Chapter 6        Rationalism and its Flaws

 

In Western philosophy, the main alternative to Empiricism for describing the mind and, thus, giving us a model of knowing, is called “Rationalism”. It is the way of Plato in Classical Greek times and of Descartes in the Enlightenment.

Rationalism claims that the mind can build a system for understanding itself, and for how it “knows” about its world, only if that system is first grounded in the mind by itself, before any sensory experiences or memories of them enter the system. Rationalism says you can know truth by beginning inside the confines of your own mind. In fact, that is the only reliable way to know truth.

 

 

                                             (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

Descartes, for example, points out that our senses give us information that can easily be faulty. As was noted above, the stick in the pond looks bent at the water line, but if we remove it, we see it is straight. The hand on the pocket warmer and the hand in the snow can both be immersed shortly after in tepid tap water; to one hand, the tap water is cold and to the other, it is warm. And these are the simple examples. Life contains many much more difficult ones.

Therefore, the rationalists say, if we want to understand thinking in a reliable way, we must construct a model of thinking that is based only on concepts that are built into the mind itself, before any unreliable sense data or memories of sense data even enter the picture.

Plato says we are born already dimly knowing some perfect forms that we then use to organize our thoughts. He drew the conclusion that these forms, which enable us to make sense of our world, are imperfect copies of the perfect forms that exist in a perfect dimension of pure thought, before birth, beyond matter, space, and time – a dimension of pure ideas. The material world and the things in it are only poor copies of pure forms ultimately derived from the pure Good. The whole point of our existence, for Plato, is to discipline the mind by study until we learn to recall, understand, and navigate through life by, the perfect forms – perfect tools, perfect medicine, perfect beauty, perfect houses, perfect animals, perfect justice, perfect love, and so on.

Descartes’ similar system of thought begins from the truths the mind finds inside itself when it carefully, quietly contemplates only itself. During this totally concentrated self-contemplation, the thing that is most deeply you, namely your mind, realizes that whatever else you may be mistaken about, you can’t be mistaken about the fact that you exist; you must exist in some way in some dimension in order for you to be thinking about whether you exist. For Descartes, this was a rock solid starting point that enabled him to build a whole system of thinking and knowing that sets up two realms: a realm of things the mind deals with through the physical body attached to it, and another realm the mind deals with by pure thinking, a realm built on the clear and distinct ideas (“clarus et distinctus essentiam”) that the mind knows before it takes in any impressions coming from the physical senses.

In our last chapter, the moral philosophers’ hope of finding a foundation for a moral system in Empiricism was dashed by Gödel and other thinkers like him. Rationalism’s flaws have been just as clearly exposed by psychologists such as Elliot Aronson and Leon Festinger.

 

                                         

                                   Elliot Aronson (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

 

Aronson was Festinger’s student. He went on to win much acclaim in his own right. They both focused their work on cognitive dissonance theory, which describes a human mental habit. The theory is fairly easy to understand, but its consequences are profound and far-reaching. The theory says that the inclination of our minds is always toward finding reasons and evidence to justify what we want to do anyway, and even more firmly believed ones to justify the things we’ve already done.¹

What it says essentially is this: the mind tends, insistently and insidiously, to think in ways that affirm itself. In every action the mind directs the body to perform, and in every phrase it directs the body to utter, it tends to try to stay consistent with itself. In practice, this means humans tend to find reasons for maintaining the way of life in which they’ve become comfortable. Reasons that sound “good” to them. Every mind strives to make theory match practice or practice match theory – or to adjust both – in order to reduce internal feelings of discomfort. (“Am I being a hypocrite here?” we ask ourselves.) This mental discomfort is what psychologists call cognitive dissonance.

A novice financial advisor who used to speak disparagingly of all sales jobs is now able to tell you with heartfelt sincerity why every person, including you, ought to have a thoughtfully selected portfolio of stocks.

A physician adds another set of therapies, of dubious effectiveness, to his practice every year. A plastic surgeon can show with argument and evidence that the cosmetic procedures he performs should be covered by the state’s health-care plan because his patients are not vain, but “aesthetically handicapped.” 

The divorce lawyers are not setting two people who used to love each other at each other’s throats. Each is merely defending his or her clients’ interests, while the clients’ misery grows worse every week the case goes on.

The cigarette company executive not only finds what he believes are flaws in the cancer research, he smokes two packs a day.

The general sends his own son to the front. And his mother-in-law’s decent qualities, not her rude ones, become more obvious to him on the day he learns that she owns over ten million dollars’ worth of real estate. (All that landlord-stress! No wonder she’s sometimes rude.)

What of the Philosophy professor who is trained to spot bad logic? He once said he believed in the primacy of the rights of the individual over any group’s rights. He sought to abolish any taxes that might be used to pay for social services. Private charities could do such work if it needed to be done at all. But then his daughter – who suffers from bipolar disorder and who sometimes goes off her medications and runs away from all forms of care, no matter how loving – runs off and becomes one of the mentally ill homeless in the streets of a distant city. She is saved by alert street workers, paid (meagrely) by the state. Now he argues that citizens should pay taxes that can be used to hire street workers who look out for the vulnerable and destitute. 

In addition, he once considered euthanasia to be totally immoral. But now his aging father who has Alzheimer’s disease has been deteriorating for over five years. Professor X is broke, sick, and exhausted. He longs for the heartache to be over. He knows he cannot keep caring, day in and day out, for the needs of this now unrecognizable, pathetic creature for very much longer. Even Dad, the dad he once knew, would have agreed. Dad needs and deserves a gentle euthanasia. Professor X is sure of it, and in confidential conversations, he says so to his grad students and colleagues.