Is everyone under the mistaken impression that a human is primarily a reasoning animal? Much of what appears to be "reason" is pattern recognition with no significant cognition backing it up. Don't think you're immune either. We all do a lot of things that if questioned closely is based on presuppositions that aren't ultimately as justifiable as we think.
I've given up on humans in general being amenable to reason. If an obvious 2-bit incompetent conman can get 40 percent of the population to swear unwavering alliegance, the species has no chance. Dinosaurs lasted far longer, we're just too stupid as a collective.
Where this all falls down is in the assumption that human minds are consistent systems. I have to wonder if anyone who thinks such a thing has ever met any actual humans. Even a brief interrogation of a typical human as to their beliefs and assumptions about the world should rapidly disabuse us of the thought.
Humans are perfectly capable of assuming unproved axioms, changing their set of axioms, and accepting contradictory axioms. We do these things all the time, applying one axiom in one situation, and it's opposite in another. Just ask someone about their political beliefs for a while.
The fact is human intelligence is not an end in itself, it's a tool we use to achieve goals set by our evolutionary priorities, as encoded into our emotions and needs. These are the things that drive us, not logical axioms and proven truths. Even smart people have an emotional need to be correct, and many will resist having their beliefs challenged and changed tooth and nail. It takes constant effort and self discipline to maintain an open mind to new ideas and the rejection of existing assumptions, and certainly doesn't come naturally to us.
So this systematic theorising all seems somewhat beside the point. Don't get me wrong. It's interesting and useful philosophical work, no question, but it's not really applicable to actual human minds.
It's totally possible that humans don't do reason. It's possible that the parrot in our brain makes the decision, and then the "frontend" of our mind makes fake reasons that sound logical enough.
But it's just a possibility, and I don't find it's particularly convincing.
Humans are born with certain intuitions and the ability to interact with the world around them even if they never interact with other humans. I have a hard time taking this argument in good faith
Eh, I would say anyone who’s not capable of second order thinking isn’t meaningfully human. I guess it gets fuzzy with babies and the extremely disabled, but that’s life
I know your statement is sarcastic, but it's disturbing how common this sentiment actually is.
It assumes that humans are unchanging, inflexible automata whose actions can be predicted entirely by what they have said or done, let alone that it doesn't consider the fact that they may simply be a facade. In reality, it is their unstated framework of thinking that guides their speech and actions.
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