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From: trc@houca.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: A Consistantly answered question
Message-ID: <411@houca.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Oct-83 18:13:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: houca.411
Posted: Mon Oct 24 18:13:49 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Oct-83 05:11:08 EDT
Organization: American Bell, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 67

Response to stan the l.h.

I think you asked several questions - 1) what is rationality; 2) how is
it different from rationalization; 3) why is your scenario not a proper
presentation of an "Objectivist mode of reasoning".

The second is easiest - rationalization is the act of perverting one's 
reason to the defense of a rationally incorrect decision, via the selective 
evasion of reality.  The minimum evasion is the evasion of the need to use 
rationality *before* a decision is made, when possible.  And then there are 
additional evasions required, (depending upon how incorrect the decision is) 
of the context of the decision and how it was made.

Rand defines reason as "the faculty that identifies and integrates the
material provided by man's senses.  It is a faculty that man has to exercise
*by choice*.  Thinking is not an automatic function.  In any hour and issue
of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort.  Thinking requires
a state of full, focused awareness.  The act of focusing one's consciousness
is volitional.  Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed
awareness of reality - or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a 
semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate
moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of
any random, associational connections it might happen to make."

My understanding of rationality, which I think agrees with the above is:
Reason is the faculty that allows humans to create, hold, and manipulate
concepts that represent things, and which is capable of representing *real*
things.  Rationality is the state or process of using that faculty *fully*
to accept (hold) and use concepts that represent things in reality.  Reason 
can be "misused" in the sense that one can fail to apply it fully to what one
knows, or can apply it with improper premises (based on something that one 
does *not* know - a known falsehood, fabrication, or irrationally derived 
concept [latter is recursive, not circular]).  That is "irrationality".

Your third question seems to require a lot more than an understanding of
rationality to answer, though the use of rationality in considering the
context you give would indeed lead one (eventually - one has to get into
ethics first) to reject the use of force against humans as a means of 
attempting to gain values.  (Force is justified in order to *retain* values 
that another is trying to use force to take away from you.)  The "vulgar
masses" are human, even if some of them have given up the *use* of the 
mental capabilities that distinguish a humans from animals.  And in fact,
I do not agree that the "masses" have given up the use of reason - they
merely do not apply it consistently across their lives.  They may apply
it to solving problems like finding a new store, but refuse to put out the
effort to apply it to the (more difficult) task of understanding themselves 
or ethical questions.  

Also, as I have indicated in other notes, most of the "masses" pay lip 
service to altruism, while acting common-sensically selfish most of the 
time.  This leads to numerous conflicts, in that they "double-think" - 
expecting others to live by an altruistic code, while each really acts 
semi-properly selfish.  Because of this expectation on others, they 
may try to *take* the values that they believe that the other *should* 
altruistically give them.  This either doesnt work, or causes huge 
resentment, or both.  Either way, it messes up lives.

By the way - I believe that you have mis-interpreted my "Taggart" note.
Dagney was not justified in shooting the man merely because of his 
irrationality.  For example, Dagney would not be justified in deliberately
shooting an innocent-but-irrational bystander.  It was the combination of
the man's opposition to a just cause, combined with his refusal to even
think and choose whether he should submit to force to save his life - 
let alone consider whether the cause behind the force was just.

	Tom Craver
	houca!trc