Consistency: how important is it?

Post Reply New Topic

Consistency is widely toted as a good thing for thinkers. The reason being that truth has to be consistent with itself and that holding to consistency will promote more solid thinking and more "rational" stands on issues. The question I ask though is how important consistency is.

The reason I question it is that there is no reason why the best theories we have in a set of varied subjects should be consistent with each other. Our best theories may be wrong, and they probably are, but there is no reason to force false consistency despite this problem. After all, by forcing consistency, we lose the ability to explore both ideas more fully, and instead commit to one idea in a manner that is somewhat arbitrary from our perspective. By allowing inconsistency, we have a more diverse set of ideas that can be explored where more things can be explored and more ideas discovered from it.

So, while I am not getting into any depth in this defense, should we regard Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." to be wisdom or outright folly, and why? If consistency is important, why is it important? It is not as if your mind will be the one to find truth if you are consistent? If inconsistency can be tolerated, then why can it be so? Inconsistency makes a person's character all the more difficult to understand and weakens cognitive processes in the mind that many would believe are essential for finding truth and making sense of reality, possibly even leading to a kind of nihilism given how inconsistency destroys the possibility of a "web of belief".

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) " -Walt Whitman

But pragmatically, we should always try to seek the most parsimonious set of beliefs.

Ex Falsi quodlibet. From an inconsistency anything follows logically. We must be consistent in order to distinguish between what is true and what is false.

ruveyn

Nope, you mean a logical contradiction in a system of deductive reasoning. Many systems, such as for instance, our system of law, are filled with contradictions, but nobody holds the stand that "anything follows", otherwise we would essentially not regard our legal system as reliable for matters of rape and murder. However, our legal system only works to any extent if we can rely on it for such cases and other ones.

Why should we always seek the most parsimonious set of beliefs?

Consistency is most important in food. The sauces shouldn't be too thick or too thin.

if we insist on coloring strictly within the lines of our circumscribed philosophy, we surely avoid the occasional happy accident, which progress sometimes needs. sometimes it is better to think outside of the box, take a leap of faith, have a nixon-in-china moment.

A logical argument must be self-consistent, but I do not think an individual's behavior and personality necessarily need be consistent.

Ah, how about the set of logical arguments and ideas that a person accepts? I mean, yes, any particular argument must be self-consistent to be valid, but often people will espouse ideas that if taken seriously will be found to have contradictions. (I think it has even been argued that basic egalitarianism itself ends up having internal contradictions unless its followers abstain from the pursuit of wealth, at least according to Gerald Cohen's book "If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?", which I have not read.... yet, at least)

Anal retentive logicians like parsimonious systems.

ruveyn

So, I should seek the most cluttered set of beliefs because I hate anal retentive logicians?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurathian_bootstrap
"We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction."

I think that although ideally we should simply determine what is true, in reality it is better to have a robust, but somewhat flexible system. Otherwise what would be a series of paradigm shifts in a evolving system (which is large but contains some false consistency) becomes thinly spread and lacks structure on it's foundations.

If someone were writing out a philosophical treatise explaining their worldview, it'd probably be reasonable to try to keep things consistent. But people are not philosophical tracts, and they're almost bound to contradict themselves. People hold beliefs and values that are almost certainly in conflict. Different situations activate different cognitive schemata. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. As people take in new information and encounter new situations, they need to be able to adapt, and so their views will start to evolve.

Not at all. If you don't like clutter then don't be cluttered.

ruveyn

I find inconsistency leads to increased flexibility when you're thinking of philosophical stuff. Forcing yourself to be consistent makes you a defender of an idea very easily, and that's a bad trap to be stuck in.