Irrational Man
I'm always fascinated by rationalists claims that posit everything in life is logical. Of course, we notice that in extremist religious views as well as positive atheism (as if there is a willful denial of mystery associated with our existence).
Anyway, in the spirit of trying to reconcile the existential dichotomy between being and becoming, I was thinking about all the abortion and procreation threads and wanted to see if this was a reasonable conclusion in the said context:
Existence requires time.
Human Beings exist.
Human Beings require time for their existence.
If that little syllogism is sound/true, then would it make abortion illogical or irrational?
I'm not necessarily that concerned with the political arguments viz pro-choice/pro-life there. I'm interested in shedding light on the practical implications of human actions. And the fact that seemingly human's act irrationally without complete awareness of them doing so...
Anyway, in the spirit of trying to reconcile the existential dichotomy between being and becoming, I was thinking about all the abortion and procreation threads and wanted to see if this was a reasonable conclusion in the said context:
Existence requires time.
Human Beings exist.
Human Beings require time for their existence.
If that little syllogism is sound/true, then would it make abortion illogical or irrational?
I'm not necessarily that concerned with the political arguments viz pro-choice/pro-life there. I'm interested in shedding light on the practical implications of human actions. And the fact that seemingly human's act irrationally without complete awareness of them doing so...
Comments (14)
My understanding is that rationalists posit, not that everything in life is logical, but that everything humans think, is predicated on logical conditions.
All phenomena are conditioned by time. For while it is possible, and indeed necessary, to conceive the existence of things in time, it is impossible to conceive existence as a phenomenon, which makes explicit existence cannot be conditioned by time. That which exists requires time is a valid premise; existence requires time is a logically invalid premise.
Rationality is not so much acting from reason, but acting from reason logically. There is much historical precedent for human’s reasoning illogically, both unknowingly and knowingly. The former may be called ignorance, the latter may be called immoral.
Just in passing by.....
objectivity/logic -and- feelings/emotion are opposites, that must coexist.
the mind is caught in between the two, trying to balance them.
when im eating ice-cream i dont care about logic. but when i have no ice-cream and want some i care about logic because i need it to get the ice-cream.
logic is a temporary tool to get the goal (which is pleasure)
pleasure is how the body controls the mind into doing its bidding (survival)
logic is just the order of sense data. a processing method, from the sense data, to navigate the sense data, to the pleasure
No. It wouldn’t make it ‘rational’ or ‘logical’ either. Given that emotional weight is part of rational understanding and positioning it is fallacious to frame ‘logic’ and ‘rational’ terms that ignore the grounding of any argumentation at it’s essence - that is what is ‘better’, ‘correct’, ‘true’ or ‘right’ being dependent upon our emotional orientation.
In short there is little to no substance to the question posed - unless it was done in order to open up a discussion along the lines I’ve set out? If so, why not just get to it.
Thanks ON! Is there a primacy associated with those impulses? In other words, are you thinking that the Will, provided for sense data first, then looks to find logic/intellect to make sense of the sense data or Will(?).
If so, higher consciousness could mean the Will is comprised of human sentience which takes precedence over intellect?
Just trying to make sense of what you are saying.
Thanks S! Well, firstly, taken for face value, if those premise are valid or sound, then it has to be true.
(In the case of human's requiring time for their existence.)
I love sweet emotion, don't misunderstand. I'm trying to parse out basic existential a priori concepts that would prove, say, that on its face, abortion is irrational.
Secondly, perhaps It doesn't even have to be abortion. It could be the phenomenon of Love for instance. But that would be a little trickier to parse I think.
Johnny is in love
Mary loves Johnny
Johnny loves Mary, but also loves Suzy more than Mary
Johnny will love both of them
Suzy is ok with that, but Mary is not
Any thoughts there... ?
Thanks Mww! Can you elaborate a bit more on the invalid premise of 'existence requires time' propositional statement?
There is some parallel to the thought experiment I played out before regarding an extension of the Trolley Problem. If having more humans existing is deemed ‘better’ (regardless of implications) then it is - at a stretch - a ‘logical’ argument against abortion.
The thing is I will add in the ethical/moral implications myself to ‘judge’ what is ‘better’.
Hmm. The whole "requires time" premise seems to me a red-herring based on an exclusive definition of synchrony vs diachrony. A thing can cognitively be "in time" without necessarily "taking time." As a simple example, painting a picture takes time (diachronic) but the complete picture can be observed "all at once" (synchronic).
Most interesting to me is your last observation that people act irrationally without awareness of doing so. This reminds me of the age old question, why do people choose bad instead of good when, ex hypothesi, bad is harmful and good is beneficial. People must somehow think that they are acting rationally even though they are acting irrationally. Bad faith?
"Emotion just elaborates on the meaning of information. Information alone is useless to you. To work with that information in a logical manner, you have to know what that information means. Your emotions tell you what information means to you."
“All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge.”
— Albert Einstein
S, I just was doing some researching there ( those are just a couple sound bites)...I think what you're saying is that emotions will preclude a purely objective logical formulation?
Ha, thanks P! In a funny similar way, I was thinking while reading your above quote that when I tell people 'happy Monday' and they look at me like I'm growing a horn, I then reply with something like : " I know, I know, it's an oxymoron, but I lie to myself every morning".
As far as bad faith, yes. I wonder what that faith consists of...like we get the notion of a justified true belief, deductive and inductive logic, and all the other intellectual things in life. But sometimes we say we are aware of those bad things as you suggest, yet we just don't care.
So, I'm thinking Aristotle's 'know thyself' meme sounds good, and trust me I love that meme, but people may be aware that they are aware, yet still proceed out of some level of willful ignorance.
And that is why I tried the 'abortion syllogism'.... which takes us back to sentience as other's have suggested...
I'm trying to figure this out
logic is a set of rules in the mind, used to process information, those rules come from sense data (evidence)
What is sense data, a metaphysical concept or phenomenological theory of sorts about our consciousness (I wonder) hence:
"Talk of sense-data has since been largely replaced by talk of the closely related qualia. The formulation 'the given' is also closely related. None of these terms has a single coherent and widely agreed-upon definition, so their exact relationships are unclear. One of the greatest troubling aspects to 20th century theories of sense data is its unclear rubric nature.
A controversial issue is whether sense-data have real, concrete existence. Depending upon the version of the sense-data theory adopted, sense-data may or may not be identical with aspects of external physical objects; they may or may not be entities that exist privately in the subject’s mind."
brain, mind, consciousness, qualia, feelings, are five different things
brain = grey matter in head
mind = thoughts
consciousness = awareness
qualia = color, sound, feeling,
feeling = one aspect/type of qualia
sure another word for sense-data is qualia. same thing.
as for 'external physical objects' ... these are just a trick of the mind. when the mind is ignorant of the true nature of reality as consciousness it uses its own memory as a replacement backbone to reality. it fills in the qualia shapes with memory and assumes they are separate physical objects that continue to exist when your not looking at them. this is just a delusion of ignorance.
maya and materialism
https://www.britannica.com/topic/maya-Indian-philosophy
https://www.britannica.com/topic/materialism-philosophy