From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Mon Apr 03 2006 - 13:14:41 EDT
Hi Jerry, You wrote: I think it could equally be said that there is also irrationality of parts and overall rationality: Sure - what you perceive as "rational" is in good part shaped by your own station in life, or, if you like, by your position in the hierarchy of social classes and your background. In a deductive argument, the conclusion holds, if the premises are accepted. But if you have different premises or different values, a different conclusion follows... and the "logic" of the situation might shape the "logic" in your mind, or vice versa. You wrote: The issue of consumer behavior is one we've wrestled with over the years on the list... Yes - if advertising psychologists are to be believed, it has a lot to do with habits, and people get habituated/conditioned to a consumption pattern (a certain culture). But even that might have a certain rationality to it. You wrote: How is it that you were able to arrive at this generalization? It's just my experience of life, that is all. I don't deny that we can do some pretty whacky things in sexual relations, but usually people rather quickly find out what their limits and abilities are, in that area. You can have addictions and all sorts of psychopathologies too, but most sexual worries are about what might/could/should/would happen, or fails to happen, not what actually does happen, at least in my experience, leaving aside real epidemics of sexual diseases. I mean, people might like to watch the Jerry Springer show, but would they genuinely act like that themselves? My hunch is, they mostly wouldn't. You wrote: I don't think that most people are even consciously aware of the underpinnings of their sexual beliefs and practices. Maybe so, but does that stop them from being rational - in the sense of consciously weighing up choices and decisions based on their experience? If there's something progressive about postmodernism, it is among other things about trying to understand the "Other", who might have a rationality framed in quite a different way than your own. But obviously there's ways and ways to go about that, and merely professing a concern with the Other, is no guarantee that anything much is truly understood. But really we don't get anywhere much with this controversy, unless we have some kind of agreed concept of rationality. For example, is terrorism irrational? From one point of view, it is. From another point of view, it might not be. I'm generally rather suspicious of claims about how irrational people are, in the same way that I'm rather cautious about calling people stupid - the thing is that the appearance of stupidity might just mask the real motivation for behaviour which, if correctly understood, might not be so stupid at all. Moreover, were I to dismiss people as irrational, I would not be able to learn much from them either. As regards revolutionaries, you're the expert, not me... but I agree that people change themselves while they try to change their circumstances. Jurriaan
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