I'd guess that most human activity throughout a routine day is irrational activity. we're acting on impulses and feelings, looking for pleasurable sensations, going through social routines, fulfilling the needs and whims of others. how much of what we do during the day is actually reasoned out first? probably not much. even if you're in some kind of brainy profession, much of your work is likely not to require much thought.
yet Western society seems to have converged round the illusion that the ideal human being is perfectly rational and "logical" at all times--and there's macabre amusement in seeing how the most obnoxious believers in this fallacy are people like Christian dingbats, i.e. people whose core personality is irrational adherence to an outlandish faith.
the premise of the fallacy is roughly this: human beings are like state machines who run through a basic program. (1) they perceive the world. (2) they think about their perceptions and come to a rational and logical decision about what to do. (3) they act on the logic, and go back to perceiving. now maybe people do behave like this in certain limited circumstances but plainly this doesn't really apply to most human behavior--yet the hardcore "rationalist" will claim that this is how they always behave.
how'd this wretched state of affairs come about? can we blame Protestantism? (I'm Catholic btw)
~Chara
As in many ways, they are correct; living beings are machines of input and output, action and reaction.
But there is a series of fatal flaws in their own logic:
- that the input they receive; their perception, is functionally correct; — In many cases this is false, and leads to undesirable action, as what was perceived did not align with reality.
- that their thought process themselves are without flaw, blemish, or error; — As with all computing, there are bugs; flaws in the computational state due to oversight, damages, unexpected state, unhandled errors, and more. Thought is no different. From chemical imbalance to brain damage; from lack of clear input, to spontaneous output; thought is not without its problem states.
- that the input they receive is complete. — It happens all the time where we as living beings are given only a fraction of information about a situation or our surroundings, and given woefully inadequate time to act upon it. The only way in which, barring the first two issues, true "rational" thought could be 100% guaranteed is if one had unilateral understanding of every variable that could possibly be conceived, let alone perceived.
So they're right in a way, but horrendously wrong about the conclusion they make. If anything, the reality is the exact opposite!
