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I'm currently reading _The Righteous Mind_. While I haven't finished it yet, so far a major theme has been that reason's major job is merely to justify what the

by acabal 8y ago

I'm currently reading _The Righteous Mind_. While I haven't finished it yet, so far a major theme has been that reason's major job is merely to justify what the gut instinct has already decided. Taking that theory to its conclusion, that means that most people are approaching the question of rationality vs. emotion the wrong way by assuming that appeals to reason and logic are the way to convince the average person. Not so; one must convince their emotions first, and then they will reason together a logical framework to fit their emotion. It's a bit distressing to think about, but unsurprising when one reflects on the course of history that humanity has taken, and is taking.

james_s_tayler 8y ago
His experiment in one of the early chapters where they come up with these little stories that are for some reason morally repugnant but on closer inspection don't appear to be hurting anyone and then they press people for their reasons on why they think it's wrong and they wind up inventing justifications that are sometimes pretty far fetched. That was pretty interesting. There's another great bit of research detailed like that detailed in The Elephant In The Brain. In the 60s and 70s Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga did some research for which Sperry eventually won a Nobel Prize in 1981 where they showed images to patients who had undergone a corpus callostomy where the two halves of the brain can no longer communicate and asked them questions about what they saw. The results were really striking. They did it in such a way that they show the image to only the right side of the brain but then ask the left side of the brain to describe what they saw verbally. They just invent some kind of fantastical rationalization and they seem to fully believe that's what they think despite the fact that it can't be. I'm explaining it kind of badly but that part was jaw dropping. Seems to fit with Haidts research though.

by acabal 8y ago

james_s_tayler 8y ago

His experiment in one of the early chapters where they come up with these little stories that are for some reason morally repugnant but on closer inspection don't appear to be hurting anyone and then they press people for their reasons on why they think it's wrong and they wind up inventing justifications that are sometimes pretty far fetched. That was pretty interesting. There's another great bit of research detailed like that detailed in The Elephant In The Brain. In the 60s and 70s Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga did some research for which Sperry eventually won a Nobel Prize in 1981 where they showed images to patients who had undergone a corpus callostomy where the two halves of the brain can no longer communicate and asked them questions about what they saw. The results were really striking. They did it in such a way that they show the image to only the right side of the brain but then ask the left side of the brain to describe what they saw verbally. They just invent some kind of fantastical rationalization and they seem to fully believe that's what they think despite the fact that it can't be. I'm explaining it kind of badly but that part was jaw dropping. Seems to fit with Haidts research though.