Life at the end of reason | Kathleen Stock, Carol Gilligan, Michael Shermer

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Kathleen Stock, Carol Gilligan and Michael Shermer debate the merits and pitfalls of "rationality".

Is reason anything more than a rhetorical strategy?

Rationality has often been cited as a key factor in the uncovering of truth. But today, in a world of competing and often radically incompatible perspectives, reason has been called into question and rationality is seen as a rhetorical strategy to defend outdated views. Yet this runs the risk that there is no agreed way to test assertions. Hardly surprising perhaps that 60% of Britons now believe in conspiracy theories and some claim social cohesion itself is being undermined.

Should we give up the idea that rationality helps uncover the truth? Or must we double down on reason to follow through the consequences of competing perspectives? Is reason nothing more than a pretence of objectivity, masquerading as value-free when it is in fact embedded in a given outlook? Or is rationality the primary and vital means to escape subjective chaos?

#reason #rational #philosophy #neuroscience #feminism

Kathleen Stock is a daring and bold philosopher famous for her gender-critical views. She is a founding faculty fellow at the University of Austin.

Carol Gilligan is a groundbreaking feminist, ethicist and psychologist based at New York University.

Michael Shermer is the founder of The Skeptics Society. He is best known for his searing critiques of pseudoscience and the supernatural.

Myriam François hosts.

00:00 Introduction
00:13 Myriam François intro
00:23 Kathleen Stock on reason
04:31 Michael Shermer on reason
08:09 Carol Gilligan on reason

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Carol Gillian is absolutely BRILLIANT! And the most articulate person I’ve heard in a long time.

craigswanson

I enjoyed Carol Gilligan's input. In A Different Voice is an important book. I'd suggest that part of the problem is the way in which rationality and reasonableness are used synonymously. Rationality, with its associations with 'logic', tends, at least in everyday usage, including by "intelligent people", to trade in absolutes, e.g., famously, the Law on Non-contradiction. That's fine when you are, indeed, working in an area that lends itself to metrics and measurables. But it's not just useless but an actual encumbrance when dealing with aspects of the human situation which cannot be measured, or not other than stupidly. Here you need to rely on reasonableness, which isn't just 'having reasons' but also accepting that other people, too, have reasons, and they may not coincide with yours. Taken as such, the ground of human interaction is, as Gilligan points out, necessarily relational and, to be successful, depends on care, goodwill, and give and take. Rationalists aren't much interested in these forms of human concern ("facts don't have feelings") and so bludgeon their way to their own prejudices, which, for the reasons Shermer points out, they don't recognise.

tobymnewton

Rationality should not be confused with rationalizing. Rationalizing is backing into accepting a hypothesis as true by not eliminating interference by testing how its not. Thats why a hypothesis proven to be reliable is so intuitive that most people think what a waste of effort to prove it. Meanwhile there are an infinite number of incompletely tested hypothesis being promoted as rational truths that are only defensible with violent emotional reaction.

Perhaps we should distinguish between reason and logic, as discussing rationality is a rationalization in itself. Reason is a human interpretation of logic, as variable as humans are apt to be, which makes discussion necessarily vague and conclusions far from absolute. Descartes 'i think therefore i am' has the same flaw, the term *'therefore'* leverages absolute logic where reason is more appropriate. He might have said "I am capable of independent thought, which suggests existence on some plane' - to acknowledge the role of reason and uncertainty.

Psycandy

What all the disciplines advise from religion to philosophy to psychology is what is called the middle way or negotiating a path between opposites; between reason and feeling. We live not in unity but in a dual system. Sometimes one perspective, or one course of action is right in a different situation it may not be. That is why all the disciplines advise negotiating a path between opposites as the right way to go.
I was cut off from the video so I do not know whether that was discussed or not so I am bringing it up here.

ALavin-enkr

why is this conversation so fast? it's so strange to choose this specific subject and then rush it. you make it look like there's something wrong with having a conversation.

fffranz

That last speech was very interesting.

nypala

One view on things in the past too, is their view of rationality being the highest good was likley based on the fact that “rationality” can be scaled, relationships can’t be as easily

DaveE

Certainly reason can be separate from emotion, but only theorerically. Its evident that the Atistotelian-Thomistic tradition on this subject is unknown to this people.

cristopher.ah.

Freud: men can think rationally and not be impacted by feelings or relationships.
Stock: wrong
Me: thank you Kathleen Stock for correcting the notion that psychopathic thinking is good for our species. Thinking like yours gives us hope that our species can survive and thrive.

williamjohns

And who has not been injured or traumatised? To a greater or lesser extent, we all are damaged physically and mentally; we heal, hopefully, but damage leaves scars. In that way, our capacity to function is impaired. It might be in some small, inconsequential way or, unfortunately, severely affected. The physical damage might be very apparent. The loss of a limb and others will respond. If the damage is mental, there will be nothing in the way which says for sure that the damage is recognised for what it is; often, it is at these junctures where difficulties begin, which in turn can exacerbate the original injury, and the sufferer is often our shared humanity.

tomarmstrong

... a pity that it stops where it gets interesting..

BrunoWiebelt

Fascinating that condemnations of Freud's or Piaget's alleged sexism are simply proposed as wrong, with no real argument.

DaboooogA

This notion of rationality is such a modern one, and yeah I am against that type of "rationality" though I wouldn't call it that, the concept of rationality will change depending on your metaphysics and theology, and if you lack these then rationality for you will be just a set of systems superimposed on reality, thus rationality will be more related to trauma than to reason. To reason traditionally is no understood as something men do and women don't, reason is a spiritual faculty which makes us all capax Dei, capable of God, men and women, it's not a faculty of the brain nor the senses, nor of material corporeal faculties, it's a noetic faculty that canis capable of seeing reality and abstracting from the sensible reality what is beyond matter into the essential nature of things. It is in this sense that corporeal faculties can either work towards a better rationality or to lessen your rational capacities, because the material, sensitive and the spiritual intelligible are not separated but united essentially in human beings so that one always affects the other and are codependent for their proper functioning. Rationality has to do with the capacity to relate distinct aspects of reality in a coherent integral manner, rationality and relationality are extremely linked, to be able to see patterns in reality is due to reason, to be able to distinguish things from each other is due to reason, to be able to relate things is there because of reason. The problem is not rationality, the problem has to do with "distinctionism" which is the tendency to analize reality taxonomically, and super impose categories tyrannically over nature, and that it's caused by trauma of course, the trauma of separation, the trauma of divorce, the trauma of rupture in general, the trauma that causes the incapacity for men and women to work together for a higher purpose, the trauma that causes you to either distinguish and separate everything in reality or to mix and relativize everything in reality. But to say that reason and rationality is the issue is to not understand what reason actually is.

irodjetson

11:48 "separation reason from emotion rather than being apigy of cognitive development... I mean the achievement of rationality, which is how it was seen by psychologists, was in face a manifestation of injury or trauma" - when she was saying this, did she realized that she was separating reasoning from emotion? She did what she denies.

MaximZemlyanoy