We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide. – Samuel Johnson
An ancient dictum, attributed to Aristotle, is: Man is a rational animal. Some, like Bertrand Russell, have wondered about this. With his usual sarcasm, Russell wrote: “Man is a rational animal. a long life I have searched diligently for evidence in favor of this statement. So far, I have not had the good fortune to come across it.”
But we should take Aristotle to mean that humans are capable of rational thinking, rather than that they are always rational. Man is a straight-line-walking animal means that humans are capable of walking on straight lines, not that they always do that.
Generally, we describe that as rational which conforms to basic logical reasoning and is consistent with well-established facts of experience and observation. Through evolution, human brains share some commonalties in their functioning. One of these is the universal logic to which they conform while awake.
Nowhere else are the principles of rational thinking as meticulously applied as in mathematics and theoretical science. But even here, rationality is embedded in handling the systems, not in their creation. The basic concepts and hypotheses in mathematics and science do not flow from pure logical thought. Intuition and insight often play a role there.
When it comes to issues involving history, politics, religion, and the like, logic is not always chaste. Subtle factors, springing from emotions, ideals, values, frustrations, and cultural conditioning subtly constrain major premises and deductive processes. Such contextual coloration of logic plays an important role in our being fully human. Without it, we would be perfectly functioning thinking machines, spewing out impeccably correct results from inputs to the brain, but devoid of feelings that make life rich and meaningful.
There are two ways in which one might digress from rationality. The first is through blatant disregard for syllogism. Here one stumbles into positions or engages in actions that can be grotesque, absurd, and silly, even dangerous. Abusing others through words or deeds, regarding groups of people as inferior on the basis of their skin-color, and refusing to accept evidence against one’s cherished beliefs are all examples of irrationality.
Another way in which one may stray from rationality is through beliefs and actions that are fulfilling, uplifting, enriching, and helpful to others, even if it costs something to oneself.I call this transrationality, though this term is often used to mean something else. Thus, while elements in the religious framework may not seem rational to the logical addict, religious behavior need not be irrational. It can be, and often is, transrational. Doing an act of sacrifice, giving up one’s own needs to serve the sick and the needy, á la Albert Schweitzer Ramalinga Swamigal, are transrational gestures. Praying for peace and going through the rites and rituals of traditions, are also instances of transrational acts.
Religious doctrines which call for the death and destruction of those who do not subscribe to particular tenets or prophets, which deny salvation to non-believers, or disallow spiritual initiation to some members of one’s own group because of their birth in a lower caste, are all examples of irrationality. On the other hand, singing hymns to the Divine, reverential chanting, being respectful of time-honored texts, and turning the other cheek are instances of transrational elements in religions. Transrational belief and behavior are meaningful and can be enriching too. Hope and well-wishes are not rational or irrational, but transrational.
Back in 1946, during the horrific Hindu-Muslim riots in Calcutta, a Hindu mob surrounded an old Muslim vegetable vendor and beat him up with an iron rods. Their behavior was irrational, let alone inhuman. My father tried to intervene to stop the lynching, but he was pushed aside by the mindless mob and he was badly hurt. The victim of the mob’s religious hate died. My father’s intervention was not rational, it was transrational.
It is important to recognize the distinction between the real which is related to the factually verifiable and experimentally confirmable, and is thus tied to rationality; and the imagined which may be irrational or transrational. Transrationality can add to our aesthetic experience. Much of art, poetry, and the tales in mythology are transrational.
Thus, we see that the normal human brain is conditioned to logical thinking in its interactions with other brains. But it is no less capable of deflecting from the neatly constructed steps of logic. One benefit from this is that in a communication (oral or written) even if one makes an inadvertent error or two, the recipient will be able to decipher the message from the context. You can get the meaning of my reflections even if a few typos creep in the text. But the more important fruit of non-rational thinking is our capacity to imagine things. Imagination can be unbridled from logic; the brain can jump out of the logical straight-jacket. Grand epics and mythologies, the Creation stories of religions, odes to nightingales and clouds, novels and operas, puns and poems all result from this capacity to go beyond the factual and the verifiable, the consistent and coherent. Some brains can create transrational realities, all brains can enjoy them.
Rejecting Aesop’s fables because animals can’t talk is missing the opportunity to be enriched by transrationality.
Rationality must be respected for intelligent living, transrationality must be cherished for meaningful life, and irrationality must be scrupulously avoided for the sake of society’s well-being and one’s own mental health.
Spurts of Thought 