Confidence in reason

A popular adage goes something like this “I cannot argue down a conviction that has not been argued up.” It is impossible for me to use reason to convince someone who is without confidence in reason that they should have confidence in reason.

An adult without confidence in reason must start the effort to study reason before they can gain a confidence in reason. Perhaps that is impossible also. Perhaps it is the case that an adult without a confidence in reason will never have confidence in reason.

I suspect that 95% of the adults in the US have no confidence in reason and if my logic is correct they never will have that confidence. If that does not depress 5% of the population then nothing will. Perhaps it will delight the other 95%.

Further thought leads me to modify that statement. The 95% without confidence in reason do in fact have some confidence in reason. They do recognize that as an instrument to gain a goal reason is necessary.

What can we say about the 95% and reason? I guess we can say that they often have confidence in reason but that confidence is restricted to a limited aspect of life.

Is a person capable of having confidence in reason when that person is almost completely ignorant of the nature of reasoning?

Hmmm. I wonder if it doesn't kind of go back and forth. It's tough when you apply it to today's society however. The economic policies in the US are such that there is a wholesale distribution of wealth that flows, curiously, from the bottom to the top. It's like trickle-up economics now. But the same people who voted for this policy, twice, are the ones suffering the most from it. They are the ones who get pandered to and are told that universal healthcare is bad, yet again, they would benefit from this the most.

It's more like people have confidence in confidence. It's not what you say but how you say it, right?

Does one acquire the capacity to reason through practice, or is it inherited?Does it come simply from experience?

How does one apply reason to current events?

Mostly I feel it's like a muscle you have to work. The more you work it, the better you get at it.

A wealthy nation, just like a wealthy individual, can withstand great and numerous mistakes in judgment and still suffer no serious damage to its basic welfare. There is, however, a point in which this margin of safety is diminished to the point that the wealth becomes to small and the results of mistakes to large to withstand the damage suffered by mistaken judgment.

I suspect that such an insufficient margin of safety may be rapidly approaching the US. Due to the rapid acceleration of change and damage incurred by errors--because of technology that present and future circumstances portend--the US faces a need to make a rapid and fundamental adjustment in ability to make significantly better judgments.

In a liberal democracy like our own we cannot out-distance the general judgment capacity of the majority. If the US is going to make better judgments in the future then, by definition, our citizens must be able to make better decisions.

I consider CT for all citizens as the only avenue for improving the judgment of our society in general.

Everybody considers themselves to be a critical thinker. That is why we need to differentiate among different levels of critical thinking.

Most people fall in the category that I call Reagan thinkers—trust but verify. Then there are those who have taken the basic college course taught by the philosophy dept that I call Logic 101. This is a credit course that teaches the basic fundamentals of logic. Of course, a person need not take the college course and can learn the matter on their own effort, but I suspect few do that.

The third level I call CT (Critical Thinking). CT includes the knowledge of Logic 101 and also the knowledge that focuses upon the intellectual character and attitude of critical thinking. It includes knowledge regarding the ego and social centric forces that impede rational thinking.

I think that any normal human can easily comprehend the message of CT. Very few adults have been taught CT but it can easily be learned by anyone who recognizes its importance.

Anyone who can watch TV for a few hours a week certainly has the time to learn. The problem is lack of motivation and that is due to the fact that within our society few individuals recognize that thinking can be improved by study. Because our schools and colleges have only recently began to teach the subject few people have ever heard of the subject. Everyone thinks they are critical thinkers because they know nothing about it and that is the purpose of my sounding the horn.