Reason has never been as sexy as emotion, and our romantic side will always back the passionate over the rational. Or as the critic Clive James once put it, a sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. And while his jokes may not be exactly rib-ticklers, he knows that what we find funny is often nothing more than clever inversions of logic. Just the mention of such phrases brings to mind Star Trek’s Mr Spock – the archetype of the dry and humourless slave to rational thought.
Even Romeo had to employ his rational mind to find a way to overcome the obstacles placed between himself and Juliet Among these tools are systems of logic, probability and empirical reasoning. Among other things, Rationality is also a response to these critics, a reaffirmation of critical thinking against the encroachments of critical theory.Īs he writes: “Fashionable academic movements like postmodernism… hold that reason, truth and objectivity are social constructions that justify the privilege of dominant groups.” Pinker’s line is that while we may never definitely establish objective truth, objective truth nonetheless exists, and our best means of getting closest to it is through rational understanding.īut what does rationality actually mean? Essentially, it amounts to a set of rules and tools that help us to eliminate bias, bigotries, phobias, superstitions and what Pinker calls the “cognitive illusions” that stand between us and our clearest perception of reality. That book stirred plenty of controversy, and the affable Pinker has become an increasingly disparaged figure by those who see him as a white male product, and defender, of the scientific establishment.
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