Nil desperandum! One of David McDonagh’s many favourite quotations was that “psychology follows logic” (he attributed this to Popper, but I cannot immediately find a reference). By this, I take him to have meant that as long as a sound argument is understood, then we will eventually come to fully accept it. But that might take some time, as we are often initially inclined to treat non-intuitive arguments as anomalies that we might be able somehow to explain away—until we finally accept that we cannot, and then even later find that they are our new intuitions. The patience required for this process to occur was referred to in another of McD’s favourite quotations: “[How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?] Thou know'st we work by wit and not by witchcraft, And wit depends on dilatory time” (Othello, II.iii.).
I find it difficult to avoid falling back into this conflation. I am not defending this, but regretting it.
Nil desperandum! One of David McDonagh’s many favourite quotations was that “psychology follows logic” (he attributed this to Popper, but I cannot immediately find a reference). By this, I take him to have meant that as long as a sound argument is understood, then we will eventually come to fully accept it. But that might take some time, as we are often initially inclined to treat non-intuitive arguments as anomalies that we might be able somehow to explain away—until we finally accept that we cannot, and then even later find that they are our new intuitions. The patience required for this process to occur was referred to in another of McD’s favourite quotations: “[How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?] Thou know'st we work by wit and not by witchcraft, And wit depends on dilatory time” (Othello, II.iii.).