RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 13, 2021 at 4:21 pm
(This post was last modified: August 13, 2021 at 6:21 pm by vulcanlogician.)
(August 13, 2021 at 3:40 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Rather, it seems like something a behavioral scientist is more than willing to educate us on.
We’re not absurd. We’re biological.
Interesting that you brought behavioral scientists in. Think about a pigeon in a Skinner box for a moment.
What if you were able to converse with a pigeon in a Skinner box, and you asked it what the meaning of its existence was?
And it said, "Well, when I push the button, I get a food pellet. But when I don't push the button, I get a shock from the floor. So, what I'm supposed to do with my life is push the button and do what I can to avoid the shock from the floor."
That's a very Platonic answer. You could say that the pigeon deduced this, and what the pigeon says is rational. It is truthful, and it is accurate.
But then, let's say the pigeon then read a book by Albert Camus and came away from it with a new attitude. The new attitude is: "Fuck this! I'm in a Skinner box, and my whole existence is absurd. Any rational activity that I engage in is useless. Sure, I'll continue to peck the button to get my food pellet and avoid the shock... but never for a minute will I think that understanding any of this is 'me getting closer to the truth.' The truth is: I'm in a Skinner box and my life is absurd." Is this new attitude from the pigeon unwarranted?
The absurdist doesn't want to stand back and understand the capital 'T' Truth like Plato. The absurdist wants to show us that we are in a Skinner box of sorts, and no kind of rationalizing will ever set us free from it. And THAT is the human condition. But we CAN find a freedom of sorts from it. As Camus writes, "Imagine Sisyphus happy." Or the last paragraph in his book, The Stranger, when the protagonist is about to be executed:
Quote:...blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself-so like a brother, really-I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
Should a pigeon trapped in a Skinner box all its life feel any different? Is it better off being "rational" and trying to obtain a better understanding of its predicament? Or, if it had the faculties to realize it, why shouldn't it pronounce its circumstances absurd?
