Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Glad we got that all worked out. :lol:

:lol:

 

As long as you learnt something  new thats all that matters 

Edited by BruceVC

"Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss”

John Milton 

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” -  George Bernard Shaw

"What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead" - Nelson Mandela

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did and I didnt. :(

 

Im going to continue to remorselessly airquote and use words everyone else understands in conversational English. But I also pity the foo's that engage certain people irl. That's got to be a rough ride.

 

And the above examples I provided are "rational" to those cultures. :biggrin:

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I don't think stoning an adulterer to death or marrying a child is "rational", but other cultures do.

 

That's belief/ morality/ tradition; not rationality. They didn't do an in depth analysis of the pro and cons before coming up with those rules, they do it because their parents did it or the Flying Spaghetti Monster('s representative(s)) 'told' them to. Belief is not a synonym for rationality, and it doesn't matter how hard the person believes or whether you put airquotes around it.

 

 

And rationality doesn't rest on quasi-religious foundations? 

 

Its perfectly feasible to rationalize anything depending on the framework you start from (whether it be sharia-law or civil law), and you would not be wrong to do it too. 

И погибе Српски кнез Лазаре,
И његова сва изгибе војска, 
Седамдесет и седам иљада;
Све је свето и честито било
И миломе Богу приступачно.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, it doesn't and yes it would be wrong.

 

Rationalising/ rationalisation is actually quite distinct from being rational; it's the process of working back from a conclusion you've already chosen using 'logic' to justify said conclusion while a rational decision reaches a conclusion based on the evidence presented. 'God told me to do it' is not a logical or rational explanation for something, no matter how much the person saying it may believe because it rests on belief in god, and belief is not a logical process where A follows from B, it's one where B springs direct from the mind. You can rationalise something like filling a slot machine with coins with something like "but the coins are still in there, logically if I won I would get them all back!" but that is using pseudo logic to justify something you want(ed) to do, the rational decision says that you won't win and you're wasting your money*. Rationising stuff is usually an emotional crutch to protect people from their decisions by framing them as not really being their decision but the person simply following what was logical.

 

Blame English for the near contradictory terms being so similar, it's not the most, er, rational language.

 

*You can gamble rationally, where skill is involved or where you only have to win once such as buying a ticket to a big stakes lottery.

 


Im going to continue to remorselessly airquote and use words everyone else understands in conversational English. But I also pity the foo's that engage certain people irl. That's got to be a rough ride.

 

See Bruce, that's how you do passive aggressiveness properly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

'God told me to do it' is not a logical or rational explanation for something

Unless, of course, God actually told you to do it.

  • Like 1

I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot! ~ Ro-Man

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To no one's surprise:

 

 

Former head of ZDF Bonn Dr. Wolfgang Herles make the remarks during a radio event (from minute 27) in Berlin where journalists discussed the media landscape. Moving on to the freedom of the press, the panel chair asked Dr. Herles whether things in Germany had got “seriously out of whack”. With an honesty perhaps unusual in Germany, Dr. Herles replied that ordinary Germans were totally losing faith in the media, something he called a “scandal”. He said:

 

“We have the problem that – now I’m mainly talking about the public [state] media – we have a closeness to the government. Not only because commentary is mainly in line with the grand coalition (CSU, CDU, and SPD), with the spectrum of opinion, but also because we are completely taken in by the agenda laid down by the political class”.

 

Link to radio speech: http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/medienquartett-bitte-nicht-stoeren-hauptstadtjournalisten.1301.de.html?dram:article_id=343058

Link to article: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/02/02/top-german-journalist-admits-live-on-air-national-news-agenda-set-by-government/

Edited by Meshugger

"Some men see things as they are and say why?"
"I dream things that never were and say why not?"
- George Bernard Shaw

"Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

 

"The amount of energy necessary to refute bull**** is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."

- Some guy 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I don't think stoning an adulterer to death or marrying a child is "rational", but other cultures do.

 

That's belief/ morality/ tradition; not rationality. They didn't do an in depth analysis of the pro and cons before coming up with those rules, they do it because their parents did it or the Flying Spaghetti Monster('s representative(s)) 'told' them to. Belief is not a synonym for rationality, and it doesn't matter how hard the person believes or whether you put airquotes around it.

 

To go back to the original, meting out summary justice would be an emotional response, understandable perhaps even justifiable too, but there's no need for airquoting "rational" at all as it isn't even a slightly accurate usage and there are accurate terms available. Simple fact is that it is highly unlikely anyone would be able to make rational decisions in that situation, and the simple fact of having reasons for an action does not alone make it rational or logical. That's why you're getting flak for using 'rational', it simply isn't the right word for what you mean. What you're talking about is the mess of subjective stuff that goes on in people's minds involving belief, tradition, morality, emotion etc, they're all the enemy of rationality because rationality is at its heart an objective logical approach that is immiscible with subjectives like tradition, belief, emotion etc.

 

 

You realise humans living in the non-West 500 years ago weren't brain-dead drooling morons that go 'hurrrr I stone this lady I've known for ten years cos whatever? Hurrrr okaaaay', right?

 

Obviously they weren't rational, because in most cases they didn't consider western modern Reason very, well, reasonable. One can hardly argue they sat there and pulled a Habermas public sphere. But I like this fancy fairy tale where subjectivity and objectivity are neatly dividable (something refuted by every serious historian of those concepts).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You realise humans living in the non-West 500 years ago weren't brain-dead drooling morons that go 'hurrrr I stone this lady I've known for ten years cos whatever? Hurrrr okaaaay', right?

It's got nothing to do with them being stupid though it may well have something to do with being uneducated or (justifiably) ignorant- it's only stupid if you should know better. And I hardly think there's much evidence for me being a Euro exceptionalist.

 

If you always make decisions based on being rational you're probably going to be just as 'stupid' as someone who never did, just stupid in a different way like one of those obnoxiously militant evangelical atheists.

 

If that were the only example Gfted had used I wouldn't have said anything because there is some logical process there with it being based on traditional custom. His original situation though didn't have even that.

 

But I like this fancy fairy tale where subjectivity and objectivity are neatly dividable (something refuted by every serious historian of those concepts).

 

Subjectivity and objectivity aren't neatly dividable, except in theory. I'd tend to describe subjectivity and objectivity as being two immiscible liquids floating on each other because it describes the simple sense of a line dividing the two perfectly and also the practical sense as there's always an interface between the two and always a bit of one liquid in with the other. That doesn't change anything though, unless you're going to argue that belief etc are- at their heart- objective and the rational process is- at its heart- subjective.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...