Can an irrational universe produce rationality?

[Guest andrew]

Objectivism rejects the supernatural. However this does pose a contradiction:

The supernatural stance explains how rationality can exist: if the universe has been "designed" then it must have a "designer" and therefore can be expected to perform along rational lines.

If the universe has not been "designed" then it must be the result of an irrational accident. Therefore how can we expect an irrational universe to produce rationality?

If our minds are irrational collections of atoms/electrical impulses then how can they produce rational thoughts?

I can't answer this question, all I can do is ask it.

[Capitalism Forever]

The supernatural stance explains how rationality can exist:  if the universe has been "designed" then it must have a "designer" and therefore can be expected to perform along rational lines.

Oh, but who designed the designer?

[JohnGalt]

I think you're confusing the rational with the ordered and the irrational with the chaotic. These concepts are not identical. Order does not require reason, in the sense of a single consciousness performing a rational thought process. There is such a thing as spontaneous order. The free market system is an excellent example of this, but there are others.

I recall hearing of an experiment performed in a robotics laboratory: a number of simple robots were placed in an area in which were scattered a number of square blocks. The robots' programming followed this algorithm: move until you find a block, pick it up, move until you find another block, put the block you're carrying down, repeat. Over time, the robots began to form small piles of blocks, and eventually, one large pile. The suggestion was that ants may operate on a similar "program" when gethering food. Order without rationality.

The natural world, by which I mean "the world excluding man," displays order. Certain animals live in social groups, with a definite structure, though they do not posess rationality. Plants have structured system to sustain their life, though this is not a product of reason, merely of evolution.

Evolution, like other forms of spontaneous order, is a result of the law of identity. A is A and can not be anything else. A nuclear missle can be netiher a sperm whale, nor a small bowl of petunias. Every event has specific effects. The effects can not be contradictory to the cause. I can not eat my cake and still have it.

As to the order of the universe as a whole: I used to believe as you do, Andrew, until the weakness in such a belief, pointed out by Capitalism Forever, occurred to me. If order must be a product of rationality, and rationality can not exist without order, which came first? I think someone was quoted in another thread, "The universe is just one of those things that happens from time to time."

Reason, as a structured method of thought, requires order, but order does not depend on reason.

[y_feldblum]

"Rationality" is a thing which describes the mind. Can the universe be rational - or does it just exist and it is up to us to act in accordance with our mind and capability of reason?

Rationality regarding the mind would mean, in essence, non-evasion of fact and, and objectivistically, the morality of active sustenance of one's own life.

Physical order simply means a degree of non-continuum, is a thing independent of the mind, and arises spontaneously in accordance with the laws of nature.

[Guest andrew]

But are our minds independent of the universe or just "things" within it, like any other thing?

And if our rational minds have evolved out of a series of random mutations, surely a future mutation can cause them to cease to think rationally? Or perhaps a mutation has already meant we do not think rationally, except that we do not know it.

[Capitalism Forever]

But are our minds independent of the universe or just "things" within it, like any other thing?

They are certainly within the universe (given that the universe is defined as all that exists) but they are things of a special nature: they are conscious, and they have a will. Other things just react to events according to predefined rules--but we can act on our own.

And if our rational minds have evolved out of a series of random mutations, surely a future mutation can cause them to cease to think rationally?

You don't think rationally because a series of random mutations have caused you to think rationally. You think rationally because you choose to think rationally.

Man's brain may have evolved in a Darwinian way; but the brain only provides a capacity for rational thought. This capacity is not utilized automatically. The very idea of rational thought is to exert your will to get your brain to produce the result you are looking for. (And analogously, rational action means exerting your will to get your body to act as your brain has determined it should.)

Is it possible for men to have mutant children who lack the capacity for rational thought? It certainly is. Will such dumb offspring be fitter to survive than rational humans? Certainly not.

[y_feldblum]

I cannot speak to exactly what the mind is, except it is the capacity within any animal responsible for perception and the higher orders of consciousness.

Hypothesizing the end of the mind via the method of its creation is fun, but pointless.

The capability of reason within the mind is the capability of abstracting from perceptions, thinking and planning abstractly, and concretizing one's thoughts. If humans do such, they have the capability to think with reason; if not, not.

Whether no or yes a human thinks with reason is: a choice between evasion of fact or acceptance and action based on it; and a choice between destruction of oneself and one's surroundings or the morality of active sustenance of one's own life. If humans have the capability to think with reason, and if at least some humans do not evade reality and instead act to sustain themselves, then humans certainly think rationally.

Such is very easy to test, simply by looking at one's surroundings - and I conclude that humans certainly think rationally.

[JohnGalt]

There are a couple of problems in your reasoning that are leading to your diffculty with this question.

Yes, our minds evolved out a series of random mutations. The process of evolution, however, is not a random process. Let me explain this a bit more clearly. The indivdual mutations that are part of the process of evolution arise randomly. The corrollary part of evolution that you're overlooking, and which is not random at all but is driven by causality, is the process of natural selection. Objective reality serves as judge, jury and executioner over which mutations are beneficial to the survival of a species. Those that are continue to propagate. Those that are not, do not.

My opinion is that both "advance" and "reverse" mutations occur all the time. Most of these are so insignificant as never to be noticed, and over time they cancel each other out. What drives evolution is the environment, reality. When the environment remains constant, these mutations will remain in an equilibrium, never producing any noticable change. When the environment changes, however, it will drive those mutations toward a form more adapted to the new environment. This is evolution. (Changes in the environment too extreme and too rapid for this process to take place result in extinction.) Since man has aquired, as his last step in evolution, the ability to control his environment, to adapt his background to himself, there is no further need, nor any driving mechanism, for biological evolution regarding man.

Rational thought is not a product of evolution. The capacity for it is, but we must exercise that capacity by choice. A child may learn the value or dis-value of rational thought from his or her parents, but the choice to use or not to use his reason always remains open. In an objective reality, those who dis-valued rational thought would find themselves unable to survive and pass that dis-value to their offspring. In a welfare state, those who dis-value reason are protected from the punishment of reality and are, in fact, enabled to pass on their irrational values to their children. The welfare state circumvents the pseudo-evolutionalry process, call it social (as opposed to biological) evolution, that encourages the value of rationality. In this sense we can "devolve" our minds by the widespread choice not to use our rational capacity, but clearly such a society is doomed to decay and eventual destruction.

So long as we have free will, the choice to think rationally is always before us.

Lastly, I have one question: if you can not think rationally, what led you to ask the question in the first place?

[RationalBeing]

Hello Daniel,

I am a 'newbie'. I read your essay and I have some comments:

"A sense organ has no choice about what to do when acted upon, while thinking must take an active role and create the intelligible thing."

is this your interpretation? can you define sense organ? depending on your stipulative definition, i can think of some exceptions, if you are interested.

important to stick to aristotle's exact vocab choice. avoid extremes such as right and wrong. this is a compliment to you. it would be like generalizing if you were to do otherwise. a lot of people do this when they are talking about aristotle. example: non-voluntary-voluntary-involuntary-ignorance-in ignorance- out of ignorance. hospers and rawls are fine-tuned as well, cause confusion/generalizations. example, while they embellish an 'extreme' veiw, they are not necessarily putting down the opposite view (particularily in their pieces on justice as utilitarianism). i could go on here but i have other things to say:

i have a 'knack' for math and theology-- physics is another story. why do you suppose that is? what makes physics diff. for me?

a few things that are especially important to keep in mind in reading aristotle (more so than some other philosophers' work):

historical point of reference: one example--in talking about intellect and passive action. people born with systematic mal-functions not included in thinking. back then, people would have been killed for being born as such.

very abstract- read his other works on different topics to make complicated formulas more concrete. distinctions blurry- this actually helps when looking at only one philosopher's thoughts across the board. makes it easier to answer question. "well what do you suppose aristotle would say about this. . . ?"

stemming from abstraction note: literal interpretations (or the most literal interpretations given that we are talking philosophically) are usually lacking in one respect or another.

a lot of his work, at least i think, has an ethnocentric element to it. disses women, other races, non-intellectuals etc., in other words, like other philosophers, in writing his views, they are more or less written in stone. for a lot of his work, it is only fair to use the principle of charity- more so for our own sake in understanding the complexities of his arguments than his.

one thing is for sure about a lot of aristotle's work:

he assumed that people reading it would have half the brain capacity he did.

any thoughts/criticism welcome,

maggie

[cards52ofthem]

Rational thought is not a product of evolution.  The capacity for it is, but we must exercise that capacity by choice.

this is very true. the capacity for rational thought may arrise from evolution, but it must be exercised by choice. but then, from whence comes the choice? certainly some of the lower animals do not have the faculty of choice, they are guided entirely by instinct. so how does choice evolve?

Edited April 10, 2004 by GreedyCapitalist

[Richard_Halley]

so how does choice evolve?

That is a question for science, not philosophy. The important thing, philosophically, is that it does exist and that it does so according to the laws of reality.

So, the above question should be in the science section, not the metaphysics/epistemology.

[y_feldblum]

As I see it, the faculty of rational thought (ie, the capability of thought on the conceptual level) and the faculty of volition (ie, choice) are corollaries. Without one, the other does not exist; where one exists, there is the other.

[Richard_Halley]

Correct, feldblum, the ability to think rationally depends completly on the ability to choose.