Yikes! 22 hits already. I must have caused a stir.
Well, let’s begin…
Are you accusing me of being irrational?
There’s nothing childish about how the human brain naturally works. You think it’s all just a big logic-chopping, reason-using, rationality-computing bundle of nerves? There’s dreams, there’s emotions, there’s intuition, there’s tastes and persuasions, there’s even illogical thinking sometimes–they’re all in their too, sharing the same room as the rational parts. If you’re ashamed that this makes you human–if you think it’s childish–then by all means, try your best to suppress those parts of yourself.
Yeah, v, remember I called you an idiot?
Something like that, but I wouldn’t say one should stop listening in a rational way, but that one should stop cooperating–make no mistake, the decision to put on one’s rationality cap is a decision–it’s a decision that one is going to cooperate as a listener with the speaker. Sometimes I do this with trolls–when I start to sense they are trolling, I don’t exactly stop paying attention to the reasoning in what their saying, but I switch gears and stop intending to respond back in an equally rational way. I sometime commit logical fallacies (knowingly) but in subtle enough ways that the troll won’t notice, or I’ll purposely misinterpret him–sometime enough so such that I can get his juices riled.
But then there’s advertisers whom I can’t do this with. In those cases, it’s not really about being irrational, but not being a slave to their reasoning. I mean, if you take a minute out and try to sense other parts of your mind, parts that might be telling you “no, this is wrong” even though you can’t quite figure out why, then all of a sudden, their reasoning has something to contend with in your mind, and you suddenly gain a certain measure of freedom. I find it’s better to make decisions while in that state of mind–a freely thinking state–rather than in the state the advertiser (or politician, or preacher, etc.) is trying to put you in.
So to answer your question: it’s when you bring together all parts of your mind–reason, intuition, emotion, selfish desires, lessons and teachings from those you trust, the advice of others you trust–that you know when to apply reason and when not. If you believe that you’re just a crazy or stupid moron if you don’t always think rationally, then you’ll never know when not to use it, or when to use it for that matter.
Yeeaaah…and?
Right, because if it can be used to construct arguments, then clearly it’s always underrated.
How do you know how I meant it?
Not quite, vol. It’s more like: Let’s not always be rational (as you’re clearly exemplifying), because rationality is overrated.
Anyway, to everyone else: what it comes down to is this: are you slave to rationality or is it a slave to you? Either way, rationality is here to stay–we’re not getting rid of it–in the first case, you are a tool to rationality, in the second, it is your tool.