The first issue in my view is the attitudes people have about irrationality. What do you think? To my own view, rationality is equivalent to mechanism, artificiality. Is that fair to say?

So thoughts on rationality? Is it always a virtue? If it is always a virtue, wouldn’t evolution naturally select for it?

Can you give an example of when it’s not a virtue? Well, in general, decisions about experimentation are made “rationally”, leading to a great many failed experiments perhaps most noticeably when it comes to medicine.

It’s true that a large percentage of people don’t act rationally. Failing is how you learn. A failed experiment is as useful as a successful one. Actually, perceiving is how you learn. Failing as learning is a rational attitude. Have you ever learned something by process of deduction that changed your life more than something you spontaneously realize? Does heuristic reasoning always reveal a clear picture?

It seems like the problem with rationality is when someone decides it’s the only way to an answer.

My intention in the ‘Metaphysics of Science’ classes is to discuss the metaphysical side of various scientific topics, anything and everything really, and perhaps by doing so add additional insight to what is, at least for me, often a fuzzy picture taken from a strictly rational point of view.

I think some people prefer experimentation, others prefer intuition. People experiment often to their detriment, or to the detriment of others. In order to focus on one thing and perceive it objectively, they treat it as an object separate from any other part of reality, at least temporarily, and thus we get events like the wide spread use of things like thalidomide, and all science has to say is “Oops, our bad.”

Why is our mind “irrational”? Is this a simple defect? Biological shortcoming that’s meant to be fixed by chemicals and technology applied just because we think it will work?

When I play mahjong, I use a strategy to try to maximize my success, but at a certain point, you have no idea what is beneath the tiles, so you have to wing it.

I think emotions give us the motivation to move forward.

Isn’t it part of imagination? Indeed. It’s not my intention to attack science as a body of knowledge on its own, but the primacy its advocates seek for it, the oversights engaged in because it’s inconvenient or “unnecessary” to consider them.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~