Search Ideas

Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral […]

Don’t you mean immoral?

This is largely a duplicate of #1633. You’d want to avoid repeating ideas.

Criticism is a form of knowledge. How does reason have access to criticism if reason is not the source of knowledge?

Yeah but there’s still #1635.

Great. With that in mind, would you like to revise #1617 in such a way that it has no outstanding criticisms? Note that it currently has one outstanding criticism (#1623).

Is irrational just "false" or is there something else to it?

There’s more to it.

Are there true but irrational ideas?

It would be irrational to continue to hold true ideas in the face of unaddressed criticism, yes.

I think rational but false ideas must exist, no?

Yes. Mere falsehood does not imply irrationality.

Okay I read it. Not sure I'm clear on my questions after doing so to be honest.

You asked if irrationality was just false or if there was something else to it. Note that the word ‘false’ does not occur on the linked page. Instead, she mentions the destruction of life, dishonesty, lack of integrity, context dropping, mysticism, and more examples of irrationality. These are attitudes toward truth seeking and their effects.

You asked whether rational but false ideas must exist. That is what Rand means by “not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.” Blindness = being wrong on some issue, refusal to see = refusing to seek or recognize the truth on some issue. To her, blindness and the refusal to see are not the same thing, which answers your question.

Fair enough. Will revise. By the way, I prefer when people use their real names. Mind changing yours under settings?

I wonder if ‘drive’ is really a good word for unconscious ideas. In this context, my Dictionary app says:

 an innate, biologically determined urge to attain a goal or satisfy a need: emotional and sexual drives.

and

“determination and ambition to achieve something: her drive has sustained her through some shattering personal experiences.”

But neither of those is unconscious. People are aware of their sexual and emotional drives and their ambitions.

In addition, there are other types of unconscious knowledge. As you say in your video, habitualization is a source of unconscious knowledge.

When I hear the word ‘drive’, I think of determination and ambition, which take lots of conscious effort. I don’t think of habitualized knowledge, which by definition takes no effort.

Is this kid being irrational?

Perhaps not. However, I find your example implausible. Let’s look at it more closely. You originally wrote that a belief in god could be rational if two conditions are both met:

1. “[The] belief stems from a sincere effort to explain the world and …”
2. “… the believer is ready to jettison his belief if he were to think of some reason why it cannot be true.”

As for 1, a sincere effort to explain the world implies a critical attitude, honesty, conscientiousness/thoroughness, which means subjecting candidate ideas to lots of criticism, following up on counter-criticisms (as opposed to running off and doing something else), etc. A child might prioritize playing in the dirt today, but at some point he will ask questions. A sincere effort to explain anything means he’d rather say ‘I don’t know’ than believe something as silly as god.

God as a concept is arbitrary on its face. It cannot survive even very basic criticism. So it cannot possibly stem from a sincere effort to explain the world.

As for 2, kids ask tons of questions and criticize ideas. They’re naturally curious and conscientious in this way. The problem is that parents beat the god idea into their kids (figuratively if not literally) so that the kids don’t question it. So then those kids are not willing to jettison the idea anymore. Which is why the idea sticks around despite not being a sincere effort to explain the world.

Superseded by #1629.

That quote is better but still not quite right. You’d want to end it not in a dangling comma, but in an ellipsis to indicate that you’re cutting the sentence short. Try changing it to:

"The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge […]." This is wrong etc.

Then, in the section “Do the comments still apply?”, be sure to deselect the criticisms that your edit addresses.

In other situations, I would agree. For example, back when I was first learning how to code, I made it a point to type code from tutorials manually to retain it better.

But with quotes it’s different because retaining the literal letter matters. Typing it manually is too error prone and there’s no compiler (except Quote Checker) to catch errors.

There we said we have three types of knowledge or three categories of knowledge. have our statements, which are our explicit knowledge. We can express fully in words. We have intuitions, which are know how skills we know how to do it, but

we cannot articulate it fully in words but we can approximate it and then the third category is our drives which are completely unconscious knowledge

We have no idea what's driving it, but they make themselves known to our consciousness via our feelings.

Deutsch uses the terms explicit, inexplicit, and unconscious.

Are you saying intuitions are synonymous with inexplicit knowledge, or are you saying they’re an example of it?

Are you saying drives are synonymous with unconscious knowledge, or are you saying they’re an example of it?

So the same mistaken idea could be rational in one person's mind and irrational in another person's mind depending on whether that person is committed to the truth and ready to ditch the idea should they find some reason to do so.

Did I get this right?

I agree, yeah. I think (ir)rationality has to do with an attitude toward ideas and truth seeking. It’s a property of minds, not ideas. (Though as a shorthand, calling a belief in god irrational is fine, I think, as long as we know that we’re calling the holder of that idea irrational, not literally the idea itself.)

You asked if rationality was just false or if there was something else to it.

Irrationality, not rationality.

If I get her right, one could in principle hold a rational belief which is false —a belief in god, say— so long as this belief stems from a sincere effort to explain the world and so long as the believer is ready to jettison his belief if he were to think of some reason why it cannot be true.

A belief in god is a form of mysticism. Rand writes that rationality “means the rejection of any form of mysticism […].” So a belief in god is not just false, it’s irrational. It’s also implausible that someone could hold on to as blatantly false an idea as the existence of god without some refusal to look into the matter critically.

Is irrational just "false" or is there something else to it?

There’s more to it.

Are there true but irrational ideas?

I don’t think so, no.

I think rational but false ideas must exist, no?

Yes. Mere falsehood does not imply irrationality.

Okay I read it. Not sure I'm clear on my questions after doing so to be honest.

You asked if irrationality was just false or if there was something else to it. Note that the word ‘false’ does not occur on the linked page. Instead, she mentions the destruction of life, dishonesty, lack of integrity, context dropping, mysticism, and more examples of irrationality. These are attitudes toward truth seeking and their effects.

You asked whether rational but false ideas must exist. That is what Rand means by “not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.” Blindness = being wrong on some issue, refusal to see = refusing to seek or recognize the truth on some issue. To her, blindness and the refusal to see are not the same thing, which answers your question.

Is irrational just "false" or is there something else to it?

There’s more to it.

Are there true but irrational ideas?

I don’t think so, no.

I think rational but false ideas must exist, no?

Yes. Mere falsehood does not imply irrationality.

Okay I read it. Not sure I'm clear on my questions after doing so to be honest.

You asked if rationality was just false or if there was something else to it. Note that the word ‘false’ does not occur on the linked page. Instead, she mentions the destruction of life, dishonesty, lack of integrity, context dropping, the rejection of mysticism, and more. These are attitudes toward truth seeking and their effects.

You asked whether rational but false ideas must exist. That is what Rand means by “not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.” Blindness = being wrong on some issue, refusal to see = refusing to seek or recognize the truth on some issue. To her, blindness and the refusal to see are not the same thing, which answers your question.

Is irrational just "false" or is there something else to it?

There’s more to it.

Are there true but irrational ideas?

I don’t think so, no.

I think rational but false ideas must exist, no?

Yes. Mere falsehood does not imply irrationality.

Okay I read it. Not sure I'm clear on my questions after doing so to be honest.

You asked if rationality was just false or if there was something else to it. Note that the word ‘false’ does not occur on the linked page. Instead, she mentions the destruction of life, dishonesty, lack of integrity, context dropping, the rejection of mysticism, and more. These are attitudes toward truth seeking and their effects.

You asked whether rational but false ideas must exist. That is what Rand means by “not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.” Blindness = being wrong on some issue, refusal to see = refusing to seek or recognize the truth on some issue. To her, blindness and the refusal to see are not the same thing, which answers your question.

If I get her right, one could in principle hold a rational belief which is false —a belief in god, say— so long as this belief stems from a sincere effort to explain the world and so long as the believer is ready to jettison his belief if he were to think of some reason why it cannot be true.

That’s technically a misquote of Rand. https://www.quote-checker.com/diffs/checking-ayn-rand-quote-re-rationality

How did that happen? Did you not copy/paste?

What do you think is the source of knowledge if not reason?

y as things get complex and more detailed, it becomes to know which part you are 100% right about.

Typos

You make several points here. Try breaking them up into separate ideas. Otherwise, you run the risk of receiving ‘bulk’ criticisms. See #465.

This idea should be posted as a criticism of #1578, not as a top-level idea itself.

Yeah, you’re right.

I suggest you change your idea (#1602) into a criticism so that it cancels out mine. Just click on “revise”, check the box that says “Is criticism?”, and submit the form.