Rational unpicked

George G Clark, 20 November 2009

I get the jitters at the idea of not being ‘rational’. This needs unpicking.

I am assuming that:

conscious = rational and
unconscious = irrational.

But we have the option of thinking of ‘causes and conditions’. These undercut ‘rationality’.

We need not assume ‘magic’ in terms of brain functioning: there are causes for all mental processes - and they are usually more multi-faced than conscious rationality supposes.

There is thus the possibility of unpicking as follows:

conscious = linear processing (bracketed reductionist) (the single bottom line) and
unconscious = parallel processing (integrated holistic) (the multiple lines of interaction)

But I still get the jitters!