed because they don't make enough money. Why aren't people making enough money? Because the government taxes too much. Why does... [finish. question here]
  
  All of these services the idea that, in your words, distillation will not always get you to degrees-- distillation will get you to where you want to go with your argument. Despite our best efforts to be rational and unbiased, reasoning is a fickle tool that ultimately evolved in us to convince others (more on this here). As an example, you might have even demonstrated your biased reasoning in the following:
  
  >Your example:
  >
  >the flow of goods and services in America disproportionately distributes wealth between the middle class and upper class in favor the upper class and contributes to rising inequality, depressing the middle class.
  >
  >Is then debunked by the same step process. Why is the upper class able to disproportionately do that? Because middle class people aren't making enough money (which is the first step above, and leads you to...where?
  
  Where in my statement was it said that the upper class is doing this? In a genuine step analysis, shouldn't the next question logically be "why does the flow of goods and services in America disproportionately distribute wealth between the middle class and upper class in favor the upper class?"
  
  *******************
  
  In response to the following:
  
  >If you sat in front of an executive and asked that exact set of questions, or at least some derivation thereof, you'd end at up the same conclusion. But wait...it then opens up an obvious contradiction.
  >
  >If the labor doesn't require advanced education, then why does your job posting require or even desire a college degree?
  >
  >To which you'll get one of two answers: "It's the company standard policy to require everyone have a college education" (most likely) or "we do it to help weed out applicants".
  >
  >If it's standard policy to require something that isn't the standard (and it isn't by all statistics available), you are acknowledging, by correlation using the step process above, that this "something" is depressing the middle class.
  
  For reasons mentioned earlier, I'm not very confident that you and I would come to the same conclusion in a step analysis of the question, "why is the middle class depressed"?. However, let's table that for a moment, and assume that I happen to agree with you. In order to discuss it, I need to know what field or profession you're envisioning in this scenario. I ask because these conversations are absolutely not the case in fields like healthcare, and the differences between the professions you're envisioning versus healthcare might shed light on some of the relevant mechanisms here.
  
  I conclude that college degrees are among one of many reasons the middle class is depressed, but it is yet to be seen how it might be playing the primary driving role that you've proposed.