Question: Are human beings becoming more rational?
Daniel Dennett: We’re all pretty rational. It’s quite a robust thinking system that we’ve got between our ears. But what’s going to happen, and has been happening for several millennia now, is we’re going to develop more and better thinking tools and we’re going to identify more weakness in our rationality. And a weakness identified is at least something that can be avoided to some degree, we can learn work-arounds, we can recognize that we’re suckers for certain sorts of bad ideas and alerted to that we can, we can flag them when they come up.
I think that process of self-knowledge and self-purification, of reasoning processes, will continue slowly to develop. So it’s not so much, although it might include the development of actual software technology to help us think, that’s part of it, as we all know, but also just the self-knowledge that alerts us to foibles, blind spots in our own thinking. We probably can’t repair them with any technology. We might not want to repair them. The cost might be too great; might stunt us in some other way. But at least we can nail them.
And of course that idea is an ancient idea that goes way back to Socrates--know thy self. That’s Socratic injunction; even following it for several millennia with good results.
Recorded on: March 6, 2009.
Discuss
Richard McDonough on April 10, 2009, 12:34 AM
The basis of the notion that “we are essentially rational” is not at all clear to me. A little evidence might go a long way. None here. I would think there is a lot of a priori evidence for the opposite.
Vicki Nikolaidis on June 5, 2009, 1:12 PM
Daniel has lifted my spirits with his comments on human rationality. Though I’m not sure I can agree. For example, Except for the U.S.A. countries around the world are working to cut pollution emissions and reach admirable goals for clean water, air and fertile soil. Yet there is a tenacious group of citizens in the U.S. who can not even discuss the rise of the globe’s temperature nor that there is any reason to address climate disruption.
When I say they can not discuss the subjects I mean they respond with irrational arguments, using name calling or examples that they have experienced of a recent year in which they lived through a colder than usual winter with no regard to the experiences of those around them nor around the world. In the U.S.A. with the duration and extreme damages caused by wildfires and tornadoes there seems ample evidence that something needs to change. Less dramatic clues are everywhere.
So I’m thinking that ability to be rational and self-knowledge are very tightly connected. Now that I’m able to insist on the time I need to have space to think and reason on my own, I am abe to act more rationally. For instance, I don’t robotically buy an object because the sign says, “Last one available for your entire lifetime!” or something as silly!
Perhaps between the onslaught of information and the ease of jumping on a bandwagon people in the U.S.A. aren’t able to trust their own instincts (know themselves) nor accept rational facts that they could verify through their own experience unless they have the ‘permission’ of their tribe.
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