“For what its worth” department—some additional thoughts on the conventional view of rationality:

 So how does the average person think about the issue of rational action?  Here’s a clue from wikipedia, under the topic of rationality:  “All that is required for an action to be rational is that if one believes action X (which can be done) implies Y, and that Y is desirable, he or she does X.”

In other words, following David Hume, many people think of rationality strictly in terms of means rather than ends.   "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” said Hume, “and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." In other words, our reasoning powers can deal with facts and draw conclusions from them, but cannot dictate our choice of values; only our emotions can do this.  So if you told a anxious, troubled thief to be rational, he would not question his decision to be a thief—he would think about more effective ways to steal.  In terms of primary values, telling someone to be ‘rational’ is unlikely to have any impact other than to possibly enhance their overall effectiveness. We might as well be giving drug addicts tips on finding pushers or advising mass murderers to use more powerful guns.

Any psychologist trained in cognitive therapy knows that most people are not particularly proficient at introspection—i.e., at distinguishing feelings from thoughts.  That is one of the first steps a person must take to begin correcting his thinking errors—to discern what is, in fact, a thought and what is a feeling. It takes some training and skill to be able to do that.  The difficulty of distinguishing thoughts and feelings highlights the almost universal confusion and mysticism that surrounds the word “consciousness.”  This helps to explain the persistent appeal of religion: people find it easy to ascribe the creation of the universe to a supreme consciousness because they see their own mind as such a mystery and have no clear sense as to its origins or limitations. 

To have limitations is to have an identity. Before Kant, philosophers tended to see thinking and reasoning as ultimately divine or other worldly.    Plato said that the soul “participates” in universals, which exist in a kind of ghostly or heavenly reality, while Aristotle saw the soul as passively diaphanous (David Kelley’s excellent term)—we acquire knowledge by somehow “taking in” the external forms or essences. Aquinas believed that all knowledge ultimately comes from the mind of God. And Descartes was the source of the concept of the ghost in the machine.

Kant took a sharp departure from philosophical tradition, asserting that consciousness did have a specific identity, then concluding that its information processing mechanisms automatically distort the incoming data.  He contended that the mind’s inherent structure entails subjectivism, and most subsequent thinking has bought into that fatally flawed premise.  The growth of postmodern philosophy resembles a viral pestilence spreading like a subjectivist plague, until its diabolical hosts have infected the deepest foundations of human knowledge, with “thinkers” like Richard Rorty (in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity) defending the “truth” that there is no such thing as intelligible truth, and Peter Unger publishing a paper aguing that “I do not exist.”  (He should know.)

When the average person hears the word “reason,” they probably think of  ‘mind,’ or ‘consciousness’—and many will assume you are simply referring to subjective experience.  Unless they have had the benefit of cognitive therapy or something comparable, their thinking is likely to be hopelessly confused, meandering through feelings, memories, imagination and impressions like a synaptic Buck Rogers swept up in the epistemological equivalent of a cosmic black hole.  Objectivists understand that the only way to insure the objectivity of your thinking is through a rigorous application of the laws of logic—but logic, too, has been totally corrupted by modern philosophy. Take a look at most academic studies on contemporary logic, and try to make sense of the inane list of topics: “modal logic,” “probabilistic logic,” “subjective logic” and even “fuzzy logic.”  (Yes, they use that exact term.)  All of them, in varying degrees, represent a rejection of classic Aristotelian logic.

So our challenge is how to permanently bury, once and for all, that one pervasive idea:  the mind is inherently subjective in its operations.  One good way to start might be with a primer explaining the axiom “consciousness is conscious” and all of its corollary implications, with additional introductory material on the nature and purpose of the laws of logic.

Bob K,

Introspection is a form of day dreaming, not a mode of cognition…

 

Day dreaming?  Not hardly.  Not if performed, as it should be, with full mental focus.

The Ayn Rand Lexicon:

A major source of men's earned guilt in regard to philosophy—as well as in regard to their own minds and lives—is failure of introspection. Specifically, it is the failure to identify the nature and causes of their emotions.

(from The Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology)

In regard to one's own feelings, only a rigorously conscientious habit of introspection can enable one to be certain of the nature and causes of one's emotional responses.

(from “The Age of Envy”)

If a physicist ever cited his introspection as substantial support or evidence of his work in science he would be laughed out of the business (and rightly so).

 

That much is true.  On the other hand, psychologists must make use of it all the time. And rightly so.  And so should anyone who cares to develop self-awareness. 

“Living consciously entails a concern to know not only external reality but also internal reality, the reality of my needs, feelings, aspirations, and motives, so that I am not a stranger or a mystery to myself.”

Nathaniel Branden, from The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.

Jim,

Heisenberg argued that, because we cannot precisely specify the position and momentum of subatomic particles at the same instant, their behavior defies prediction or measurement, and that this somehow invalidates the law of causality.  He leaped from an observation about our present scientific efforts to measure a subatomic phenomenon to the assertion that, in principle, it is impossible to obtain such measurements in the subatomic realm.  Heisenberg followed that with an even bigger leap:  that such phenomena in physics do not exist in nature unless and until we observe them.

The implications of this are clear: (1) Reality is subjective—we create that which we observe; (2) Uncertainty and imprecision are inherent in human cognition.

This leap from current limitations on our knowledge to conclusions about the nature of reality and the validity of human cognition is simply unjustified.  It amounted to a massive non sequitor.

As Peikoff explained in OPAR: “Even if it were true that owing to a lack of information we could never exactly predict a subatomic event--and this is highly debatable--it would not show that, in reality, the event was causeless… Our ignorance of certain measurements, however, does not affect their reality or the consequent operation of nature.”

And present uncertainty in one specific delimited scientific area does not prove anything about the inherent limitations of human knowledge.

I agree with Jon Trager’s comments about your subsequent remarks insulting Objectivists and disparaging Atlas Shrugged.  Apparently you think we should be eager to engage in endless debates about fundamental Objectivist principles anytime they are challenged.  That’s rather like telling a doctoral level mathematician that they should be excited by arithmetic.  When I see evidence of a certain level of ignorance, it is clear that a lengthy debate will follow which could be avoided if the person were familiar with certain foundational materials.  I see no reason to keep re-inventing the wheel.  It is very time consuming and not cost-effective.

Back in the days of the Nathaniel Branden Institute, they had a rule for guests who attended individual lectures instead of the entire course.  Guests were asked not to submit questions in the Q & A period unless they had read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, to avoid wasting everyone else’s time.  It is a simple courtesy to others who do not wish to keep going over familiar territory again and again.  After a certain point in time, you get bored explaining the infinite regress argument to religionists (i.e., that their God also had to be created). 

If you demonstrate some rudimentary understanding of Objectivist metaphysics/epistemology and have a specific question, we are usually delighted to deal with it.  But kindly do your homework first.