What do you think it could be? — Harry Hindu

Maybe money? I figure that may be the reason why opioids are still "rationally" being prescribed even though they are killing 10s of thousands of people each year. I suppose there is a rational reason to explain this all.

Yep, I'll put my money in money as the single biggest reason for killing throughout history. I guess for some, this is quite rational.

And what makes the brain so special? Neurons? Neurons just transmit. It is a relay center. The Mind permeates the body. — Rich

You can cut off your legs, arms; remove various parts of the body such as the spleen and kidneys; several feet of intestine; you can even gat a machine to do your breathing and pumping blood - all miraculously WITHOUT affecting the functioning of the mind.
If you do ANYTHING to the brain, you change the mind is profound ways.

QED: You are being silly.

The second brain theory accounts for only 1/1000 of known neurones - all of which are expendable, and NOT "throughout the body" as you amusingly suggest.
Your statement about "having a heart" is just childish mysticism of the medieval period .

So what do you think is best

You can cut off your legs, arms; remove various parts of the body such as the spleen and kidneys; several feet of intestine; you can even gat a machine to do your breathing and pumping blood - all miraculously WITHOUT affecting the functioning of the mind.
If you do ANYTHING to the brain, you change the mind is profound ways. — charleton

If you knock out the main transmission station, things go blank. So? Says nothing. As for your pumping stations, they too will die out. People die.

If you knock out the main transmission station, things go blank. So? Says nothing. — Rich

With a blunt spoon I can remove your ability to recognise your own mother.
With a short swipe I can remove your ability to either read or speak.

"When your brain tries to heal itself, functions that were once held in damaged parts of the brain are then transferred to new, healthy parts of the brain through the process of neuroplasticity. This process is what allows you to regain lost movement, speech function, and other abilities after experiencing a stroke."

The brain is living and tries to heal like every other part of the body.

Can you direct your kindergarten understanding of Life to someone else who can really appreciate it?

"When your brain tries to heal itself, functions that were once held in damaged parts of the brain are then transferred to new, healthy parts of the brain through the process of neuroplasticity. This process is what allows you to regain lost movement, speech function, and other abilities after experiencing a stroke." — Rich

This proves my point, not yours.
I think you might be a waste of time.

The brain is loving and tries to heal like every other part of the body. — Rich

ROTFLMFHO

Didn't realize your point is that the body is living and is constantly healing itself. It is intelligent. Every single part of the body has intelligence.

You don't know what you are talking about.

It's Sunday. Time to go to church and worship the Brain.

I have no idea what it means to think rationally. — Rich

Here's one thing you seem to get right.

Time to go to church — Rich

This explains much about you.

It must be something else. What do you think it could be? — Harry Hindu

I don't know. Some here have mentioned that rationality is a tool and, therefore, has no moral status.

That's right but it's a tool that works better at the hands of the unscrupulous. Consider the adage "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". It tells of the failure of goodness to wield rationality effectively. Then take the phrase "a sucker is born every minute". It tells of how easy it is to fool people using clever tricks.

On the whole I think rationality serves evil much better than good.

There is a sense in which I can agree with this, but I can't see what relevance it has to your questioning of rationality. — Janus

Rationality serves evil better than good. A very simple example. Rationality claims there is no God (Atheism) or, at least, that we can't be sure of God's existence. What follows from that?

One needs a heart to live and pump blood. It's got bugger all to do with being good, you still need a brain for that too. — charleton

It's a very common metaphor. I don't know why you don't get it. Just see the movies. Villains are always depicted with high IQ. Get the hint?

You are absolutely honest here: you have a vague doubt. — Bitter Crank

X-)

No to both sides. "All you need to do is smile" is, in a word, imbecilic.

I readily agree that rationality is limited, in that it can devise plans, design parts, and lay out elaborate proposals. In itself, rationality tends neither to goodness nor evil. The mainspring of behavior isn't the pre-frontal cortex, it's the limbic system -- the emotions. Wishes, wants, desires, urges, rages, love, hate, hot, cold, and all that are not opposed to rationality, they drive rationality.

Performing 'good' requires as much rationality as performing evil. As Jesus put it, be as subtle as serpents but as gentle as doves. Good ideas badly executed will at least result in waste, fraud, and abuse. To do good well requires rationality.

The flaw in "rational human" isn't that rationality produces evil, it's that alone it doesn't produce much of anything. Again: emotion, not rationality, is the mainspring of behavior.

Well organized hate as opposed to badly organized love, is a cliché--which may be true in some instances, but in general isn't true. International aid programs, social service programs, and all sorts of good works require the same high level organization that wickedness requires. — Bitter Crank

I was thinking about this and I realized that it takes more brains to be good in this world which isn't deficient of evil. It takes tact, patience, wisdom, etc. to do good in our world. So, yes one could say that rationality favors the good and not the bad as I thought.

But look at it this way...

First do no harm is a well known maxim of morality, am I right?

To do no harm one doesn't need intelligence do we? A stone or tree is good in that respect because they can do no harm.

However, to harm one needs high IQ. Look at how Hollywood depicts villains - all high IQ individuals.

This is obviously false. People rationally do good things and irrationally do bad things all the time. — aletheist

But rationality has questioned God's existence and where does that lead to? A moral vacuum that can't and hasn't been filled since God was put on the stand.

Captain Kirk use to rail against it all the time. — Rich

X-)

If all the good people were clever,
And all clever people were good,
The world would be nicer than ever
We thought that it possibly could.
But somehow ’tis seldom or never
The two hit it off as they should,
The good are so harsh to the clever,
The clever, so rude to the good!
So friends, let it be our endeavour
To make each by each understood;
For few can be good, like the clever,
Or clever, so well as the good.

Elizabeth Wordsworth

But rationality has questioned God's existence and where does that lead to? A moral vacuum that can't and hasn't been filled since God was put on the stand. — TheMadFool

This is patent nonsense. The number of self-declared atheists in the world has grown rapidly over the last 200 years. A time when we've seen the abolition of slavery, the end of oppressive colonisation, the universal declaration of human rights, emancipation of women... The list goes on. Where on earth are you getting this rubbish that morality had gone out of the window with the abandonment of religion?

Ok, then God must be irrational to be good. If God is irrational, then how do you know what God actually wants, or what good and evil actually mean to God? Being irrational never gets you to the truth. Irrationality is the antithesis of searching for truth.

What you don't seem to recognize is that you are attempting to be rational in pointing out a "connection" between rationality and "evil". It's just that you aren't taking into account that irrationality has caused harm, if not more harm, than rationality has. Rationality has given you a better standard of living and longer lifespan. Irrationality leads to ignorance, the greatest "evil" (according to Socrates).

But Socrates (or Plato) was perhaps mistaken on this point. If someone's going to be wicked then I'd prefer them to be dumb as well. But if they're going to be good, then I'd prefer them also to be rational. I'd prefer them to be good, whether rational or not, than wicked, no matter what their level of rationality. So I would say that rationality and moral goodness are quite different things and they can hang together or stand apart.

Tho I'd add that some kinds of moral goodness require rationality in planning one's own actions. But no rationality requires goodness.

But rationality has questioned God's existence and where does that lead to? — TheMadFool

Rationality has also contemplated the reality of God by interpreting how He has revealed Himself in nature, Scripture, etc. Again, the problem is not rationality itself, but the (non-rational) assumptions that serve as our first premises.

First do no harm is a well known maxim of morality, am I right? — TheMadFool

"Primum non nocere, first do no harm" is a maxim in bioethics and a good one. But in medicine and and in many other settings, not doing harm is more difficult than it appears. For instance, prescribing too many antibiotics, too many addictive pain medicines, or doing too many invasive procedures has resulted in bad consequences rather than good ones. The bad results stemming from good intentions and doctor's desires to cure, reduce pain, or remove very slow growing cancers has resulted in less effective antibiotics, addiction, and unnecessary consequences from surgery. At first, these actions looked good and benign.

Examples of the difficulty of "first, do no harm" being difficult to fulfill can be heaped up from all sorts of settings--caught in the phrase, "If it's not broken, don't fix it." Most energetic well-intentioned people have screwed things up at one time or another (I certainly have) by "fixing" things that "weren't broke".

It's a very common metaphor. I don't know why you don't get it. Just see the movies. Villains are always depicted with high IQ. Get the hint? — TheMadFool

This has no bearing on the thread. If you can't see 'why I don't get it", I think the fault lies with you, ot me.
I mean really what the fuck are you babbling on about?

Rationality does not claim there is no God; but self-reflexively comes to understand that there can be no purely rational (or empirical) way of knowing that God exists or does not exist. This is (as Kant said) recognizing the limits of reason to make way for faith. I don't think it is true to say that rationality serves evil more than good.

I think what we would call a rational person is one who has a balanced view of life, a balanced view of self and other, and will not be an evil person. Evil is driven by selfish desires; a rational person is more likely to see why such desires should be controlled, which is the first step towards actually being able to bring them under control.

Thanks for the poem. (Y)



My main goal is to find a flaw in rationality. Rationality seems to have acquired a reputation that is impeccable. It is beyond criticism, much like God was. I'm not saying that this is so without good reason. Rationality has been the driving force of human civilization. We are better off than before because of R. There's no question about that.

However, if experience teaches us anything then it is that there's always a danger in an infallible authority. Look at what some believers do in the name of God, the quintessential infallible authority.

Add to that the well established folk wisdom that everything has pros AND cons. Even the most perfect being, God, has been criticized.

So, that begs the question "Does rationality have a flaw too?"

The answer, if you agree with what I've said above, seems to lean towards a resounding "YES"

So, what could this flaw be?

There are many perspectives we can take and one that is important for humans - a perspective that concerns all life itself despite its own flaws - is ethics. Ethics is a necessary aspect of all human activity. We may not be clear on the details but all of us, barring the psychopath, function with our own version of moral values.

Let's look at rationality from a moral perspective then. As you all have pointed out rationality is only a tool. It guides thinking and if it has anything to do with morality then it is that we should apply rationality to ethics. I believe this too because rationality, as a system of thinking, has proven itself with flying colors.

But...

Look at how good and evil are depicted in media and literature. I don't want to use stereotypes of people but I also believe in the wisdom of the masses. Evil is associated with genius and I think this rightly so. One has to be intelligent to be fool/trick people - something that is necessary to be evil.

On the other hand one doesn't have to think much to be good. One might even have to be a fool to be good - disregard personal safety for instance.

So, it does look like rationality serves evil better than good.

there's always a danger in an infallible authority — TheMadFool

True, but rationality isn't an authority and it isn't infallible. If it was, then we would only need one rational person around at any given time. We have found that several people applying reason is better than depending on 1 person alone.

everything has pros AND cons — TheMadFool

B U L L S H I T ! ! !

No, everything doesn't have a pro and a con, and it's not rational to think there is. There was no "pro" side to the Holocaust. There is no "pro" side to the various mass murders we have witnessed. There is mo "pro" side to nuclear war. Would you say, "Ok, 6 million Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust. Now let's look at the positive aspects of genocide." ???

So, what could this flaw be — TheMadFool

The flaw in rationality is when people don't try very hard to do it.

Look at how good and evil are depicted in media and literature. I don't want to use stereotypes of people but I also believe in the wisdom of the masses. Evil is associated with genius and I think this rightly so. One has to be intelligent to be fool/trick people - something that is necessary to be evil. — TheMadFool

Do you really believe in the wisdom of the masses? What, exactly, is the wisdom of the masses? How do masses of people with various opinions -- all over the place, up one side and down the other, manage to have "wisdom"?

Well, evil is associated with genius in some literature (literature which features evil geniuses) but geniuses are not always evil and evil isn't always operating at the genius level. Quite often evil is as stupid as it can get.

One might have to be intelligent to fool or trick people, but being intelligent doesn't lead to fooling and tricking people. Lots of very intelligent people, geniuses even, don't attempt to fool or trick people.

On the other hand one doesn't have to think much to be good. One might even have to be a fool to be good - disregard personal safety for instance. — TheMadFool

You say this as if no one had demonstrated to you that doing good requires intelligence, wisdom, and insight. Consider the people who discovered the various drugs which are successful in controlling diabetes, a number of cancers, AIDS, infections and so on. These people did immense good, and it required immense rationality, careful thinking, and so on -- not by a few people, but by scores of thousands of people who worked on the various drug development programs.

Consider therapists who provide therapy for the victims of torture: This is a very complex kind of therapy that requires great intelligence, enormous sensitivity, perceptiveness, and so on. Your average dull-normal do-gooder can't begin to help.

Consider the managers of projects like The Big Dig in Boston, or the people at NASA. They did/are doing great good, and it requires an extraordinary intelligence. the list of great works which need great intelligence is a long, long one.

In fact, you have been surrounded all your life by people doing good things very intelligently. You aren't aware of much of this because a) they are good at it, and b) because they are good at it things don't go wrong most of the time. This past year there were no crashes of large planes -- the first time in a very long time. Why? Because the people who design, fly, and manage all the planes in the air are good at it. And it's a very good thing that they are.

Evil is quite often very stupid, stumbles over itself on its way to perform wicked deeds, and in the end is quite frequently too stupid to escape capture and punishment.

So, it does look like rationality serves evil better than good. — TheMadFool

Rationality serves whoever wields it, and far more people are good than evil. We know this because the world, by and large, is a fairly pleasant place most of the time in most places for most people. If rationality and evil were such a good match, life would be ruined most of the time just about everywhere for everyone almost all the time. That isn't the case.

Rationality doesn't cause evil. It's a tool. Rationality doesn't seek out evil people to get them to be better at being evil. It can't. It's a process, not a thing with volition. We can just be thankful that there are not more bright wicked people out there applying rationality to their evil deeds. And we can be thankful that there are so many good people out there applying rationality to the good stuff they do.

You are stumbling over the bias which makes the bad act seem more common than the good act because we remember bad acts more. Evil acts stand out against the background of much more common good.

For some weird reason you want to hang evil around the neck of rationality. I don't understand why you want to do this, but it is very annoying. STOP IT or I will have to think of a fiendishly creative and a perversely wicked means of making you want to cease and desist (since good arguments clearly are not good enough for you).