I attended the WHC last year and one of the outstanding presentations for me was Janet Radcliffe Richards' element of this one. I commend it to the house.

Great video. I'd just add that "we" are also blinkered by Enlightenment thinking. But this is at least a start.

Looks like she's casting a spell in that still shot opening!

kennyc wrote:Looks like she's casting a spell in that still shot opening!

Joking apart, she cast a spell on me! She was mesmerising.

epepke wrote:I'd just add that "we" are also blinkered by Enlightenment thinking.

Awww, maaaan. I was gonna say that. So instead, I'll say, what do you mean we, paleface? Which you pretty much also said. I'm not blinkered, here, so much as failing to punch myself out of a wet paper bag.

Well, I think "we'll" always be blinkered by some sort of, form of irrational thinking/beliefs .... unfortunately. All we can do is keep battling to find truth.

kennyc wrote:Well, I think "we'll" always be blinkered by some sort of, form of irrational thinking/beliefs .... unfortunately. All we can do is keep battling to find truth.

We'll know it when we believe it, won't we?

kennyc wrote:Well, I think "we'll" always be blinkered by some sort of, form of irrational thinking/beliefs .... unfortunately. All we can do is keep battling to find truth.

In the case of being blinkered by Enlightenment thinking, "we" are as much or more blinkered by rational, or perhaps rationalizing thinking/beliefs. What is usually called "rationalism" is a big floating turd in the punch bowl of the Enightenment. It was important historically to get beyond the Divine Right of Kings and blah blah blah, but it simply fails to work.

I'm not coming out against reason. I'm a big fan. I like a nice slobbery reason as much as the next ape, probably more than most, and I'm very good at it.

But the idea that it is part of cognition in any large sense, let alone the Cartesian idea that it is the basis of cognition, is not only wrong but flat-out ridiculous. Even when reason happens, it is a puny edifice built on the shifting sands of not-reason.

Given that this is the philosophy forum, I guess I have to speak superficially. Nietzsche was on the right track when he said that people think in mythological terms and that it would probably be better to say that thoughts think themselves. Cognitive Scientists use different but not necessarily better terms such as "framing" and "metaphorical thought." But that stuff does correspond to structures in the brain you can microtome or put live on a slide and zap with a 9 volt battery to make them go.

Janet Radcliffe Richards talked brilliantly about the imposition of a moral hierarchy upon nature, giving a picture that canonically describes e.g. American conservative thought. But Enlightenment thought, or any other kind of thought, is based on something every bit as squirrely, just different. It's unavoidable. That's how brains work.

It doesn't mean that's bad. It's the only way for a brain to do anything beyond approximately blinking and drooling. But one has to be a bit careful not to fall into unrealistic traps. The most important trap to avoid involves the folk models of the brain, the models that the brain constructs of itself, because if you can't avoid that, you can't see what a trap it is.