I am of the opinion that there are no ‘causes’ where free will is concerned but only choices and influences. So I believe that outside of the most viciously abusive upbringing or physical brain damage an evil parent can inflict on a toddler, the public education/university system can only act as an enabler of students and faculty who are predisposed to irrationality (i.e. removing some of the immediate consequences of being a malignant whim-worshipper) while alienating and punishing those who choose to be rational. Even someone who unquestioningly swallows the crap he’s fed at a university may be driven to do some retro-active premise checking when exposed to the real world; that would be entirely his choice and if he chooses to remain irrational, not even the prospect of starvation would sway him. I don’t think a school could get away with the sort of heavy-handed brainwashing and isolation that cults inflict upon their followers.
The question should be reversed. How can one be taught to be rational? If one doesn’t learn what it means to be rational, they’ll only act rational to the extent they have learned through experience. Without learning how to think rationally, a person will only sometimes act rationally. To me, it’s similar to what it would be like to not be taught about how the Earth orbits the Sun. If you don’t tell a person that it happens, they might not ever be able to figure that out and think that the Sun orbits the Earth, as people thought for thousands of years.
Without learning to be consistently rational, one may accept things like the existence of god much like primitive humans probably did. It’s closer to an error in knowledge rather than learning how to be irrational.
It is less a matter of teaching someone to be irrational and more a matter of getting them to believe that the *world* is irrational and incomprehensible. No one who believes that will bother with the difficult and demanding task of becoming a rational person.
I am of the opinion that there are no ‘causes’ where free will is concerned but only choices and influences. So I believe that outside of the most viciously abusive upbringing or physical brain damage an evil parent can inflict on a toddler, the public education/university system can only act as an enabler of students and faculty who are predisposed to irrationality (i.e. removing some of the immediate consequences of being a malignant whim-worshipper) while alienating and punishing those who choose to be rational. Even someone who unquestioningly swallows the crap he’s fed at a university may be driven to do some retro-active premise checking when exposed to the real world; that would be entirely his choice and if he chooses to remain irrational, not even the prospect of starvation would sway him. I don’t think a school could get away with the sort of heavy-handed brainwashing and isolation that cults inflict upon their followers.
Thoughts?
Even though Eiuol’s question of “how can one be taught to be rational” is more important, you certainly can be taught to be irrational, and there is no shortage of people who work very hard at practicing and perfecting the method of “how”. If you aren’t objective, your standard of truth will not be conformity to reality. Instead, you’ll rationalize what constitutes successful action, and that will become your standard. For example, people who have abandoned logic in the evaluation of abstract arguments will typically operate on emotional outbursts. Instead of thinking, they’ll respond, “Oh, you just want to argue,” or “That’s what you say.” Some form of irrationality will take over: evasion, subjectivism, something.
These people weren’t born to act irrationally. They had to be shown that certain actions lead to success – to something that they value – and they decide to adapt the method that leads to such success to their own thinking. They are choosing the easy, immediate payoff of peer approval, or baseless self-esteem, or material gain, because the irrational way gets you what you want, you don’t have to fight the crowd, and reality won’t smite you at the first hint of irrationality. This pathetic, rationalized, anti-life standard of successful action is what pragmatists champion.
You can easily observe (in public schools or wherever) people teaching some method of irrationality. Mostly it is implicit. They’ll get some result that they know people will value, and thay can count on others to figure out how they got that result, and apply that irrational method to their own pursuit of values. And sometimes it is explicit, such as in education, where an instructor or textbook lays out in detail how to wage war against reality and “win”. To key to recognizing how it can be that people accept the teaching of irrationality is recognizing that they view the results of irrationality as efficacious, and that frees them from worrying about the fact that they are irrational and its consquential hazards.
I think what causes one to reject thinking outright is only bad philosophy, but there are many causes that prevent people who do not reject thinking from “becoming John Galt”, realizing their full potential.
Some of the causes why people grow (develop mentally) into creatures that do irrational things (of varying severity) in every day life, off the top of my head:
-the culture around the person both as a child, and an adult
-the economic, political, technological state of the society one is living in
-having one’s natural curiosity and predisposition to think suppressed, as a child
-being abused and scarred psychologically as a child
-being taught bad philosophy, “peer pressured” into bad philosophy
As for being predisposed to irrationality, I don’t think most people are genetically predisposed to that. There’s mental illness, and probably conditions I don’t know about, but in general people are naturally curious and quite willing to think as children, and that is suppressed by other people and the culture. So yes, we clearly have free will, but people’s choices are influenced by other people’s words and actions, and (more rarely) by bad luck or natural occurrences.
These people weren’t born to act irrationally. They had to be shown that certain actions lead to success – to something that they value – and they decide to adapt the method that leads to such success to their own thinking. They are choosing the easy, immediate payoff of peer approval, or baseless self-esteem, or material gain, because the irrational way gets you what you want, you don’t have to fight the crowd, and reality won’t smite you at the first hint of irrationality. This pathetic, rationalized, anti-life standard of successful action is what pragmatists champion.
You can easily observe (in public schools or wherever) people teaching some method of irrationality. Mostly it is implicit. They’ll get some result that they know people will value, and thay can count on others to figure out how they got that result, and apply that irrational method to their own pursuit of values. And sometimes it is explicit, such as in education, where an instructor or textbook lays out in detail how to wage war against reality and “win”. To key to recognizing how it can be that people accept the teaching of irrationality is recognizing that they view the results of irrationality as efficacious, and that frees them from worrying about the fact that they are irrational and its consquential hazards.
That brings up the question what specific ‘successes’ are sought when one employs irrationality to obtain them. It seems that those who are consistently irrational have a severely stunted perspective that is limited to the personal, visceral and immediate; there is no empathy (or empathy is selective) or foresight. When an irrational claims to work towards a noble, long-range goal it tends to be an affectation meant to deceive others and himself.
That brings up the question what specific ‘successes’ are sought when one employs irrationality to obtain them.
Some examples that come to mind are social acceptance by a person or group (partying with other vacuous twits); advancement at work by following an irrational or immoral protocol (pick any government bureaucrat); personal self-assurance (such as that offered by religion or New Age mysticism); finanical/material gain (dropping morality to apply for a government favor). Seems like most irrational values fall into one of those categories.
It seems that those who are consistently irrational have a severely stunted perspective that is limited to the personal, visceral and immediate; there is no empathy (or empathy is selective) or foresight. When an irrational claims to work towards a noble, long-range goal it tends to be an affectation meant to deceive others and himself.
Some examples that come to mind are social acceptance by a person or group (partying with other vacuous twits); advancement at work by following an irrational or immoral protocol (pick any government bureaucrat); personal self-assurance (such as that offered by religion or New Age mysticism); finanical/material gain (dropping morality to apply for a government favor). Seems like most irrational values fall into one of those categories.
What about those who seek to control or harm others for its own sake? Acting out fantasies of omnipotence?
What about those who seek to control or harm others for its own sake? Acting out fantasies of omnipotence?
I think that is essentially as irrational as a person can get, and this is only possible with an explicit mental illness (as in, it is a medical problem, not merely just an evil method of thinking).
What about those who seek to control or harm others for its own sake? Acting out fantasies of omnipotence?
Yes, that would be another category of motivation for being irrational. An example would be an aggressive driver, who has a “screw 'em!” attitude about how he menaces others behind the wheel. I see a mentality of “I don’t want to have to respect others. I don’t want others to be a restraint on my whims.” Bullying was discussed in another thread, and that definitely fits with “acting out fantasies of omnipotence” and the hatred of respecting others.
I guess sheer nihilism would be another class of motivation; habitualized irrationality because of a hatred of the good and the pleasure gained in destroying it.
I think that is essentially as irrational as a person can get, and this is only possible with an explicit mental illness (as in, it is a medical problem, not merely just an evil method of thinking).
I would accept that explanation if the sentiment wasn’t so commonplace. The majority of evil people are actually too cowardly to directly harm anyone; preferring instead to exploit moral equivalence to enable victimizers and disarm victims.