Alternate Rationalities Part III

If we follow a thread from the non-rational to our emotional rationality the next step may well be the rational intelligence of bacteria. A few months back All in the Mind aired a fascinating program on the intelligence of bacteria. If we work with the notion that that "being reasonable" is like singing in tune with who you are and what the universe is like, then this program would seem to suggest that bacteria are very reasonable and perhaps even rational creatures.

myxococcus xanthus "the primate of the bacterial world".

One of the more astounding ideas that comes up in this program is the notion that certain bacteria can process 1 000 000 000 bits of information per second. This is probably one of the facts that leads Jeffry Stock, a molecular biologist to quote Koshland who says "that there's no question that bacteria are the most intelligent organisms on earth, at least on a per gram weight basis". Stock also says that "the real question is why they wouldn't be the most sophisticated intelligent organism on earth because they've been around a lot longer than animals, and they have evolved extremely rapidly, and they are very, very competitive with one another. So why wouldn't they be as intelligent as an organism could possibly be? There's an incredible selection pressure for intelligence." Download the audio here (you may need to right click and "save link as..." from the fly-out menu on this one).

The Value of Property Rights

In this forum on the global economic crisis Hernando de Soto (a Peruvian economist) makes the point that one of the principal causes of this crisis is a lack of clarity in terms of property rights. From what I understand of de Soto's argument the problem with the trading in dodgy loans is that no one actually knows who "owns" the debt or how many times its been packaged and resold, so there is no correspondence between property and the pieces of paper that have been traded. de Soto and the other panelists (Naomi Klein and Joseph Stiglitz) then discuss examples of property rights issues including those from the third world where a lack of clarity in terms of who owns what has led to some of the poorest people being thrown off there land in all sorts of different circumstances (including immediately after the tsunami of 2004). We might then see how the framing of the global warming issue that George Lakoff gives toward the end of the video posted below can be seen as granting everyone property rights over the air. Those who put carbon into it must then pay us, as the owners of the air, for the right to do so. Download the audio here.

Lakoff: Reason, Emotion and Politics

In this video George Lakoff suggests that many of the failings of 'progressive' politicians stem from their lack of understanding about the way we make decisions and how the mind functions. He argues that the typical approach of 'focusing on the issues' and making a rational argument for the introduction of particular policies is one that draws on an 18th century understanding of the brain and our decision making processes. He cites research that demonstrates the importance of emotions in our ability to make choices while also speaking about how empathy is crucial when we decide who to vote for. Lakoff suggests that running a campaign based on emotion and empathy is not irrational but that rather that "the old notion of rationality is false". We might link this to the previous post and our thoughts about alternative rationalities by thinking of what Lakoff is describing as a kind of emotional rationality. The other key idea that Lakoff draws on is the notion that language is not neutral and that progressive thinkers need to actively-seek-to-disseminate ways of framing issues through language that allow even the more conservative-minded amongst us to support progressive policy. He points to the success of conservative 'think tanks' in disseminating their own framings of contemporary events ("the war on terror" etc) and suggests that progressives need similar institutions to be able to move forward on issues such as global warming. Download the audio of Lakoff's talk here.

Chris Hedges on the religious right and new atheists

In this video journalist and writer Chris Hedges identifies certain parallels in the ideologies of the religious right in the US and a group of people that he calls "new atheists". One of the points that has stuck with me from his discussion is the notion that both religion and art are ways of engaging with the non-rational. He makes it clear that the non-rational is not to be thought of as synonymous with the irrational. This reminded me of a contribution by Rowan Williams to an issue of New Scientist that considered the question of reason. Williams writes;

Until the early Middle Ages, being "reasonable" was primarily a matter of being aware of where you belonged in the cosmos... Being reasonable was like singing in tune (an analogy the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome loved to use) with who you were and what the universe was like.

From these ideas we can draw a link between reason and rationality and perhaps start to think about rationality as a kind of "singing in tune with who you are and what the universe is like". The idea here is to start to imagine and define alternative rationalities that might cover some of the ground that lies beyond the way science approaches the rational.