The Ego of Reductionism

This knol is 4th part of " why it takes time to have a centralist position?",   "Nature does not discriminate" and "Pure Rationalism is destined to failure".

And now, back to our first definitions,

I look to "rationalism as another name of reductionism". Logic is the art of reducing things to their fundamentals and by "pure reductionism", I mean fundamentalism in reductionist approach. While, reductionism helps us in clear understanding of things and correlating among different things to generalize our world views but we have not to forget that, these generalizations are our mechanical reflections of reality and is one among many others. For example, we reduce the matter to fundamental particles and it allows us to generalize the whole Universe as one but that can't explain everything. For life, we need another level and as you are aware, genes are the current currency. Apart from physical reality, we have mathematical and  digital realities that are other expressions of reductionism.

Cartoon Source; XKCD

Fine, the real world is far more complex and interactive than bits but what does it have to "nature" of things and why fundamentalism in reductionism is destined to failure?

As the main purpose of "reductionism" is to have an understanding of the world, so it is basically tied to humans. One of the most philosophical reductionist exercise was performed by Rene Descartes; he doubts everything but  can't doubt his own existence and famously declares, "I think, therefore I am". To understand "reducitonism", we need it to understand humans. Just for sake of current argument,  lets reduce humans to an individual like, "I" or "you". What "I" or "you" stands on? The core of "I" is "ego". Theoretically, ego is the mediator between human instincts and reality and it helps humans behave and appear as they seem to. Now, how "ego" mediate between reality and instincts depends on the cultural conditioning and it is why, we need to rationalize things. It is the urge of ego to make the interpretations of reality fitted to its cultural conditioning. If it fails to rationalize things properly, the ego won't be able to mediate well between reality and the basic instinctual desires and the results are either "suppression of instinctual desires" or "loose control" over it. For example, war is an abnormal situation, when the cultural norms under which egos were conditioned break down and egos lose the ability to mediate well between instinctual desires and reality and the "abnormal behaviors" such as killings, looting and all sorts of abuses come as common tragedies. Of course, ego still pushes to rationalize the instinctual desires by a cultural covers such as religion, nationalism, patriotism, or simply rationalism to continue its basic functions. Don't take it wrong. Ego in general is  for our good and it is the basic drive for goal settings, achievements, confidence and social responsibilities. However, the wrong cultural conditioning can lead to negative rationalization of instinctual desires. For example, the current cultural trend, in which children are conditioned around their "personal wants and liking" are making people less concerned on collective good or they escape social reprehensibility by negative rationalizations. This "selfish" and "narcissistic" ego is the result of reductionism based on "I" and "you" approach. "Do, what you want/Like" is just half of the reality in which, we live. The other half is, "Do/want for others as you want others want/do to you".

Just as mentioned earlier, Descartes reductionist exercise was to show that, "Man is a rational animal" as it is ascribed to Aristotle. Although Men have tendency to be rational but, are they really rational by their own standards of rationality? Basically rationality falls to serve two basic human needs; (1) to make one's world view based on evidences (epistemic rationalism) and (2) to help one makes right choices and function in best ways to optimize one's abilities/talents/safety (functional/instrumental rationalism).

It is not going to take time in finding countless examples and ways that, we (humans) tend to bypass rationality. Some big ones are culture, situations, costs, time, laziness, unfamiliarity (poor information) and pleasure/pain. If you are an optimist person, you may conclude; Yes, humans have the rational competence but may act or do bad reasoning due to performance errors based on some of the mentioned conditions. But, if you are a little bit skeptic, you may conclude; humans are not good at reasoning and the chances of errors are high due to different rational competences and conditioning and it is why, cross-questioning are needed to reduce the errors and a rational conclusion is an open ended inference.

Back to our Aristotelian definition of humans as, "rational animal"; Why he had used the term "rational animal"? Why he had compared humans with animals to define the rationalism? An  unequivocal explanation comes from observations that, animal behave under obligatory natural laws. Animals never had to devise laws, set standards of morality or claims of divine laws. It is only humans, who have the ability to understand natural laws by their observations, communicate to their consciences to set up the standards for nobility and morality and obligate themselves to things, that are not obligated by nature, e.g, to help people in need that are genetically and culturally distant. Despite a common characteristics of humans in understanding and making higher standards than natural laws based on their rationality, the standards of rationalism greatly vary and naturally the standards of morality and that is something, I like to discuss in the next knol.

Dedicated to Malala

Intolerance and supremacism are interwoven and is a cultural trend that grow in a beaten and scared society, that finds its safety in destruction and denial of others. The cover might be any of fancy words that rationalize damning of others. It doesn't matter, what one stands for, if he/she gets scared of others' expressions or existence ..... it is the symptom for it..... Names doesn't matter as it changes with time but the symptom matters. It comes again and again under different banners. I understand, some may get irritate by usage of animal, women or stereotypical faces but I think, it is one of the ways to let this symptom show off... Sensitivity to women, animals, books, cartoons, expressions are not ..... you know, what I mean...

Rationalization illustrated

People have become sophisticated and have learned to rationalize their acts and ideas. I have tried to illustrate this process via my cartOOns (In case, you couldn't get my point, I will take blame for that).  

Science and Islam: part 3: The Power of Doubt

And the doubt continues....... "Carl Woese, Evolution's Golden Revolutionary" and Biology's Next Revolution 

Why it takes time to have a centralist position?

This knol is 3rd part of "Nature does not discriminate"  and "Pure Rationalism is destined to failure"

To me, it is wrong to think that, one of the main jobs of philosophy is to look for meaning in life. Aristotle is thought as father of logic and he had formulated his logic approximately 23 and half century ago and have remained the core of deductive reasoning. Last century new efforts were made to apply logic to mathematics and vice versa (Gottlob Fregeand Bertrand Russell among big names). But despite of BIG names in Philosophy and its long history that stretches over three millennia, it has failed to answer the main questions, that revolve around the meaning of life. Luckily, George Dvorsky has gathered 8 of these core questions in his recent article, "8 Great Philosophical Questions That We’ll Never Solve" so, I can just skip this part.

So, now the question arise, "if it is not the job of philosophy to find meaning in life, then what does it do for life?" . Well, one of its main jobs is to add value to life OR some may like to say, add value to survival. This is really fortunate that, Philosophy can't find answer to big questions that are the "sources for 'meaning' in life". If Philosophers were able to really convincingly answer these questions, there would be as many religions out there, as many philosophers. By its nature, philosophy is argumentative and appears absurd, irrational, irrelevant and non-philosophical to opposing sides. So, by questioning and arguing the accepted rationales, meanings and systems, it helps in making them to stay open and evolve (Previously, we argued, life is an open system).  Philosophical movements like Stoicism, Epicureanism and even modern one Existentialism were not to provide meaning in life but to add values in it.

 My response; People do not challenge each other on their visions but on
their identities,that are borrowed from past as they have learned past better
 than  learning from them....

Some also may like to know, if philosophy can't answer core questions in meaning of life then, why bother at first place about the meaning? What, I understand is that, it is "Human Nature" to look for meaning and Human Nature and Human Condition are two core areas around which major philosophies revolve.

One may blame a lot of thing for the great collapse of communist block in previous century but frankly, the human nature was the main force in driving it to failure (It is the favorite argument of the libertarians and I agree with it). Competition is part of human nature and it never ceases. Of course, everybody is born with talents but neither all talents are equal nor the talent of putting others' talents in use is universal.  The only way to bring equality is to manage populations and it is evident from the very beginning that, driving people against their nature is destined to failure. Likewise, the current visible cracks in the capitalism are another show of force by human nature. From ancient times, greed was symbolized by dragon or a large snake that has collected piles of gold and protects it. But, it was assumed that, the social pressure, ethics and education are self controlled systems which contain the greed to not grow out of control. The current economic crises and skinny 99% movement suggesting that, social pressure doesn't contain it. In short, the human  nature had  driven the extreme left and extreme right to failures. It really makes sense when Tariq Ali suggests, "Extreme left is most beneficial to extreme right and vise versa" (They compete with each other, analyze and keep in check each others performances). If we take a more direct and fresh example of how human nature makes questionable the most dear systems. Hatred is usually taken as childish attitudes but the movie, "Innocence of Muslims" and reactions to it have shown, the grown ups have grown up versions of it. With freedom comes responsibility but the insulting movie has shown that, in freedom, responsibility is the first victim of hatred.  Likewise, religion's main goal is to turn men into ethical beings but the violence have shown that here, the ethics is the first victim of overwhelming anger and hatred. Again, it is the religious people who are most benefited from atheists. Atheists make them think and let them not to sacrifice the core purpose of religion for things that are related to identity and are more for social and political consumption. Similarly, it is the Atheists who are benefited most from religious people and make them not to cultivate a religion out of evolutionary theory (From the missionary acts of some, it appear that evolutionary theory are used as  revelation for atheist religion). 

This knol is under construction...