GENIUS FORUMS

Rationality is a product of Formal Operational cognition( as Piaget would have it ) which truly made its mark as a meaningfully sized minority during the enlightenment.

I like the way yougene says that he seeks to embrace everything, at the same time as abusing every rational person who ever lived, diminishing them, and kicking them in the head.

I'm not seeing why you find the quoted sentence so offensive. It certainly wasn't meant as an attack on rationality.

yougene wrote:I'm not seeing why you find the quoted sentence so offensive. It certainly wasn't meant as an attack on rationality.

Most rational people today have never heard of "Formal Operational cognition" and nor are they particularly interested in minorities during the enlightenment.

These days, rationality is something much broader, and is simply the opposite of irrationality, where "irrationality" involves unreasoning and illogic.

In my experience, the only people who try to belittle rationality are those who are trying to preserve their fantasies, or who simply wish to remain in the unconscious state.

For me being rational means not being satisfied with contradictions. Because there cannot be any contradictions by definition.

However it does not mean forcefully patching over all contradictions. Contradictions are a call to attention, one should allow them to arise, but realize that something is wrong somewhere that they are arising.

Most rational people today have never heard of "Formal Operational cognition" and nor are they particularly interested in minorities during the enlightenment.

Nonetheless most of what we consider rational( perhaps I should use the word logical ) falls under the category of Formal Operational.

These days, rationality is something much broader, and is simply the opposite of irrationality, where "irrationality" involves unreasoning and illogic.

What's unreasoning and illogic?

In my experience, the only people who try to belittle rationality are those who are trying to preserve their fantasies, or who simply wish to remain in the unconscious state.

? You think I'm belittling rationality?

yougene wrote:Nonetheless most of what we consider rational ( perhaps I should use the word logical ) falls under the category of Formal Operational.

When I think of "formal" then I think of "academic", and thus removed from reality.

These days, rationality is something much broader, and is simply the opposite of irrationality, where "irrationality" involves unreasoning and illogic.

What's unreasoning and illogic?

Illogic is when one says that a thing is not what it is, when one can know what it is.

For example, if I defined that 1 +1 =2, and then said that 1 + 1 = 3, that would be illogical.

Unreasoning uses illogic.

You think I'm belittling rationality?

That's the impression I got, even though that's not what you intended.

Rationality, as we commonly know it today, has in fact been around for thousands of years.

Formalizing it, as academics often try to do, and fail miserably, doesn't add anything to it.

Rationality is so simple that to attempt a formalization of it usually means that one has misunderstood what rationality is.

Reasonable example of a brilliant academic who is obviouosly cut off from large tracts of reality that many others would take for granted whether they had ever experienced such things or not.


For such an open mind he certainly is being a closed minded and I would not be surprised if he is being told to hold his tongue on such matters.

http://ufocasebook.conforums.com/index. ... 1208876021

When I think of "formal" then I think of "academic", and thus removed from reality.

"Formal operational stage

The formal operational period is the fourth and final of the periods of cognitive development in Piaget's theory. This stage, which follows the Concrete Operational stage, commences at around 12 years of age (puberty) and continues into adulthood. It is characterized by acquisition of the ability to think abstractly, reason logically and draw conclusions from the information available. During this stage the young adult is able to understand such things as love, "shades of gray", logical proofs, and values. Lucidly, biological factors may be traced to this stage as it occurs during puberty (the time at which another period of neural pruning occurs), marking the entry to adulthood in Physiology, cognition, moral judgement (Kohlberg), Psychosexual development (Freud), and psychosocial development (Erikson). Some two-thirds of people do not develop this form of reasoning fully enough that it becomes their normal mode for cognition, and so they remain, even as adults, concrete operational thinkers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_Ope ... onal_stage

Rationality, as we commonly know it today, has in fact been around for thousands of years.

Sure it has, just not in any significant number of people. That was the point I was making with the developmental psychology.

Formalizing it, as academics often try to do, and fail miserably, doesn't add anything to it.

What do you think the computer you're typing on is a product of? The systemization of knowledge is one of the most important developments in the last couple years.

The fact that knowledge has to exist within social institutions does present all sorts of structural limitations. Power struggles, dogma, etc... but that's just the nature of samsara, things are always at odds with each other.