And what constitutes language? There are many kinds of non-linguistic communication. Even very simple organisms share information.

I would suggest that linguistic communication exemplifies consciousness, more than I would say language is a prerequisite, if that makes sense.

Oneself as Another
by Paul Ricœur

Keen to read this as it is relates to my own 'core hypothesis': as individual thinkers we are critically limited by our (in)ability to project absolute freedom on others, the ultimate cognitive bias, thus are prevented from realizing that power ourselves, through the inexorable logic of reciprocity.

My favourite fantasy series, alongside the Deathgate Cycle.

Lord Foul's Bane
by Stephen R. Donaldson

Yes, and I agree completely with the interactionist (embodied or enacted) approacth. However Luhmann is reconceptualizing the system in such a way that it is by definition insular. There are other interesting aspects to his approach, structure is not fundamental, events are. It emphasizes the extent to which our perceptions are just co-ordinations with our own representations of reality (which can still be mapped interactively/experimentally. I don't agree with him on operational closure, but I think there is probably of a spectrum of closure, and he may be highlighting features at one end of it. It is all about differentiating inner from outer. That occurs at different places for different systems, even for the human body. The boundaries of the tactile system are not the same as the boundaries of the immune system or the endocrine system or the visual system.

:up: On Gutenberg too.

It's a great read, everything that is good about Dewey, insightful, direct, beautifully written.

↪180 Proof So...like I say, no one understands it. I just hammer this point because a lot of people on this thread and the other one seem to have "figured it out." If, like me, you believe there's a solution that isn't woo woo, then it'll be neuroscientists - if anyone - that find it. I simply acknowledge that this is my unproven belief. — GLEN willows

Neuroscience is illustrative, however it may not be fully explicative either. Luhmann has an interesting take, based on an innovative brand of systems theory:

In consciousness, we imagine that all we perceive is somewhere outside, whereas the purely neurophysiological operations do not provide any such clues. They are entirely closed off and internal. Insofar as it is coupled with self-reference, consciousness is also internal, and it knows that it is. And that is a good thing, too, for it would be terrible if someone could enter someone else's consciousness and inject a few thoughts or a few perceptions of his own into it. Consciousness, too, is a closed system. But its peculiarity seems to lie - if we choose a very formal mode of description - in the transition from the purely operational closure of the electrophysical language of the neurophysiological apparatus to the difference between self-reference and hetero-reference. Only this central difference constitutes consciousness, of course on the basis of neurophysiological correlates. I do not intend to claim that consciousness is no longer in need of a brain. However, it is of great interest to ask whether we are dealing not just with a new level of reflection, as is often said - a learning of learning or a coupling of coupling - but with the introduction of a critical difference. (Introduction to Systems Theory, 2013)

Since "critical difference" is fundamental to Luhmann's definition of a system, this does seem to beg the question of where the boundaries of consciousness lie, vis a vis internality/exterality and self and other.

Formal logic applies to propositions. Other forms of rationality don't necessarily. Still, as javra and I discussed previously in this thread, what we call rationality often seems to lead to reductionist results that don't take into account broader perspectives and indirect effects, e.g. environmental damage. — T Clark

Yes, logic can be overrated. Dewey differentiates between two fundamental original orientations in philosophy, the "lower" practical-technical and the "higher" governing form whose province was the determination of what was best and desirable. Aligning itself with tradition, in order to consolidate and justify its governing role, this is where we can see reason give way to rationality (rationalization).

Dewey paints a beautiful picture of rationality as an exaggerated and over-logicized form of thinking:

And this brings us to a second trait of philosophy springing from its origin. Since it aimed at a rational justification of things that had been previously accepted because of their emotional congeniality and social prestige, it had to make much of the apparatus of reason and proof. Because of the lack of intrinsic rationality in the matters with which it dealt, it leaned over backward, so to speak, in parade of logical form. In dealing with matters of fact, simpler and rougher ways of demonstration may be resorted to. It is enough, so to say, to produce the fact in question and point to it—the fundamental form of all demonstration. But when it comes to convincing men of the truth of doctrines which are no longer to be accepted upon the say-so of custom and social authority, but which also are not capable of empirical verification, there is no recourse save to magnify the signs of rigorous thought and rigid demonstration. Thus arises that appearance of abstract definition and ultra-scientific argumentation which repels so many from philosophy but which has been one of its chief attractions to its devotees.

At the worst, this has reduced philosophy to a show of elaborate terminology, a hair-splitting logic, and a fictitious devotion to the mere external forms of comprehensive and minute demonstration. Even at the best, it has tended to produce an overdeveloped attachment to system for its own sake, and an over-pretentious claim to certainty. (from Reconstruction in Philosophy)

(bolded by me)

Reconstruction in Philosophy
by John Dewey

I'd suggest reviewing Laszlo, focusing on bisperpectivism. You need a good overview of systems theory to move beyond the highlights I offered. See if the problem presents itself differently.

Well, more specifically, reality can be viewed as consisting of complex-adaptive systems across any theoretical domain, and these share properties ilke autopoeisis, homeostasis, and are amenable to analysis using non-linear methods. So mind and matter are not viewed as severed but as operational components of systems in which they mutually operate. Ervin Laszlo's Introduction to Systems Philosophy is a great read.

edit: you can borrow it here if you create an account https://archive.org/details/introductiontosy0000lasz

— GLEN willows

Embedded cognition is systems theoretic in nature. Many people view systems theory as offering a new paradigm of reality in which some traditional problems - such as the mind-body - are not so problematic. Laszlo calls his version bi-perspectivism. It definitely can be viewed as a variety of pan-psychism, although one solidly rooted in empirical science.

interesting. So you don’t feel there’s a question of how thoughts and persecution’s can cause material substances to move? — GLEN willows

I think the fact is that is happening, is a basic feature of the mind-matter system, so isn't really mysterious.

I'm not saying he was a metaphysician, but Nietzsche endures, in part, because he was a good storyteller. — ucarr

For me it is his only redeeming quality! lol.

Possibly what I was getting at when I said that reason can be better understood in the context of situational exigencies. — Tom Storm

Similarly Apel talks about the "rational determination of situational boundary conditions" - I like the phrase situational awareness.

It’s the job of the metaphysician to stand upon the practical foundation of scientific truth and spin a cognitive narrative of a cerebrally inhabitable world that imparts logical-conceptual coherence to physical things. — ucarr

I read something about 2 years ago that noted that the best metaphysics tells the best story. I'm still trying to dig it up, it was told particularly well. I totally agree.

When I contemplate the theories and experiments of embedded and embodied cognition they seem not so much as to invoke the mind-body problem as to blur the boundaries between the concepts and defuse the question.

Quite by accident I came across this bit in Dewey (Reconstruction in Philosophy) that nicely contrasts reason in its practical versus its rationalistic guises. It seems to fit with some of the themes that have been emerging. I think I may reread this next. (bolded by me)

"Reason" as a faculty separate from experience, introducing us to a superior region of universal truths begins now to strike us as remote, uninteresting and unimportant. Reason, as a Kantian faculty that introduces generality and regularity into experience, strikes us more and more as superfluous—the unnecessary creation of men addicted to traditional formalism and to elaborate terminology....

...reason is experimental intelligence, conceived after the pattern of science, and used in the creation of social arts; it has something to do. It liberates man from the bondage of the past, due to ignorance and accident hardened into custom. It projects a better future and assists man in its realization. And its operation is always subject to test in experience. The plans which are formed, the principles which man projects as guides of reconstructive action, are not dogmas. They are hypotheses to be worked out in practice, and to be rejected, corrected and expanded as they fail or succeed in giving our present experience the guidance it requires....

In contrast with this experimental and re-adjusting intelligence, it must be said that Reason as employed by historic rationalism has tended to carelessness, conceit, irresponsibility, and rigidity—in short absolutism.

edit: the notion of the bridging of the nomothetic-scientific and the social-hermeutic (which is how Dewey characterizes reason here) is central to Understanding and Explanation by Apel, which I'm currently reading.

Just a final question to consider. In cultures existing prior to, or unaffected by, our current conception of empiric and propositional logic-based reasoning, would you say there was no distinction between rational and irrational thinking, or reasonableness and unreasonableness? — Janus

Great question. A history of reason would make an interesting read. :chin:

Sociopaths can be highly strategic and able to make complex plans, but they are not rational — L'éléphant

This is pretty much where I was heading. Do you think that is just a congenital or organic deficiency? Or did they lose or renounce the ability to be rational?

I will admit that my own approach to the reasonable-rational problem relies heavily on exemplary usages in ordinary language. I don't see a problem with this. Examples are good precisely as exemplary of common experience. Versus highly specialized, technical, neologized or otherwise contrived terminology, which loses in generality what it gains in specificity. That's another issue.

Continuing this approach, having a reason versus having a rationale. A reason is offered as causally sufficient and self-evident. I used metal to build this wheel instead of wood so it will last longer. A rationale is an internally coherent explanatory framework which is invoked precisely when there is no exemplary reason. I do not know where I dropped my watch, so I chose to search for it under the streetlamp because there is more light there. A rationale is invoked as a reason when no more specific reason exists.

I think that's true, but I don't think a difference in the experience means there is a difference in the mechanisms or processes of thought among different people. — T Clark

Ok. But if experience is empirically contingent, then there must be some empirical differentiator? Even if it is like the same light shining on two differently coloured plates. The plates absorb different spectrums of the light, so are experiencing very different aspects of the same thing. (Which reflects in the colours they reflect.)

No but often it seems that very different perspectives on the mind do suggest that some people do have fundamentally different experiences of thought.

I guess you just have a different experience of thinking than I do. — T Clark

Right?

we're rational creatures — Agent Smith

...potentially rational?

I tend to view the mind (and the associated thinking, however seemingly mundane or counterproductive) as being more of a long-term planning module within the human apparatus. — Bret Bernhoft

I am very much on board with this. I see all of our thought (that is not trivially practically oriented - thirsty, get a drink) as being driven by long-range long-term goals which then realize through subsidiary objectives. Part of the problem in a reductive-causal analysis of action is that, yes, you can have some set of primary environmental conditions that would account for an action, but the underlying motives are going to be subject to subtle (or substantial) changes as the nature of the long term goal evolves in conjunction with ongoing feedback. I get in the car to go to work. But I am going to work because I have an overarching goal. Maybe to buy a new car. But if I change an even higher level goal - from magnificent consumerism to environmental harmony - then maybe I will sell my car and find a different way to work.

More so I am thinking about analyticity as a mode of thought (leading to analytic knowledge). And syntheticity. Aligning with deduction and induction (where induction presumably includes intuitive elements, as mentioned). Whether are not there are analytic truths, it is still possible to think analytically or deductively. Reasoning in the mode of the deductive-nomological model I guess you could say.

Yes, I was questioning in a more organic sense, if someone is criminally disposed, could that person ever truly be considered to be rational. Not in the sense of breaking some law which might be extremely culturally relative (like getting an abortion in a Republican state). But in the sense of pathologically stealing or harming others.

I see divergences in reasoning and objectives emerging. At this point I would question (following @Bartricks detailed differentiation between various types of reasoning) whether this isn't indicative of the different "governing paradigms of reason" of different individuals. Something that should be taken into consideration in attempting to formulate a shared concept of reason?

Are you upholding the analytic/synthetic distinction here? — Joshs

I'm acknowledging it, not sure what you mean by upholding it? And yes, I do think that standards of rationality vary both historically and culturally. Unless you want to proclaim some kind of transcendental standard, but then I'm not sure that would accurately represent the typical meaning of rationality.

But, if you want, let me know your sense of the difference between reason and rationality and also syntheticity and analyticity and perhaps I can give a competent response. — Bylaw

To the extent that synthesis means linking together what is apparently unconnected it is consistent with the function of intuition for sure. The ordinary language use of reason captures my sense of it. Reason the noun is a faculty. But reasoning the verb also characterizes the thinking people use every day to solve challenges of every kind, from the most mundane to the most exotic. Rationalizing or rationalization, as was discussed, is more of a forcing of something to fit into a formalized schema, with the implication that the rationalization may not be accurate in some way. Rationalization has something of the procrustean about it. Whereas reason is more organic and practical.

So, most people will reject the conclusion of an argument if they dislike it, or if it conflicts with the body of beliefs they already hold, or if they think it would be immoral to believe such a conclusion, or if they find it an ugly belief to hold. And they will do that regardless of how good the argument is.

Note: the perfectly rational person is not necessarily going to be the perfect philosopher. For there may be truths about reality that we do not have overall reason to believe. The ideally rational person recognizes what they have overall reason to believe and believes it. That we have epistemic reason to believe x does not entail that we have overall reason to believe it.

So, the dedicated philosopher may not be perfectly rational — Bartricks

But standards of rationality change. Slavery was an accepted institution in ancient Greece. The slave Epictetus was a Stoic, which makes sense. But then so was Marcus Aurelius. So rejection of an argument at a social level could be the institution of a new rational standard.

Yes. Another thought is that when reasoning, there are moments of 'microintuitions'. They can be all sorts of things - moments of feeling into semantics, the 'I have checked that enough' qualia, 'it feels like some step is missing here' qualia, tiny thought experiments where one circles around a step in reasoning, quick dashes into memory looking for counterevidence and so on. All these little tweaks and checks. — Bylaw

Could this be described as alternating phases of syntheticity and analyticity? Analytic thinking seems to fit the bill as a kind of framework of rationality. Whereas syntheticity, which in its very nature involves leaps, seems better described as a process of reason.

We tend to fetishise reason as a sort of transcendental virtue. And while I think reason is non-negotiable for civilised discourse, it may also be used to achieve lamentable outcomes. — Tom Storm

And this is another aspect I think. Reason is also social and dialogic/dialectical in nature. Even when we think, we reason internally as an internal discussion.

No human being is purely one type or another, can make all their decisions according the same mode of thought, and everything they do decide is situation-dependent. So, all decisions are likely to be some mixture of rational, ethical, instinctive, emotional and coerced. — Vera Mont

I think so too. And tradition-authority influenced.

And do you think, for example, that these reason-orientations would tend to produce different orientations toward various philosophical topics, so some people might naturally lean towards particular types of solutions, others others? Then many of our antinomies could be objectifications of these different rational-types.

I'm only surprised no one has yet used the phrase "instrumental rationality," which could be defined something like, the rational selection of a course of action to achieve a given goal -- the kicker being that this means any goal, however arbitrary. Sometimes "reasonableness" is contrasted specifically with instrumental rationality in submitting to judgment also the worthwhileness of the goal and the acceptability of the means of achieving it, so a broader decision-making process. — Srap Tasmaner

I think instrumental rationality aligns closely with something I mentioned, which was situational awareness. Vera mentioned how one can think instrumentally, but within a misguided or delusive framework.

Can you briefly summarize these. That may be an unreasonable, although not irrational, request. — T Clark

It concerns the distinction between deductive nomological events which have "explanations" (are cases of laws taking place in specifiable contexts) versus the meaningfulness of human events, which can be interpreted in contexts, which are themselves meaningful (the hermeneutic circle). Mechanical causality versus freedom is another dimension of this inquiry. I wasn't citing it so much for content as an example of how disparate concepts can complement and exclude and participate in a mutual inter-definition.

I think that ambiguity is the reason I never took on the task of clarifying the distinction. There's just too much room for pointless disagreement descending into "sez you." People have a lot invested in what is considered reasonable or rational and what is not. — T Clark

I think the terrain can be mapped. I'm reading Understanding and Explanation; in exploring the contention between the scientistic and hermeutic approaches to understanding and intentionality Apel comments several times how the approaches mutually exclude to the extent that they complement. I think that the "key players" in this debate likewise all play their parts and can be profitably explored through example usages (if not reduced to simplistic definitions).