This is the kind of discussion that a Newly Minted Peircean, such as myself, should be all over, but I find myself oddly (thankfully?) reticient. My intuition tells me that all thinking is rational - it's just that most of it is weak or founded on truly crazy premises. Among valid inferences, Peirce made a distinction between strong inferences (All ravens are black, this bird is a raven, this bird is black) and weak ones such as "this bird is a raven, this bird is black, all ravens are black" (induction) and "this bird is black, all ravens are black, this bird is a raven"(abduction). But he regarded all three as valid forms of inference. In this spirit, I might argue that right wing thinking is not irrational, but exceedingly weak. But we should beware of falling for the syllogism, "This guy is wrong, all right-wingers are wrong, this guy is a right winger" which is valid, but horribly weak.
Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 12:20 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:41 AM, glen <g...@ropella.name <mailto:g...@ropella.name> > wrote: [ ... ] Now, that carries us to how/whether/why humans would use irrational inference procedures. But I think we would _need_ some evidence that people actually use irrational reasoning procedures. I think even so-called "irrational" things like _emotions_ are, somewhere deep down, rational. Those emotions are an evolutionarily selected decision-making ability that has its own calculus. Bob Altemeyer's research on right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personalities -- pdf at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ -- finds that high scoring RWAs suffer from severe cognitive disabilities which essentially render them immune to reason. (Note that "right-wing" here is a technical term meaning "adherent of the status quo".) But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic. There's an article in today's Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/media/banished-for-questioning-th e-gospel-of-guns.html, which unintentionally makes the case that the gun rights lobby is essentially a coalition of right-wing authoritarians and gun manufacturers. They cannot tolerate any discussion of the dogma because they are incapable of reasoning on the subject, only able to distinguish the party line from apostasy so they can attack the enemies. Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of explanation with the rationality of the explained. -- rec --
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