Dirty Rationalism

There seems to be some evidence to suggest that people who, in some circumstances, act without thinking are judged as more moral than those who do apply rational thought to their choices. Maybe this is based on an understanding of morality which considers it as only valid if it is operating in some state of natural and authentic purity; a version of the 'noble savage' myth. Using the faculties of reason and conscious deliberation is felt as a contamination of this pure morality, even if the outcome is exactly the same.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• morality
• sense
• reason
• rationalism
• Brett
• Keane
• atheist
• christian
• moral
• unconscious
• subconscious
• noble
• savage
• naturalist
• fallacy
• conscious
• consciousness
• metaphor
• purity
• contamination
• thought
• meme

[zarkoff45]

I'm curious, did you reference Brett Keane's video "Jesus Christ VS Christians - Dedicated to Yoketards"?

Do you understand the full context of that video?

At the core of the dispute is a boy called VenomFangX who seems to act quite immorally because he cannot reason things out.

At least that was my take:

watch?v=40BHy8UNJjg

[conferencereport]

@zarkoff45

I was really referencing an earlier one called 'Can Christians & Atheists be Friends' /watch?v=Uzte6LDcQHg

I'll add the link to the info box I think.

[Jadabh3]

Purity of reactions haha. I know what you mean. Have a look at some poems on youtube... users act as though un-filtered thought is somehow divine.

[Barklord]

I think I'm coming to the conclusion that the rational mind should be subservient to love rather than trying to fit our emotions into a conceptualized ideal of what we should love. Not that you're saying otherwise but that's what came to my mind. cheers!

[mrezralucas]

give up on the walkabout nonsense and concentrate on the quality of your ideas

[mrezralucas]

give up on the walkabout nonsense and concentrate on the quality of your ideas

[Nicx950]

The reason for the negative response when thinking rationally is not thinking rationally by itself but in the given context.

The choices are not in any way morally equal. Saving a life versus aesthetic improvements?

A better survey would have dealt with Sartre's old example of the young man having to choose either going to war against the nazis or staying with his ill mother.

If rationalism was implemented in that scenario, you would have a much more favorable response to thinking, I'd wager.

[begonefilthyhuman]

The problem with these questions is that structure always matters more than content. You can build virtually any axiom to get the response you want. In this case, it seems built-in that the researchers would want a negative reaction to thought.

A more interesting scenario might have been the standard Kantian "flip the switch (or push the fat guy) to kill 1 and save 5" axiom, where the correct decision is murkier and might genuinely require careful thought.

[CzarAdam2009]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean over all.

I agree with the first sentance. About the second one, it seems to me that the reason we come to that conclusion is because we've thought about it either in the past or in the present.

I don't understand what you mean in the third sentance so I think I've missed your main point though. Could you elaborate a bit?

[vedasisme]

I'm having difficulty deciding what we ought to take away from this study. Does the added detail of deep consideration cause the subject to imagine complicating circumstances that would make the hospital manager's decision more difficult? And if so, does this speak about the particular person's personal values?

I'm not sure that this study indicates any particular aversion to rational thought in moral judgments, but the consistency of the data is intriguing.

[TWITfromURANUS]

Indeed. Time is always a factor when it comes to matters of life & death (or any matters really)...

Toasted Tyke --nobody wants that on their plate.

[emblemOFbeing]

@TzubakiZanjuro very true - careful deliberation gets a bad wrap in many cases, well beyond those 2 discussed here. Being able to apprehend meaningfully structured gestalten , all at once, as a kind of figure segregated and consolidated from a background, seems to be the highest ideal of skill -- whether in the realm of cognitive, moral, of physical being.

[emblemOFbeing]

@conferencereport as I said in my reply, and I think (more clearly) expressed again in my reply to Iralon's video reply to that video....purity is one way of looking at it, but it seems to me that the first choice expresses moral cultivation of ethical know-how, whereas the second results from a more reasoning, logically thought out (automatic, in the true sense) process based on knowing-that. The second is contingent and decays with age, whereas the first is core, never hear of it 'decaying'