That’s what we’ve been saying. Not all of a person’s thoughts are rational. And I certainly don’t assert someone can easily think themselves out of being depressed or anxious.
I think rationality should also be viewed as a social construct.
I think that the goals people set are socially constructed. Thus, the ends rationality seeks to achieve are socially constructed. Once that is established, what further insight is contained in the assertion that rationality itself is socially constructed? To put it slightly differently, I don’t think mathematics is socially constructed, but it’s pretty obvious to me that what we choose to add together is socially constructed.
That’s what we’ve been saying. Not all of a person’s thoughts are rational. And I certainly don’t assert someone can easily think themselves out of being depressed or anxious.
My point there wasn’t that people’s thoughts aren’t all rational, though I agree with that. My point was that not all human actions are tied to thoughts or intentions. There are habits, twitches, there is emotional momentum driving people to do things they’d never dream of and may regret for the rest of their lives. People often don’t think in the first place.
Once that is established, what further insight is contained in the assertion that rationality itself is socially constructed?
I think that, when one’s goal is to improve and spread rationality, a elementary questions should be: When, and under which circumstances does a person think? How does a social situation affect your thinking?
So instead of just asking how do we think and how do we improve that? It could also be usefull to ask when do we think and how do we improve that?
At some point in the future we could then inform people of the kind of social environment they might build to help them better formulate and achieve goals. Like people with anger problems being taught to ‘stop! And count to ten’ other people might be taught to think at certain recognisable critical moments they currently tend to walk past without realising.
That’s what we’ve been saying. Not all of a person’s thoughts are rational. And I certainly don’t assert someone can easily think themselves out of being depressed or anxious.
I think that the goals people set are socially constructed. Thus, the ends rationality seeks to achieve are socially constructed. Once that is established, what further insight is contained in the assertion that rationality itself is socially constructed?
To put it slightly differently, I don’t think mathematics is socially constructed, but it’s pretty obvious to me that what we choose to add together is socially constructed.
My point there wasn’t that people’s thoughts aren’t all rational, though I agree with that. My point was that not all human actions are tied to thoughts or intentions. There are habits, twitches, there is emotional momentum driving people to do things they’d never dream of and may regret for the rest of their lives. People often don’t think in the first place.
I think that, when one’s goal is to improve and spread rationality, a elementary questions should be: When, and under which circumstances does a person think? How does a social situation affect your thinking? So instead of just asking how do we think and how do we improve that? It could also be usefull to ask when do we think and how do we improve that?
At some point in the future we could then inform people of the kind of social environment they might build to help them better formulate and achieve goals. Like people with anger problems being taught to ‘stop! And count to ten’ other people might be taught to think at certain recognisable critical moments they currently tend to walk past without realising.