Stumbled across a blog which has the charming thought: maybe we should put robots in charge of human affairs given that humans have been so prone to violence. That is the kind of thought that every two-penny closet fascist harbours now and then. Not too far away, you suspect, from other dark musings: do we really need so many immigrants?
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Over the weekend little r asked me what nerves are. Not quite sure myself I said that the brain sends messages through them to the rest of the body..so, the brain says, "lift up you hand" and you do. The brain says "scratch your ear" and you do.
Little r was having none of this. "I won't do what my brain says".
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Back in 1977 Sen wrote a remarkable paper, Rational Fools, which has had very little influence on mainstream thinking. The idea was radical: Reason was not a mechanical decision procedure defined well in advance by narrow axioms but, in fact, the ability to take a step back from your desires (and, more controversially, from your own goals and objectives) and re-evaluate them in the light of experience. Reason, in this more capacious sense, was the ability to subject one's purposes and values to reasoned scrutiny. A person who could do nothing else but maximize their 'given' preferences (even when defined in a broad sense) was in effect a 'rational fool'.
Intelligence requires judgement and is not mere cleverness and certainly not simply the pursuit of one's self-interest. To understand another person's goals and not reduce them to your own aims sounds like a momentous task and a world away from the dominant strain in economic thinking. Ultimately, to take a step back and evaluate your purposes means that reason isn't a cold and calculating capacity of the mind but, instead, an irreducible characteristic of a human way of relating to the world. Reason is, in this sense, not separate from emotional intelligence or ethics. To see yourself in the right light means seeing other people in the correct way, too. They're inseparable. There is no thinking alone, no subject before language or the world.
~
Over the weekend little r asked me what nerves are. Not quite sure myself I said that the brain sends messages through them to the rest of the body..so, the brain says, "lift up you hand" and you do. The brain says "scratch your ear" and you do.
Little r was having none of this. "I won't do what my brain says".
~
Back in 1977 Sen wrote a remarkable paper, Rational Fools, which has had very little influence on mainstream thinking. The idea was radical: Reason was not a mechanical decision procedure defined well in advance by narrow axioms but, in fact, the ability to take a step back from your desires (and, more controversially, from your own goals and objectives) and re-evaluate them in the light of experience. Reason, in this more capacious sense, was the ability to subject one's purposes and values to reasoned scrutiny. A person who could do nothing else but maximize their 'given' preferences (even when defined in a broad sense) was in effect a 'rational fool'.
Intelligence requires judgement and is not mere cleverness and certainly not simply the pursuit of one's self-interest. To understand another person's goals and not reduce them to your own aims sounds like a momentous task and a world away from the dominant strain in economic thinking. Ultimately, to take a step back and evaluate your purposes means that reason isn't a cold and calculating capacity of the mind but, instead, an irreducible characteristic of a human way of relating to the world. Reason is, in this sense, not separate from emotional intelligence or ethics. To see yourself in the right light means seeing other people in the correct way, too. They're inseparable. There is no thinking alone, no subject before language or the world.
2 comments:
very interesting post. I will be looking for that Sen text.
These days ethical or moral considerations are increasingly derided as "sentimental" (and therefore as silly or weak ) and only the pursuit of self-interest is considered as "rational" (and therefore as 'reasonable').
But you're so right, in fact it takes a lot of 'distance', 'reflection' and yes 'reason', to have an "enlarged mentality" instead of just instinctively defending one's primal interests. There's a lot more reason in empathy, and a lot more empathy in reason than today's tough discourse allows for. (perhaps there's more of Kant in Merkel than of Mother Theresa)
best,
fff
These days ethical or moral considerations are increasingly derided as "sentimental" (and therefore as silly or weak ) and only the pursuit of self-interest is considered as "rational" (and therefore as 'reasonable').
Yes, that's a good point, fff. (Adam Phillips makes the same point about kindness which is now assumed, almost exclusively, to be a "female" sentiment). In a similar vein, religion is now "blind faith: and has nothing to do with reason (which is remarkable when you think of the scholastic tradition).
I like what you say about empathy..isn't there a higher form of thinking that is associated with 'thinking for', 'thinking with' and thinking about other people?
Sen makes the interesting point: rationality is usually bound up with particular notions of the self. What might be going wrong in the Prisoner's dilemma is not just self-interest (that is the traditional explanation); it could also be that people are taking on an exclusively individualistic perspective.
If you get the chance, his introduction to Rationality and Freedom is a masterclass.
Take care,
b.
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