Rationality What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (Stephen Pinker).mp4

File size : 72.9 MiB

Duration : 46mn 54s

This video can advance your grasp of logic and further inform your appreciation of how humanity’s hold on logic is quite tenuous (weak).

I have been following Steven Pinker for decades for his insightful research and analysis, particularly in the areas of linguistics (particularly grammar) and cognitive psychology (particularly consciousness and reasoning)– two areas of interest that I have done extensive research in as well, though not at the level of his professional expertise.

I am heartened by viewing this video, finding him supporting my belief that logic should be taught in schools; right along side of reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic; as I have been doing in my English classes for some time now. And this discussion is poignantly pertinent in our days of seemingly epic tribalism and fake news, so gaining knowledge from this video should be immediately applicable to your life now, unless you live under a rock and want to stay there.

Although I am supplying a video file for your viewing, it may be best to view the video on Youtube with the closed captions/subtitles enabled, to better take in the presentation. (The link to that video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkv633a4KU8 .)

I recommend pausing the video after each idea presented that is new to you or is complex enough to benefit from your rumination of the idea and its implications. This will help your comprehension of his larger arguments.

While I don’t agree with all of what Pinker asserts in this video, largely I find him once again right on point, this time in his explanations of rationality and the obstacles to it. In particular, I object somewhat to his derision of educational opportunities typic’ly offered in classes, since part of that problem stems from how students engage in classroom lessons and how they lack the initiative too often to further explore and advance the knowledge offered, by doing further work outside of class on their own. Pinker also says, at one point, that in logic, one may not consider knowledge of life to reject a logical assertion, or proposition; when that’s not true in the practical application of logic. Here Pinker doesn’t distinguish well the difference between when a logical argument is “valid” versus when it is “sound”.

Pinker’s presentation also dovetails with what I try to teach my students, supporting my contentions, about the conflict in the human brain that impedes our better thinking skills, when he speaks about the matter of our emotional selves (that more primitive layer of our brains that we want to live life through, understandbly so) seeming at odds with our more modern rational layer of brain matter.

Over the years, I have shifted away from thinking we should all be more Spock-like in our mental processing of our lives, to favor also embracing our emotional selves (especially given that, through our emotional being, we get our most essential sense of ourselves, our central sense of self-identity, thus making it the seat of our souls, if you will). But this is not to say emotion should not be curtailed by reason and allowed to dominate us. Please read my poem “004 Enjoy your Silly Bliss (poem by Thom DeMarcky).jpg” that is pertinent, which clarifies what I think the balance need be between these two great forces within ourselves. The poem is located on the “About” page of this website.

Overall bit rate : 217 Kbps

Video

Bit rate : 81.0 Kbps

Width : 1 280 pixels

Height : 720 pixels

Display aspect ratio : 16:9

Audio

Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec

Bit rate mode : Constant

Bit rate : 128 Kbps

Channel(s) : 2 channels

Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz

Compression mode : Lossy