Reason & Rationality

[amicus]

Reason:


Quote:
The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence.

Good judgment; sound sense. A normal mental state; sanity



Rationality:

Quote:
reasonable and sensible: governed by, or showing evidence of, clear and sensible thinking and judgment, based on reason rather than emotion or prejudice

able to think clearly and sensibly, unimpaired by physical or mental condition, strong emotion, or prejudice

in accordance with reason and logic: presented or understandable in terms that accord with reason and logic and with scientific knowledge

~~~

From the thread: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Post #94; Pure


Quote:
"Whether 'rationality' can do all the heavy lifting as regards ensuring a social component of 'the good', is however, open to question."



Same post:
Quote:
"...The question though, is whether *reason* is the basis for all such rules. I think not..."



~~~

Xssve says the same thing; that reason and rationality are not the fundamental source for moral judgments, but uses anecdotal (personal examples), subterfuge, to never say anything in absolute terms; a defining characteristic of moral relativists/subjectivists.

Reason is mans' only tool to acquire knowledge. Glance back to the definitions and note the association of reason, rationality and logic. Pure and Xssve reject reason as a means of acquiring knowledge.

This is important for all who may be 'one issue' liberals, and do not understand the necessity for man to use reason to determine human values, morals and ethics.

Reason is what differentiates man from animals. Further, the ability to construct concepts and abstractions, sets man apart from animals.

An animal can perceive the threat of one wolf, but not the concept of, 'many wolves'. Man can perceive the single wolf and the concept 'many' wolves and the abstract, 'predators'.

Both Xssve & Pure advocate that both 'concepts' and 'abstractions', do not exist in reality; are not connected with reality, are not 'concrete' absolutes upon which man builds knowledge.

Xssve will spend page upon page giving examples of how reason, rationality and logic fail and suggest that a majority consensus, 'for the greater good', is the means by which man determines the value of human actions. Pure does the same in poorly crafted, less cogent style, but the message is identical, 'man exists by his emotions and the approval of others.'

These two posters represent the result of a culture wide rejection of reason and rationality and have wrought untold damage to an entire generation who have rejected the mind and adopted emotionalism and subjectivism as a means of determining their own lives and values.

The reign of relativism is coming to an end and you will be faced with adopting a belief, a faith, to define your values, a 'Statist' society that will force values upon you; or you can use your mind, with reason, logic and rationality to determine human values.

With a faulty premise, "for the greater good"; society can justify the worst horrors you can imagine to sustain the whole by sacrificing the parts.

With the exception of the dictionary definitions at the top, these are my words, my syntax. They reflect, to the best of my understanding and ability, the philosophy of Objectivism as created by the late Ayn Rand.

I thought to mention that, as the beginnings of a Tax Revolution spilled out onto American streets today, on April 15, 2009, and signs bearing the title of Rand's book, 'Atlas Shrugged', which portrays a government gone wild, were evident across the country.

Amicus

 

[Pure]

re post

since i'm reduced to two lines taken out of context, i'm reposting in this spin off thread, my material from the thread about good and evil.

the question is whether reason gives us a basis for treating the other person--esp the stranger-- with respect, and not, for example, exploiting or killing him (assuming he's not friend or family). the question is NOT, isn't reason one of man's crowning glories in investigating the nature of the universe with abstraction, inference, hypothesis, systematic evidence-seeking. my argument is that some degree of compassion, fellow feeling, 'caring'--rooted in emotion-- is necessary for a foundation of morality. (i'm NOT saying 'run your life entirely from emotion or UNreason'.)

those seeking to better 'the race' or "the nation" ofter employ reason to justify the atrocities. reason says nothing about the truth of premises, such as 'XX type of people are inferior in some way." one needs to get one's fact right through scientific investigation, which is *partly* a matter of reasoning, but involves other processes as well. (Amicus' views on women and Black people are wrong , without proper basis in evidence, or inaccurate, not contrary to reason.)

further, within Rand's ethic of rational self interest, it becomes murky what is to most of us rather clear: if you see a man drowning and it takes a few mins effort and incurs no danger, you should, for example, toss him a life preserver and help him to safety. both fellow feeling and ordinary (non Randian) morality dictate this.




===

The Good and Rationality

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The good and rationality.

If people ought to pursue the good, and 'the good' has something to do with the flourishing of human life, obviously rationality has a part to play. For example a certain amount of peace is necessary in society, and some practices, e.g. inciting riots, breach the peace, and so, rationally, one must oppose on legal and moral grounds, inciting riots.

Similarly, human reason, in the broader sense is worth cultivating; the works of physicists and civil engineers, for example. And so a component of human flourishing has to do with the health of institutions that produce or sustain physicists and engineers.

Whether 'rationality' can do all the heavy lifting as regards ensuring a social component of 'the good', is however, open to question.

The good obviously includes a component of non harm to others. Certainly random and gratuitous harms, e.g. those committed by muggers, clearly harm the life of humans in their human society. Mugging is wrong.

The question though, is whether *reason* is the basis for all such rules. I think not. One need only look at the history of racism in the US. Certain harms to Black people were rationalized in terms of their 'inferiority' and 'special needs'. So for instance denial of access to a vote or to the better colleges, etc occurred. These are flagrant instances of immorality, but i argue, they don't offend "reason." It's not an offense against 'reason', but against compassion, to do these things.

It might be said that the claims about Black inferiority did not have a *rational* basis. I disagree. They did not have a factual basis. Black intellectual inferiority was believed by such rational and scientific persons as Thomas Jefferson. Now i suppose, if you were there, you could say "Tom, go gather some more data." and he might reply, "I've seen a lifetime of evidence, including the absence of Black mathematicians. I decline to collect more data." Well, Tom is being stubborn, but, I would say; one can't say "Tom, you're irrational." It's intellectual laziness, perhaps, to subscribe to the prejudices of the day, and not to investigate all manner of questions. But it's hardly *irrational.*

In conclusion, our reason cannot suffice to generate an adequate list of moral principles about treating others--especially others to whom we are not bound by family or friendly ties. It can generate a few items, but far from an adequate list. Consideration for the feelings of others, to some degree, is required, and it's our own, similar feelings that provide a reason for considering those of others to whom we have no immediate ties. Our feelings PLUS a 'golden rule', for example, can generate lots of the desired prohibitions, e.g. against beating up random Black or immigrant people for the sport of it.

If i simply go by reason, I *might* conclude this 'other' [stranger] is a person, or even that s/he has life goals etc. But this FACT is not *a reason* to treat him as equal or to adapt my behavior to his desires [assuming he's NOT family or a friend and is not able to retaliate later]. Consider the fact that a squirrel sits on my sill, and wants to live, and i know it; those facts do NOT supply a reason for me to avoid shooting it. For that, I have to care.

==

incidentally ayn rand herself was not able to solve the problem above, except by the bald assertion that the rational man will necessarily respect another rational man (or even woman), and the following claim: the interest of rational humans NEVER conflict (outisde the lifeboat); that it's NEVER in my genuine rational interest to do your such interests any harm to further my own.

as further evidence is the rand/randist discussion of whether i ought, at minimal cost and no real danger to myself, to rescue a stranger i find drowing, e.g. by throwing him a life preserver. her conclusion was that it's NOT WRONG to save them if you're so inclined, but no 'duty' is involved.

further, she argued, since NO GOOD accrues to me (i lose sweat) or mine, it's in a category of acts that needs careful scrutiny. i need scarcely remind the readers of the moral dangers of charity, encouringement of dependent and leech like behavior. the resuced fellow may start to feel the rest of humanity owes him something, and go on the dole the rest of his life.

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[JAMESBJOHNSON]

People act from experience. They adapt to their environment and do what works. Logic is a luxury most of us cant afford. Rationality is a steakhouse in the ghetto.

 

[SirLicksAalot]

. . .

Rationality is a steakhouse in the ghetto.

succinctly put.

 

[Pure]

opening a crackhouse in the ghetto is an act in the owner's rational self interest.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

PURE

I was being sarcastic. Chicken and barbecue are rational choices for ghettos. But here's a curiosity that defies logic.

I reside inside the wealthiest zip code in my county. We have the only Cadillac dealership in the county but no decent restaurants.

 

[xssve]

Both Xssve & Pure advocate that both 'concepts' and 'abstractions', do not exist in reality; are not connected with reality, are not 'concrete' absolutes upon which man builds knowledge.

Xssve will spend page upon page giving examples of how reason, rationality and logic fail and suggest that a majority consensus, 'for the greater good', is the means by which man determines the value of human actions. Pure does the same in poorly crafted, less cogent style, but the message is identical, 'man exists by his emotions and the approval of others.'

I cannot speak for Pure, but when it comes to anything I've argued, this is pure confabulation - lying in other words.

On the contrary, it's you who have repeatedly derided any reference to empirical reality in favor of sterile, abstract logic.

You who scream bloody murder at the very word "consensus"? I've argued the reality of consensus politics all along, for years - now you pretend to represent it?

Please leave me out of your projections from now on, you lying little weasel.

 

[xssve]

People act from experience. They adapt to their environment and do what works. Logic is a luxury most of us cant afford. Rationality is a steakhouse in the ghetto.

Interesting way of putting it, but not far wrong - human behavior is driven largely by hormones, serotonin and dopamine, oxytocin and vassopressin, estrogen and testosterone, etc.

Love, it appears, is essentially an obessisve compulsive disorder, for example.

Reason does not create these things, it only allows us to understand and communicate them - or lie about them.

 

[xssve]

In short, my argument has been thus: "morality" is an oral tradition, that constantly changes, absorbs, reflects, and contradicts behavior, it reflects the tension between individual and group fitness, on the one hand, an oral tradition of successful adaptations, on the other, a highly subjective ideology that serves to centripetalize group cohesion at the expense of the individual, and acentric innovation and adaptation.

What ties it all together, is neuropsychology, it underlies all behavior, and as such, form the stable baseline, w/respect to both group and individual fitness, that allow us to make value assignments about given behaviors, which otherwise, can only be judged against a relativistic construct of "normative behavior", that demonstrably changes with time and place.

Institutional hostility towards female sexuality on the part of orthodox religion, for example, has a neurobiological basis:

There’s an inverse relationship between the levels of prolactin and dopamine; when one is up the other is down. This rise and fall produces a dopamine/prolactin roller coaster of highs and lows, and this roller coaster is a major part of the post-orgasm hangover.

What do couples complain of as their honeymoons end? The very symptoms associated with high prolactin: weight gain, drop in libido, mood changes, depression. Notice that in women excess prolactin is also associated with anxiety and hostility. Sound familiar? The following table lists symptoms of patients with chronically elevated prolactin. We think that after sex, the surges may be more subtle, but still noticeable in their effects.

Following orgasm, Dopamine levels drop and prolactin levels rise, leading to interpersonal conflict - when women are confined to service roles, as they have been by orthodox religion historically, they are often denied basic affection, which mediates this hormonal see-saw, and one way to compensate is to deprive them of orgasm, and divert their energies into childrearing in order to maintain high oxytocin levels.

So, oddly enough, it all makes perfect sense, rational even, but it also means the orthodoxy has a stake in denouncing any other social arrangement that works: it requires an autocratic, external enforcement system, to create a dependency system that has a chilling effect on creative adaptation, which is tied to dopamine levels - that and they tend to get fat.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

XSSVE

Let me elaborate on my thesis. People, by nature, are lazy and take the path of least resistance. The resistance can be anything.

Most people dont consider me logical or common sensical but I am. Here's a recent example. Sunday my water heater spilled water all over the garage floor. Guests assumed the water heater was busted and I needed to buy a new one. I mean, the floor was covered with water.

A new water heater is a minimum of $250, and closer to $500 if a plumber installs it. The present water heater is about 7 years old. The heater it replaced was 20 years old. So I wondered if I had a kaput water heater or something else.

I cleaned up the mess, turned 'off' the water heater power and observed what happened with the water 'on.' Nothing much.

The next morning I saw no more flooding, though the water was pressurized inside the water heater tank all night. I deduced that the problem was temperature related and not simply pressure related. So I concluded I had a problem with the heating elements or their thermostats. To make a long story short, by trial and error I discovered I had a defective thermostat that made the heater element heat all the time. The excess heat forced water out the pressure relief valve, and there was my leak.

I corrected the problem at a cost of zero dollars.

Now! The experience part comes into play because of my history. As a child my family was poor, and we didnt have the luxury of replacing old with new. You made the old last longer by fixing problems. And to fix problems you had to be perceptive, rational, and somewhat clever. Buying new simply wasnt an option.

But if you grow up with affluence and little experience fixing things, then buying new makes the most sense to you.

 

[xssve]

XSSVE

Let me elaborate on my thesis. People, by nature, are lazy and take the path of least resistance. The resistance can be anything.

Absolutely. I was raised by parents who were raised themselves during the Great Depression, and they instilled values of frugality in me that went against the grain of conspicuous consumption that prevailed during the sudden balloon of consumer demand that started in the Sixties, and still prevails - largely behind the current liquidity debacle as a matter of fact.

Incredible how much waste there is in this country, I used to dumpster dive a lot, I'd grab bicycles that people would throw out because the tires were flat, fix 'em and give 'em away to the neighborhood kids.

Took a lot of shit for it too.

 

[xssve]

They don't call it "frugality" anymore, nowadays it's called "cheap".

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

XSSVE

Allow me to differentiate FRUGAL and CHEAP.

A company called Johnson Controls makes most of America's car batteries...WALMART, FIRESTONE, SEARS DIE HARD. Same battery, different case. Frugal is buying the brand that costs less. Same battery, different price.

'Cheap' is buying hamburger thats mostly fat when ground chuck or ground sirloin is just a few pennies more.

 

[amicus]

Interesting way of putting it, but not far wrong - human behavior is driven largely by hormones, serotonin and dopamine, oxytocin and vassopressin, estrogen and testosterone, etc.

Love, it appears, is essentially an obessisve compulsive disorder, for example.

Reason does not create these things, it only allows us to understand and communicate them - or lie about them.

~~~

Love, it appears, is essentially an obessisve compulsive disorder..."

Read the above a couple times...let it sink in.

That would be funny, if it were not so tragically pathetic.

Gay and Lesbian sex is okay, but love is a disorder?

"...human behavior is driven largely by hormones, serotonin and dopamine, oxytocin and vassopressin, estrogen and testosterone, etc..."

That sound like any kind of a chemical society you would wish to be a part of?

Xssve represents a vocal minority of pointy headed savants, vaguely familiar with science, who see in pharmacology, drugs, the answer to all of mankinds' ills. As I said, silly, were it not so pathetic.

It is consistent, however, with the full range of knowledge based on only 'experience' Empiricism, and the function of the mind dismissed or minimized to the function of a computer chip.

In mid stream, criticizing an axiomatic base for human actions, Xssve, while not admitting it, presents an identical format, using instead 'science' as a posited axiomatic truth as a foundation. Note the phrasing, "...human behavior is..."

Even the global warming scientific farts say only, 'maybe, could be, might be', referring to their amazing pronouncements that the world is coming to an end as a result a man caused climate change. Ah, but not the excessive one, no, certain absolutism based on nothing, love is a disorder and drugs are the answer to everything.

Maybe you can get a refund from whatever school you attended.

Amicus

 

[Pure]

simple challenge

ami, you unable to give a single reason [rational basis] why one rational human will (i.e. should) treat the interests of other rational humans [not his intimates] as on a par with his own-- this is assuming the other is not family or friend, and further that he and his clan are not going to be in a position to retaliate.

you know this is a basic principle of rand, and even more basically, perhaps, that of a thriving society, but unfortunately it's inconsistent with her basic principle that a man should be "concerned [primarily] with his own interests," that he himself should be the beneficiary of his own moral actions.

 

[xssve]

~~~
Gay and Lesbian sex is okay, but love is a disorder?

That sound like any kind of a chemical society you would wish to be a part of?

Amicus

Don't worry, it's just reality, it shouldn't concern you.

Technically however, you have confabulated it in your usual manner - love is the OCD disorder, most likely, but the abstractions of the human mind make us capable of "falling in love" with things other than the opposite sex (like ourselves, for instance), i.e., OCD's are, in a sense, attachment disorders, displacement of a trait selected to enhance pair bonding.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Actually love is the antidote for sociopathy.

 

[xssve]

It's the antidote for acute Narcissism, not sure about sociopathy, I'll have to look that up, I'm a bit vague on the definition, it's sort of a catch all isn't it? It would make sense, if it represents psychological conditions.

Psychopathy is a neurological condition, corresponding to actual changes in brain structure, and incurable at the moment.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

XSSVE

Psychopath is an obsolete term like neurotic. No one is neurotic anymore.

Sociopaths are chronic law violators and criminals. They do not conform to social conventions, either.

 

[xssve]

Conforming to social conventions are often nothing more than camouflage, it's indicative of nothing in particular except deception, or the desire to blend into the background.

Psychopathy, on the other hand, is pretty well established to result from brain damage - it appears to be on the order of a stationary phase mutation, i.e., it's triggered in an already developed human brain through malnutrition or deprivation of affection, and it's possibly heritable.

In adaptive terms, the psychopath has fewer compunctions about taking care of himself first, he'll steal candy from a baby.

Even amicus, for all his self centeredness, would likely throw himself in front of an automobile rather than see his daughter run over - I'd give him that much benefit of the doubt anyway.

Humanism is simply expanding kin selection to include the rest of the human race, to which we are all distantly related, when it's convenient - and even sometimes when it isn't - we all suffer the consequences of genetic damage to the gene pool eventually.

 

[xssve]

Psychopaths in fact, may be very good at conforming to social conventions, they often have a stake in creating better camouflage.

It is associated with damage and/or changes to the prefrontal cortex, as well as other parts of the brain.

It's the old character based paradigm that's obsolete, although it's still pointed out that only a small percentage of people who exhibit psychopathic traits act out in violently antisocial ways - there is still a case to be made for free will, even if it's just to avoid punishment.

 

[xssve]

Robert Hare has described his attempts to identify true psychopaths as a prison psychologist in the early 1960s. Most of the personality ‘measures’ or ‘instruments’ popular at that time, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), were questionnaires based on self-reporting. When administered to psychopaths, who are expert at ‘impression management’ (Hare, 1993, p. 30) these instruments are less than reliable. One of the inmates in Hare’s research program even had a complete set of MMPI tests and interpretation manuals and, for a fee, would advise fellow inmates on the correct answers to show the steady improvement more likely to lead to parole. Another inmate ‘had an institutional file that contained three completely different MMPI profiles. Obtained about a year apart, the first suggested that the man was psychotic, the second that he was perfectly normal, and the third that he was mildly disturbed’ (Hare, 1993, p. 31). Each of these profiles had been treated as genuine, but each had in fact been produced to meet specific objectives: the inmate’s desire first to transfer to a psychiatric hospital, then to transfer back to the main prison after he found that conditions were not to his liking, and finally to secure a supply of Valium.

The Origins of Violence: Is Psychopathy an Adaptation?

 

[Guest]

The reign of relativism is coming to an end and you will be faced with adopting a belief, a faith, to define your values, a 'Statist' society that will force values upon you; or you can use your mind, with reason, logic and rationality to determine human values.

With a faulty premise, "for the greater good"; society can justify the worst horrors you can imagine to sustain the whole by sacrificing the parts.

With the exception of the dictionary definitions at the top, these are my words, my syntax. They reflect, to the best of my understanding and ability, the philosophy of Objectivism as created by the late Ayn Rand.

Amicus

“Arbitrary” means a claim put forth in the absence of evidence of any sort, perceptual or conceptual; its basis is neither direct observation nor any kind of theoretical argument. [An arbitrary idea is] a sheer assertion with no attempt to validate it or connect it to reality.

If a man asserts such an idea, whether he does so by error or ignorance or corruption, his idea is thereby epistemologically invalidated. It has no relation to reality or to human cognition.

...It is not your responsibility to refute someone’s arbitrary assertion—to try to find or imagine arguments that will show that his assertion is false. It is a fundamental error on your part even to try to do this. The rational procedure in regard to an arbitrary assertion is to dismiss it out of hand, merely identifying it as arbitrary, and as such inadmissible and undiscussable.

Excerpted from the Ayn Rand Lexicon

 

[xssve]

The reign of relativism is coming to an end and you will be faced with adopting a belief, a faith, to define your values, a 'Statist' society that will force values upon you; or you can use your mind, with reason, logic and rationality to determine human values.

With a faulty premise, "for the greater good"; society can justify the worst horrors you can imagine to sustain the whole by sacrificing the parts.

With the exception of the dictionary definitions at the top, these are my words, my syntax. They reflect, to the best of my understanding and ability, the philosophy of Objectivism as created by the late Ayn Rand.

I thought to mention that, as the beginnings of a Tax Revolution spilled out onto American streets today, on April 15, 2009, and signs bearing the title of Rand's book, 'Atlas Shrugged', which portrays a government gone wild, were evident across the country.

Amicus

At the same time you defend religion, which is relative to an arbitrary standard: "god" whose existence can be neither proved nor disproved, making any and all "common morality" based on this arbitrary standard - arbitrary, a relativistic tribal institution that seeks to sustain itself by sacrificing it's parts. That is moral relativism.


Rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, Empiricism can be used along with reason and logic to elucidate why we do the things we do, and in thus determining the underlying motivation, preserve the beneficial aspects, freeing us from the artificial and often arbitrary encoding of these behaviors as oral tradition.

Oddly, I don't think Rand would substantially disagree with this - you of course, Cherry pick what you like in utilitarian fashion, which is why you keep contradicting yourself: your self serving personal philosophy lacks any sort of internal consistency other than it's convenient for you - and that too, is moral relativism.

All too common these days, unfortunately.

 

[xssve]

A significant problem here is that "moral relativism" has been sold as a hot button issue by the right, particularly the religious right, reduced to a buzzword with no attempt to understand it's meaning.

Wikipedia: Moral Relativism

In philosophy moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. Moral relativists hold that no universal standard exists by which to assess an ethical proposition's truth. Relativistic positions often see moral values as applicable only within certain cultural boundaries (cultural relativism) or in the context of individual preferences (individualist ethical subjectivism). An extreme relativist position might suggest that judging the moral or ethical judgments or acts of another person or group has no meaning, though most relativists propound a more limited version of the theory. In moral relativism there are no absolute, concrete rights and wrongs. Rather, intrinsic ethical judgements exist as abstracta, differing for each perception of an ethical outlook.

Some moral relativists — for example, the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre — hold that a personal and subjective moral core lies or ought to lie at the base of individuals' moral acts. In this view public morality reflects social convention, and only personal, subjective morality expresses true authenticity. (i.e. "Following one's conscience".)

Moral relativism differs from value pluralism — which acknowledges the co-existence of opposing ideas and practices, but accepts limits to differences, such as when vital human needs are violated. Moral relativism, in contrast, grants the possibility of moral judgments that do not accept such limits. As well, moral relativism should not be taken as the more extreme stance of moral nihilism, which completely denies the existence of any objective morality.

What most of us are talking about here is value pluralism, not moral relativism or more importantly, moral nihilism, which is typically what the right wing buzzword "moral relativism" is taken to mean.

Value pluralism means that value oriented behaviors are typically functional in some way, that is, they serve some purpose, even if that purpose may be served in more than one way - all it means is, that there's more than one way to skin a cat.

But you can't know what that purpose is, unless you examine it empirically.

In fact, homosexuality, as a behavior, may have been selectively reinforced for precisely because of a particular social/religious behavior, polygyny, which distorts the male to female ratio - such distortions often otherwise lead to extreme violence which is detrimental to group fitness, whereas fucking is neither here nor there, outside any arbitrary emotional reaction to it, and not surprisingly, creates more social connections than otherwise making it beneficial to group fitness.

This isn't moral relativism, it's value pluralism - if you want polygyny, you have to accept homosexuality - and in fact, it exists regardless, apparently a very stable random mutation, perhaps due to the fact that male to female ratios favor males at birth - calling it "immoral" isn't going to change a goddamn thing, so you might as well quit your whining and get used to it.