Confidence in reason A popular adage goes something like this “I cannot argue down a conviction that has not been argued up.” It is impossible for me to use reason to convince someone who is without confidence in reason that they should have confidence in reason. An adult without confidence in reason must start the effort to study reason before they can gain a confidence in reason. Perhaps that is impossible also. Perhaps it is the case that an adult without a confidence in reason will never have confidence in reason. I suspect that 95% of the adults in the US have no confidence in reason and if my logic is correct they never will have that confidence. If that does not depress 5% of the population then nothing will. Perhaps it will delight the other 95%. Further thought leads me to modify that statement. The 95% without confidence in reason do in fact have some confidence in reason. They do recognize that as an instrument to gain a goal reason is necessary. What can we say about the 95% and reason? I guess we can say that they often have confidence in reason but that confidence is restricted to a limited aspect of life. Is a person capable of having confidence in reason when that person is almost completely ignorant of the nature of reasoning?
they can aknowledge someone elses reasoning. for example. I'm crap at football, but I can aknowledge when someone has done a good job of scoring a goal or whatever, I may not understand exactly why it was so good but I can tell it was. But yes it is sad the lack of adults without logical reason.
Reasoning is a fairly poor short term survival skill: "Oh look, there's a big boulder rolling down the hill. If I compute its trajectory I see that it will intesect with my current locus in a few monents. I wonder what the consequence of that would be. Let's see, the boulder is about 1.5 metres across, if we assume a density of 2.5 g/cc...." Splat! Far better to employ instinct and learned reflexes. "Shit, time I moved!" Extend that to the slightly more sophisitcated, but genetically embedded. T"his person looks quite different from me. Therefore he must be from a different tribe. Therefore he is dangerous and not to be trusted." And that's when the problems begin.
I've heard this argument used repeatedly but I find it unconvincing. Is it rationality that makes me see the Jew, the Arab, the White, the Black as equally human. If I had been in Germany would I have needed reason to prevent my instincts from going along with anti-Jewish propaganda. No. My instincts would have said the Jews were humans like me. You need thoughts and reasoning - however pernicious and faulty - to overcome obvious things like Jews are like us. When I was a kid, well before I sat around using deductive reasoning to overcome my instincts, I had friends who I absolutely knew had different color skin than mine and most of the people i knew. It took certain people's widespread thoughts, media protrayals and propaganda to work some racism into my brain. My instincts said 'Kid' quite accurately and found they were as apt to be assholes and good playmates as those of my color.
I don't think there is such a person on Earth. I don't believe a person, or an animal for that matter, that could survive without reasoning. Baron Max
It's true, the vast majority just cannot reason out their ideas. Talking about crime and punishment with people (for example) ive lost count of the number of times people have said things to me like 'ohh just string em up and be done with it' or 'society's going down the pan, kids need to learn respect'. It's the worst kind of sloppy, superficial, opinionating, anti-reasoning and it seems like practically everyone does it. It's the same whenever you challenge accepted norms, people will ad hoc through their teeth to defend 'their beliefs' which if theyd bother to be introspective for a moment they'd realise arent 'their' beliefs atall, theyre just norms adopted from their peers. It's all value/norm appropriation which eventially turns into 'my convictions/my beliefs' in their head given enough time.
In a liberal democracy like our own we cannot out-distance the general judgment capacity of the majority. If the US is going to make better judgments in the future then, by definition, our citizens must be able to make better decisions. I consider CT for all citizens as the only avenue for improving the judgment of our society in general. Everybody considers themselves to be a critical thinker. That is why we need to differentiate among different levels of critical thinking. Most people fall in the category that I call Reagan thinkers—trust but verify. Then there are those who have taken the basic college course taught by the philosophy dept that I call Logic 101. This is a credit course that teaches the basic fundamentals of logic. Of course, a person need not take the college course and can learn the matter on their own effort, but I suspect few do that. The third level I call CT (Critical Thinking). CT includes the knowledge of Logic 101 and also the knowledge that focuses upon the intellectual character and attitude of critical thinking. It includes knowledge regarding the ego and social centric forces that impede rational thinking. I think that any normal human can easily comprehend the message of CT. Very few adults have been taught CT but it can easily be learned by anyone who recognizes its importance. Anyone who can watch TV for a few hours a week certainly has the time to learn. The problem is lack of motivation and that is due to the fact that within our society few individuals recognize that thinking can be improved by study. Because our schools and colleges have only recently began to teach the subject few people have ever heard of the subject. Everyone thinks they are critical thinkers because they know nothing about it and that is the purpose of my sounding the horn.
I really think you need to reread my post and then explain what you are saying that is different from me. You are explaining how reason is the way to overcome prejudice. I have explained that prejudice is a useful short term survival strategy that really fucks up the long term. The way of protecting the long term is to use reason. I didn't realise I had been so obscure - are you sure you weren't using a knee jerk reaction to what you thought I had said, rather than a reasoned study of it?
The examples above show that what was reason yesterday may not be reason tomorrow. The confidence in so called "reason" may be confidence in what a culture calls reason. In philosophy reason is used to try to find ultimates without error. Yet it seems an endless process. So many different views of what we try to "reason". The more we discover in science, the more we see more to see. The more we reason, the more we find to reason further. We are made to reason and will not stop doing so. As an individual, as a society, we seek absolutes. We really are all doing the same through reason, scientific method or faith. We are influenced by the culture in which we live in how we may go about this. It is through culture that we seem to develop ethics, or reason to ethics. I guess one question I have is-why do paradoxes exist? Maybe they are just plays of our reasoning to show juxtiposition of ideas.......
No, I think you need to reread mine. I am not saying that reason is the way to overcome prejudice. I am actually saying that (poor) reasoning is more likely to be the root of prejudice and also that instinct is not the root problem. My instincts as a child were to see other races as like me. I only developed the bits of racism that got hooks when presented by (poor) reasoning and the media portrayal of certain groups.
