Down From The Ivory Tower by BIG THINK EDITORS
It has long been thought that thinking rationally and disinterestedly is a goal that only makes sense in academic fields like philosophy and science. Don't accept this.
Whether it is everyday decision making, effectively arguing a point, or avoiding falling into a fallacy, thinking rationally can improve all of our lives across the board. A growing body of voices has called for bringing the tools of reason down from the ivory tower:
Philosopher Daniel Dennett is one of the loudest and most convincing of those voices. he has recently published a book, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, which aims to teach the techniques that philosophers use to think and reason, and to allow them to be applied to any setting.
Julia Galef, President of the Center For Applied Rationality, which teaches us how to overcome our cognitive biases, loudly and effectively makes the case that the "Spock" idea of rationality as opposite to humanity and emotion is wrong and outmoded. Reason, she explains, complements those most fundamental and human parts of life.
And countless other voices are proclaiming the skills and lessons we need to know to properly fit rationality into our lives.
From this ragtag movement, we can all learn to think better, to choose better, and, from that, to live better.
Here (above) is the philosopher, Dan Dennett, on one oft-used strategy in everyday arguments "Reductio ad absurdem". He argues we need to be wary of manipulative strategies people use to sound like they are arguing reasonably - including many of the logical fallacies we looked at in class.
"I think that some philosophers are what Socrates said they were, sophists. They’re in it to win, not to get at the truth. And there are lots of sneaky, tricky things that people can do. I don’t recommend any of that. I think we want to get at the truth.
So you need to be alert to these strategies to avoid fooling yourself or being fooled by somebody else. I don’t offer any advice on how to fool others. I do think, however, and perhaps this is a fine line, that in philosophy what you have to do is tweak people’s imagination. And people have hang-ups and blind spots and phobias and just sometimes they have a principled refusal to take something seriously. They think it’s beneath their dignity and they refuse to take something seriously.
For those attitudes a careful formal argument is not going to cut any ice at all. You have to find more artful ways of dislodging those convictions, those sort of emotional blockades which can be quite strong. I think that, for instance, a very, very smart friend of mine once said, “I just can’t imagine the conscious robot.” I said, “No, that’s not true. You can imagine the conscious robot just fine. You’ve seen Star Wars. You’ve seen C3PO and R2D2. Certainly you imagined they were conscious. You can imagine the conscious robot just fine. You think you shouldn’t imagine the conscious. You don’t want to take it seriously but it’s not hard to do. For that matter, you can imagine a conscious choo choo train or a conscious tea kettle. You can. So don't tell me that I can’t imagine that. Just admit that what you really are saying is you don’t want to imagine it. You think that you’re committing some sort of confused act if you do it. But it’s easy enough to do."
