Paarth Madan

A medium to iterate on my own thoughts.

Rationality

Posted at — Feb 7, 2022

Is our world rational? Is rationality sufficient to understand the human predicament?

I have a predisposition towards rationality but I think it’s really an escape mechanism. It’s cowardly. I try to reason about life with logic but recently I’ve tried to understand why. Moreover, I’ve tried to understand if it’s even the right approach.

I held the belief that rationality is above all else; everything can be explained through deductive reasoning, and we can expand our lens of knowledge until we figure out why we’re here. But, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

It came down, fundamentally, to the following question:

Is our world a rational place if it’s not readily apparent for what reason we are here?

If our universe was designed to be dealt with rationally, how rational is it that we don’t know precisely what we’re doing. It doesn’t seem to be a very logical design, if you ask me.

I believe this is a function of trying to make sense of a domain that transcends rationality. Only so much can be expressed with logic. Beyond it’s realm of explainability lives, what I believe to be, faith.

Faith in what? Well that, I suppose, is what you get to decide. But, it appears you need a combination of faith and rational to live in unison with our world. Rational can carry you to the edge of understanding, but faith resolves the remaining confusion.

I suppose it could be faith in God, but perhaps faith in a concept like the moral good. Maybe faith in love or the belief in honesty.

Perhaps the most rational way to live is with a little bit of irrationality.

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