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| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
I tried to google that condition, but with no luck. I'm sure that, hypothetically at least, a man without desire, emotion or any irrational inclination whatsoever will have no reason to get out of bed in the morning, but that's not what I was arguing against. Camus said that "the body's judgement is as good as the mind's" and I agree entirely: to ignore the inclinations of the body is to ignore an integral part of human existence. The body, however, is not a valid instrument by which to gauge the "truth" claim of any given circumstance: what I mean by this is that people rarely use the phrase "common sense" as an emotional imperitive, they use it as an epistemological one. All of the examples in the OP are examples that the author of the article obviously considers to be axiomatically true: that is, true without logical justification. There is, for instance, no visceral reason to suppose that "don't spend more than you can earn" is a good policy by which to live: this can only be justified by the mind, not the body.
So yes, to live without intuition is to hardly live at all, but that is not to say that intuition can not (or should not) be usurped by rationality. The mind is a always a far better judge of truth than the body.
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I agree, i didnt mean to imply that the the body was an accurate measure for "truth" claims in general, only that it is useful for some cases for a particular individual.
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I don't think so. The mind is conditioned to view the world in a social context: I don't think that this can be argued against. That is not to say, however, that social heiracrhies (or "adults, not children, are in charge" to quote from the OP) have any ontological validity, or that we are under any obligation to follow them. Social norms undoubtedly exist - and they are undoubtedly a product of "intuition" - but that is not to say that they should be rightly upheld. All great social movements of the past have arisen through rejection of "social behaviour", not submission to it. If we are going to progress as a species, then we have to recognise that intuition is a poor guide in cases not pertaining exclusively to the individual. We should live the life we choose - and intuition is integral to this - but intution in a social (much less an epistemological) context is a very poor torch-bearer indeed. |
I meant assesing social behaviour of other people in order for us to reply to said behaviour in particular situations, not to asses the truth or usefulness of social behaviours in general, pardon my lack of specificity  . I agree that for larger trends in behaviour, and for assesing norms the use of rational thought processes are more useful and it is often the case. The mind is design to do first a quick assesment which is what we call intuition and is usually unconscious, and afterwards the logical and more deliberate processes kick in. I agree with all you said, i just wanted to highlight that those uncounscious processes have their uses and misuses, and that it depends on what is the target of our judgements because people here readily dismiss anything thats not "logical" as being unuseful.
About the research on hyperrationality, i didnt right down references when we discussed it in one of my classes because it was only an example, it might go under a different name. If you really want to read on it i cand find out for you, i did a quick search and couldnt find it either but i can ask my prof.
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Poetry>Byron//Blog>TheMean
| quote: | Orbax
At that point you kind of crossed the rubicon and you might as well lay siege to Rome |
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