Once upon a time, when I was little, I had a sudden revelation. It came after unconscious pondering on adults inclination towards arguing.
‘Mmmm, when I grow up, I won’t argue with anyone’ -I thought to myself- ‘If someone disagrees with me, I will show them the logic behind my point of view, and they will have to admit that I am right…becuase logic is logic! And if I happen to be in the wrong, they will clarify it for me. Nothing can beat logic!’
Of course these were not the precise words, you’d understand -whatever they were, they were silently uttered in Spanish anyway- but the idea was just that. And I smiled to myself, satisfied, and a little amazed at the fact that the people I had just heard disagreeing with each other were unaware of the benefits of applying logic to their thinking!
Later on, I can’t remember whether I was still a child -but probably not!- I had to accept that logic has very little presence in the adult world.
Now I’m pondering over the following: is it logic that our world lacks, or are the premises so twisted and wrong that no logical logic can logically follow?
mmm…
meekroaringlion
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meekroaringlion
well, reason and logical thinking as a whole have certainly done a lot for us
reason has helped us get out of the mire of political/religious authorities — somewhat.
the issue begins here : rationalism expects people to behave rationally, but what is that? What is rational? Are people at the top of the food chain acting rationally? Some scientists, politics or any other public personality will advance “rational” arguments against the veracity of phenomenons such as global warming, annihilation of the state by those who are supposed to protect it and corporate fascism.
What if the “rationale” for rationality isn’t what we think it is?
Because all in all we’re no different than any other animal species, living in an hostile environment. We’re more sophisticated, and our jungle is made of infrastructures that uphold order against chaos, but the global market is the forest hiding the rotten tree that is poisoning the earth: once you give some people the power to take decisions that will involve billions of lives in order to stay in place and maintain their privileges, very quickly, at some point, this decision, as humane as it was supposed to be, will have inhumane consequences — all, of course, for the greater good.
Not that I advocate for the total annihilation of all logical thinking (which would come as a a paradox after such a long commentary), but at some point it seems that the core values of emotional/basic moral response to what is wrong with the world and what we should do, at our own scale, to keep it from happening, has been lost, taken hostage again by the same authorities that we tried to escape from.
“Sure we live in a rational world, but better leave reason and thinking to the bosses, after all, that’s why they’re here, because they’re better at it than you are!”
That is the real rationale behind rationalism today.
Thank you for your valuable contribution almagenes
Although I don’t have much time right away for an entirely constructive add on, in my opinion logical thinking can only exist when the premises themselves are logic! One can argue that there will be as many premises as people walking the earth, but I believe that there is a LOGIC that exists in itself, the logic, that escapes human subjectivity.
It is the impossibility to transcend individual need that creates the problem. In this rotten society, what is good for me will cause harm to others. Only a couple of the links in the logical chain are considered, and that in itself is illogical.
When we understand that the needs of the species as a whole are greater than and superior to our own individual concerns, than we will have strted to rationalise.
“Thank you for your valuable contribution almagenes”
You’re very welcome, miss.
“I believe that there is a LOGIC that exists in itself, the logic, that escapes human subjectivity.”
I can see where you’re going with that. You’re thinking about causality, right? Everything has a cause, everything as a reason, and thus everything can be explained. But see, in this equation you’re dealing with something important, which is language and how it constructs beliefs and systems. You can try to deconstruct an opinion, but opinionated people have a way to evade logic by constructing a logic of their own. For instance, you can go see a Mr. Monsanto and tell him that he’s really killing these poor field workers in South America by forcing them into the GMO business, and he’ll tell you that maybe it does cause a bit of harm to these people, but it really helps the country and its people in the long run because only that way can those peasants adapt to real world agrobusiness, and then again he’s only doing what the country’s government is allowing him to do.
It’s a logic in its own right. The arguments are here. But obviously I will not share them, and I’d tell him so: this business is endangering people’s health and cultural identities, polluting the earth, a source of diseases and despair to a whole generation of people worldwide who will either have to adapt, move to the city for a shitty job, or die, which is no way to advance socially, etc. After some time, if I get too excited, Mr. Monsanto would simply get me out of his face, and the conversation would end there. He would not question his activities, and the system is done in such a way that if he does and become a liability for his own company, his shareholders would slowly but surely push him out. “Nothing personal, just business.”
The logic of the business is not to respond to the logic of human beings, but simply to stay where it is and keep selling and being on top, in such a way that nothing can deter, alter or endanger it. It escapes logical thinking by surfing on the logic of consumer society and enforcing its own ultra-liberalistic agenda. It rewrites the rules of how food should be grown, consumed and what effect it has on people. The logic would be to stop it and put these guys in jail, but nothing of the sort will happen, because part of the logic here is to bribe public figures, journalists and researchers into collaboration, or push the others into ridicule and/or oblivion. That’s a logic too!
See the fallacy in this argument is to believe there is such a thing as pure, pre-human logic. There can not be such a thing. Logic is logos, and logos is language. It is a tool to push an agenda. Your logic is to look for a humane way to deal with things. Mr. Monsanto’s logic is pragmatical, in the way that he didn’t make the world the way it is today, and if he wasn’t doing it, someone else would do it in his place, so, better him than someone else, right? More money in his pocket and all. That’s a logic too.
“It is the impossibility to transcend individual need that creates the problem. In this rotten society, what is good for me will cause harm to others. Only a couple of the links in the logical chain are considered, and that in itself is illogical.
When we understand that the needs of the species as a whole are greater than and superior to our own individual concerns, than we will have strted to rationalise.”
I’m right there with you.
I don’t believe in ‘pre-human logic’, but firmly believe that a ‘logic’ that does not serves us all and the planet cannot be regarded as ‘logic’ as I understand it. If my logic does others harm then it is illogic, period; it’s somone’s (selfish) logic, sure, therefore imperfect.