People thinking the Rational mind is all

[BigBallinStalin]

Sounds like you're more of an agnostic rather than an athiest Niet.

Just look at the web. There's an big amount of sites on spirituality and cures for depression, mainly because science might set us free from the chains of religion, but at the same time it leave us feeling baseless. Our instinct tell us we need a deeper connection within ourselves, although reason tell us all we need is a big mac, a house in the suburbs and a nice car.

No, it doesn't. For example, (1) I feel incomplete, and these material objects aren't doing enough for me. (2) Therefore, I should look into some religious practices.

(3) Ah, Buddhism. Hmm, meditation?

(4) <Tries it. Gets good results>


Wow, with reason, that was possible, but from nietz perspective it isn't.

Case closed.

Question is, why did we think material objects were enough? Reason is great to explain things, only you need to know those things in advance. Plato knew this, I forget in which dialogue he mentions it. In fact, upon accepting responsibilty, one becomes better at using reason, don't use it for everything, but when it's needed, it's used without clouds of the dispair that trusting 100% in reason brings.

You do realize that with reason one can concede "I'm not 100% certain of X," right?

Currently, ITT you've been mischaracterizing advocates for reason or those subscribing solely to "the Rational mind."

We can both admit that people 'think' with reason as well as emotion. Emotion/feelings will always tinge our ability to reason, but that's okay to a degree.

The problem is when people significantly forego or discount reason, and heavily substitute it for feeling. Then, this method of thinking is applied to a huge scope of issues--not just love, god, or what have you, but almost everything. By foregoing reason and in turn failing to correct for cognitive bias, many people lead themselves and others astray--in the form of racism, prejudice, state socialism, etc.

Reason indeed well used can explain everything, because it bases it's power in understanding and premises that are fact. But reason has its realm. You do not decide what you want in life because of reason. You use introspection for that, or at least you should. Then, when you have decided, you make use of reason, among other things, to get to your goal.

If you were to use reason for that, things will not turn out well.

Do you use reason for setting your goals BBS? -- (BBS answers: WHy yes nietzsche, I do) -- Really? Think about it. Did you use only deductive reasoning? Or did you tune in to what your inner voice wanted? Try to recreate when you are finally having a beer on Friday Night, Nola by your side, and you find a moment of inspiration and say.. "you know what Nola? I'm going to bang that girl.. I'm going to ask her out on Monday".. was it reason? or was it the accumulation of semen in your balls?

Ah, so introspection is not reason, or has nothing to do with it. You're not making much sense, nietz.

[AAFitz]

Sounds like you're more of an agnostic rather than an athiest Niet.

Just look at the web. There's an big amount of sites on spirituality and cures for depression, mainly because science might set us free from the chains of religion, but at the same time it leave us feeling baseless. Our instinct tell us we need a deeper connection within ourselves, although reason tell us all we need is a big mac, a house in the suburbs and a nice car.

No, it doesn't. For example, (1) I feel incomplete, and these material objects aren't doing enough for me. (2) Therefore, I should look into some religious practices.

(3) Ah, Buddhism. Hmm, meditation?

(4) <Tries it. Gets good results>


Wow, with reason, that was possible, but from nietz perspective it isn't.

Case closed.

Well, a truly reasonable person would research the reason why you got good result, which incidentally has proven meditation just 15 min per day can actually change your cells on a genetic level.

Pigeons trapped in a cage were given food. They repeated whatever action they were doing when they got that food, spinning, bobbing, whatever. No reason whatsoever.

If they accidentally were pushing a button, that released the food, it would have been irrelevant, and coincidental, because really they didnt know that was the reason.

Similarly, Praying and getting a good result, which many good results come from praying and meditating, may make the pigeon, I mean person, think it was the supernatural making the good result, when really it was some complex bio-chemical reactions.

Also, try the meditation thing. Call it whatever you want, but 15 min a day. Its just awesome.

[AAFitz]

I assume your main point here Nietz, is that we are not quite at the point where we can fully trust our version of 'reason', and should keep an open mind about some things that don't happen to be reasonable to us at this particular moment in time?






If its not what you meant, you should have meant that.

[crispybits]

Reason indeed well used can explain everything, because it bases it's power in understanding and premises that are fact. But reason has its realm. You do not decide what you want in life because of reason. You use introspection for that, or at least you should. Then, when you have decided, you make use of reason, among other things, to get to your goal.

If you were to use reason for that, things will not turn out well.

Do you use reason for setting your goals BBS? -- (BBS answers: WHy yes nietzsche, I do) -- Really? Think about it. Did you use only deductive reasoning? Or did you tune in to what your inner voice wanted? Try to recreate when you are finally having a beer on Friday Night, Nola by your side, and you find a moment of inspiration and say.. "you know what Nola? I'm going to bang that girl.. I'm going to ask her out on Monday".. was it reason? or was it the accumulation of semen in your balls?

Our inner voice, our base instinct if you like, is to sleep, eat and screw. We have strong instinctive drives for those 3. Where reason comes in is to try and make us as successful as possible at doing all 3 in the right amounts while maximising future opportunity to keep doing all 3. Those 3 instincts are chemically driven, either by deficiencies or surpluses of certain hormones and nutrients in our bodies. Once we understand the chemistry well enough (and in many cases we already understand it very well indeed) then all of them will be perfectly grounded within the bounds of reason. The bits we don't understand are mostly little things like if someone is craving bananas and is tested and found to have a potassium deficiency, how does their body know, without intellectually knowing that bananas are high in potassium, that it wants a banana.

Reason cannot explain what falls outside of it's boundaries, but as science advances the bit outside of that boundary shrinks. It would be arrogant/naive to say that one day we will understand everything, as we are beings of finite capacity, so unless we assume the human race goes on for infinity it would be impossible to know an infinite amount and we cannot prove that reality is not infinite beyond our own universe, but for the practical side of things, for life as we know it within this universe, we have seen that reason provides explanations and predictions for past and future events that are reliable and consistent in many areas, and getting more reliable and more consistent in others.

My question in the second or third post on the thread could be more succinctly put as "what do you think we do not or should not use reason for, and if not reason what do you think we are or should be using instead for those things?"

[AAFitz]

The bits we don't understand are mostly little things like if someone is craving bananas and is tested and found to have a potassium deficiency, how does their body know, without intellectually knowing that bananas are high in potassium, that it wants a banana.

That was a tame example. The best example was from a guy trapped on a boat at sea for 30-45 days or something, and only had fish to eat. At some point, he started craving the eyeballs of the fish, because they contained a few of the nutrients he needed, and while one could argue that everyone subconsciously knows bananas have potassium, its highly unlikely he knew that fish eyeballs contained those few nutrients he needed to survive, not to say it was impossible.

Also related, when you eat chilli, which has about 100 times more Vit C than oranges, your body gives you an endorphine rush, to counter the pain from the heat, because it wants its damn vit C.

Obviously, all of these needs have evolved over millions of years, and given the insane number of genes, its hardly even a stretch to find it surprising, if you do indeed look at it rationally.

[crispybits]

Fair enough - I was actually going to give a real life example from me that when I quit smoking I craved eggplant even though I had never had one before and later found out they contain nicoteine (in very small doses) but switched to the banana one because I wanted to keep it generic rather than about me.

[AAFitz]

Fair enough - I was actually going to give a real life example from me that when I quit smoking I craved eggplant even though I had never had one before and later found out they contain nicoteine (in very small doses) but switched to the banana one because I wanted to keep it generic rather than about me.

Thats ok. I was the man on the boat.

No, not really.

And I wasnt trying to counter what you said, there, more add on to it.

[GreecePwns]

The thought isn't "if it's not rational, it's not true."

The thought is "if it's true, it can be explained rationally." Whether or not we have the technological, scientific, etc. capabilities to do the explaining is is another thing entirely. If we had infinite knowledge and therefore infinite technological capabilities, everything in the world would most definitely be explained rationally.

Infinite knowledge, is that a possibility for the rational mind?

The real matter is to accept what reality really is and not what it adapts itself to be understood by science in our current times. If something cannot be understood by our current science, why push it that it must adapt to it? That's far from being true science, true science should continue to seek for the laws that governs our world.

Quantum mechanics exist now because a handful of scientists noticed that the laws of the time didn't explain the particular level of matter/waves, and instead of being stubborn that reality must adapt to newtonian laws they observed and developed the new model. We would have computers without quantum physics.

Science is not a god. Science is a tool.

No one pushes things to adapt to science. If science cannot explain something it doesn't explain it. We have theories which attempt to explain those those things that we cannot yet observe due to lack of technological capabilities.

Science has no opinion on the origin of the universe. It has a theory to explain what is observable, that being the Big Bang. But what happened before the Big Bang? We don't know, and science doesn't claim to know nor can it even begin to theorize on it.

[Lootifer]

Sounds like you're more of an agnostic rather than an athiest Niet.

I'm not an agnostic because I do not believe in gods or creators or anything like that, but I'm aware that there is more that what we perceive with our senses. Our senses are a medium to perceive reality, but they are limited. We draw conclusions, inductive and deductive reasoning and we get valuable information, but as much as it's possible with the data we have.

I think that the world is governed by laws, but the laws we know now aren't the only laws, or ultimate laws. I read somewhere that the laws of the universe are changing, I'm not sure about this as I didn't research further but might be the case if the universe is expanding, or it could be that the ultimate laws don't change, that are the particular ones that do.

What I dislike is the arrogance that faithful believers in science presume. Science need scientists, and scientists need to eat. Money says what is researched and what is not. Moreover, we are smarter than our rational mind. Our instincts defy reason (at least until someone comes with an explanation we accept, only to be refuted 50 years later while the instinct remains) yet they are more valuable.

Just look at the web. There's an big amount of sites on spirituality and cures for depression, mainly because science might set us free from the chains of religion, but at the same time it leave us feeling baseless. Our instinct tell us we need a deeper connection within ourselves, although reason tell us all we need is a big mac, a house in the suburbs and a nice car.

Nothing you said here is preventative of you being agnostic; in fact again your dialog is aligned to that of a pragmatic agnostic rather than an athiest; an athiest is the one with the firm belief. But this is beside the point /hijackover

[nietzsche]

The thought isn't "if it's not rational, it's not true."

The thought is "if it's true, it can be explained rationally." Whether or not we have the technological, scientific, etc. capabilities to do the explaining is is another thing entirely. If we had infinite knowledge and therefore infinite technological capabilities, everything in the world would most definitely be explained rationally.

Infinite knowledge, is that a possibility for the rational mind?

The real matter is to accept what reality really is and not what it adapts itself to be understood by science in our current times. If something cannot be understood by our current science, why push it that it must adapt to it? That's far from being true science, true science should continue to seek for the laws that governs our world.

Quantum mechanics exist now because a handful of scientists noticed that the laws of the time didn't explain the particular level of matter/waves, and instead of being stubborn that reality must adapt to newtonian laws they observed and developed the new model. We would have computers without quantum physics.

Science is not a god. Science is a tool.

No one pushes things to adapt to science. If science cannot explain something it doesn't explain it. We have theories which attempt to explain those those things that we cannot yet observe due to lack of technological capabilities.

Science has no opinion on the origin of the universe. It has a theory to explain what is observable, that being the Big Bang. But what happened before the Big Bang? We don't know, and science doesn't claim to know nor can it even begin to theorize on it.

Yes, that is the correct position, but you know people use science in arguments in another manner. I have nothing against science, science, following the scientific method gives excellent results.

But people seem blind to the fact that experiments and results is not truth. For instance, it's truth that when test A is performed, resulted in X in 99% of the cases, then we can conclude that if you do A you get X, for all practical matters. But A is specific, we could use inductive and deductive reasoning but that doesn't mean that for B,C,D and A.aav and A.ccs X must be the result.

But lets leave that out, knowledge is not much without wisdom, and people seem to love using "facts" without wisdom to push their points.

[nietzsche]

Ah, so introspection is not reason, or has nothing to do with it. You're not making much sense, nietz.

It's reasonable to use introspection, as you know (mostly in an uncoscious way) that it works. But introspection would not be part of the rational mind.


Do you really think the creative process trust completely in the rational mind?
How would you value the creative abilities in humans?

In life we take very important decisions not based in our rational mind. When entrepeneurs start a project, do you think they decide it by barely knowing what to do in every step of the way? No, those people trust in their guts for a lot of that. Yes, logic and reason have their important role, but it's more than that makes people trust themselves.

[Dukasaur]

Ah, so introspection is not reason, or has nothing to do with it. You're not making much sense, nietz.

It's reasonable to use introspection, as you know (mostly in an uncoscious way) that it works. But introspection would not be part of the rational mind.


Do you really think the creative process trust completely in the rational mind?
How would you value the creative abilities in humans?

In life we take very important decisions not based in our rational mind. When entrepeneurs start a project, do you think they decide it by barely knowing what to do in every step of the way? No, those people trust in their guts for a lot of that. Yes, logic and reason have their important role, but it's more than that makes people trust themselves.

A friend of mine used to say, "Only write when you're stoned, but proofread when you come down."

In other words, the heart of creativity is irrational, but it needs to be filtered through a rational process before it's useful.

[nietzsche]

Ah, so introspection is not reason, or has nothing to do with it. You're not making much sense, nietz.

It's reasonable to use introspection, as you know (mostly in an uncoscious way) that it works. But introspection would not be part of the rational mind.


Do you really think the creative process trust completely in the rational mind?
How would you value the creative abilities in humans?

In life we take very important decisions not based in our rational mind. When entrepeneurs start a project, do you think they decide it by barely knowing what to do in every step of the way? No, those people trust in their guts for a lot of that. Yes, logic and reason have their important role, but it's more than that makes people trust themselves.

A friend of mine used to say, "Only write when you're stoned, but proofread when you come down."

In other words, the heart of creativity is irrational, but it needs to be filtered through a rational process before it's useful.

People use different methods to access their creative side, not all of them use intoxicating substances.

Some meditate, some get excited, some dance. Others simply are so good at taping their creative side that they just need to make a decision. And others simply just live connected to their creative side all the time.

[Dukasaur]

People use different methods to access their creative side, not all of them use intoxicating substances.

Some meditate, some get excited, some dance. Others simply are so good at taping their creative side that they just need to make a decision. And others simply just live connected to their creative side all the time.

No disagreement there. Certainly there exist a plethora of ways to tap into creativity.

The second half of what I said is important though. It must be passed through a rational process before it results in a decent product. Raw creativity is just chaos.