edhall@randvax.ARPA (08/30/83)
This is in response to Tom Craver in particular, but I think it applies to other articles as well. Note that creationists need not read this argument, as it presupposes evolution without arguing for it. (Some other time...) `Reasoning' is neutral; it is neither the path to `good' or `evil' (however you define them), but can be used to any end. It is a tool: no more, no less. The attitude that `reason' is the supreme means to happiness, morality, and a Better Society is one of tremendous intellectual arrogance. We have evolved over a period of 3 billion years, and only the last few thousand of those have been blessed with `rationality'. If a philosophy views 99.9998% of our origin as merely a meaningless prelude before the spark of concious intellect occured, it is absurd to expect it to satisfy or to last. I think that all that rationalists have done is substitute the intellect for what used to be called the `spirit'. In both cases, the human body is treated as a flawed and doomed machine, which somehow carries this higher essence. Well, that `essence' evolved in service to the body, and not the other way around. I find its nature far more complicated and prone to conflict and error than the `baser' elements of our existance. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that reason is worthless. Far to the contrary--it is the most powerful tool we have. But mere exercise of reason is meaningless. If you begin the search for meaning through reasoning, you'll soon wind up in cyclical arguments or else succumb to dogma. Yet I think a lot of us can *feel* a sense of purposefulness without having to argue it, unless we have been taught by way of `reason' that such a feeling is `unreal' or `mystical'. Alas, it is often true that such a sense of self-purpose is trained out of people before they have developed it. In fact, this is indigenous to Western Civilization to a certain extent. Those blessed with stronger than average intellects often become rebellious--angry, critical, and perfectionist--and end up basing their entire self-concept on intellect. Control through causality becomes their battle-cry. Through rational understanding of the cause of things, all will be controlled...and lifeless. So much for the 3 billion years; intellect is just the crust of being, not the core. (But what marvelous crust, to be sure!) In fact it is a sign of our hyper-rational sickness that we so often reduce human concerns to their economic `equivalent': the reduction of meaningfulness to dollar-value because the latter is the most `objective' measure available. Only in such terms can the human toll of dangerous products and irresponsible marketing be written off as `market forces'. Fie! The death of liberalism was when it began measuring social concerns in dollars. Instead of using our reasoning to mold the market into a more just and humane form, we're supposed to allow people's baser emotions (greed, pride, power-lust, etc) run the market until the `tension' between `market forces' reaches equilibrium. Then presto!, Utopia. Such simplistic reasoning may have worked in an argrarian economy, but all it does today is provide an ideal environment for the concentartion of economic power and the exploitation of the bewildered consumer. By itself, the intellect is pretty colorless and cold. Put in the service of positive (i.e. life-affirming) emotions, and you get medicine (well, sometimes), art, constructive progress, and a general improvement in the biological as well as the emotional and intellectual human condition. In the service of negative emotions you get Nazism, nuclear arms races, destructiveness and divisiveness, and totalitarianism. The emotions cannot bear all the blame themselves, as it was the intellect that gave them leverage, and helped disguise them. As I said, a most wonderous and terrible tool. Only a tool. To me, philosophy (the Greek means `love of wisdom') is colorless when it only treats intellectual questions. There is more life in dancing and singing--actions rooted in our biological nature--than in thought, rational or unrational. If there are no laughter or tears in your philosophy, who needs it? All the philisophical discourse in the world is less solace to someone seeking purpose than an arm around the shoulder. So what do I propose replacing reason with? Nothing! Leave reasoning where it is, but put back all that has been discarded. Reasoning can help in dealing with conflicts of pride and jealousy, and can open up understanding in oposition to hatred and superstition. Fellowship and joy can be facilitated with it, and creative endevor would be fruitless without it. But the reasoning mind is not the whole person no matter how much you want it to be. Wisdom comes in knowing when to use it, and when not to. -Ed Hall decvax!randvax!edhall :UUCP edhall@rand-unix :ARPA