KNOW

Know; now what can you do about it?

All of this raises the question of why you would want to do this at all. You can see why people may want to argue, understand, debate, or express what they believe. Or you can understand why academics might want to explain. And perhaps you do need to have explanations or explanations of why you believe something. But I would argue that in the end all of that matters little. What matters is that what you want to explain is true and the processes you use to explain it are rational and appropriate.

There is a belief that would compel a student to leave school at a certain point in the academic year because of its difficulties or because they see no rational justification for proceeding with it. This belief would say that school, as it currently is, is not a good place for anyone because it is structured by decisions that are cognitively ambiguous, challenging, and in some way incomplete. But perhaps they would be better off leaving school and preparing to return for a new course or set of courses that would make sense for them.

In some ways school is the ideal training ground for reasoning. Students who go through this process without noticing it or expressing it might experience many cognitive challenges. Students might see and understand conflicting arguments about what is true and what is rational. Or they might realize that there is a situation in which they need to explain their choices and discuss how they came to decide what to do. Or they might discover the processes that they will use for explaining what they do or do not believe. And if they do that, and if they are rational, perhaps they will be able to make the best rational choices in many situations.

But if you understand what is happening, if you explain these processes, if you explain why you should think what you do and that your thinking is rational, perhaps you will understand what you are doing and what you should expect of yourself and others. And perhaps you will get things right far more often than not, and be able to make logical judgments about important situations, and be able to argue your case in those situations.

What can be a problem is when cognitive processes are driven by feelings, particularly feeling irrational or feeling upset by what is happening in the cognitive process. I might offer you an example of a situation in which you might make a particular judgment, feel irrational and upset, and then explain to others why you made that judgment. Or I might make a judgment that feels okay for me and that I would have said I believed a few minutes before. It would be rational for me to explain what is happening in the situations that I am in. But in some situations I would feel justified to explain my judgment.

This is why I believe you need to do things that seem to require explanation, such as explaining why you are making a particular judgment. But perhaps we can limit this to reasons that are cognitive rather than emotional. Perhaps you can say, “This is an important judgment that I am making and I think it is reasonable to explain to others that I think this is right and rational for me to make.” Or, “This is a situation where I have some cognitive dissonance and that this is the best explanation I can offer.”

I would argue that the way we explain and justify is all important. It can lead us to make better decisions and correct more of our mistakes. So, I don’t believe there is anything wrong with deciding to have discussions, explaining our thinking and discussing what is good and rational. I don’t believe that anything good is achieved by arguing in ways that are cognitively ambiguous and unsettling. So I would not reject any debate or explanation. I would only reject a debate or explanation that was in cognitive dissonance or an emotional debate. I would reject a debate or explanation that tried to convince you that you were wrong or irrational, or that you had made some kind of mistake, or that you were cognitively compromised.

In contrast, I think there is good discussion in cognitive dissonance situations. I think it can lead to good decisions and to correct more of our mistakes. Perhaps we have to explain our thoughts and judgments in a different way. Perhaps we have to argue our positions, explain what we think, explain why we think this is the best thing to do, and explain that some situations require us to explain what we are doing and why we think this is right. Perhaps there are situations that need to be explained to explain our judgments. And perhaps in some situations we need to say that what we are doing is reasonable and rational and explain why we are making our judgments and explaining what we believe.

If we can understand what is going on in situations that make us feel upset and cognitively confused, then we can get out of the situations that are causing us problems and might make us seem irrational. And then we can understand our reasoning. And then we can explain that reasoning to others in ways that make it sound rational, intelligent and rational. That might be explaining why we think it is good to argue. That might be explaining why we believe it is reasonable to explain why we think the world looks different in different situations. That might be explaining why we feel justified and justified to explain why we think certain things are rational and what we believe.

Of course it is all going to depend on the situation. And perhaps some situations won’t lead to good reasoning, good reasoning. Perhaps when we are in situations that are cognitively difficult or that we are in situations where we are taking more cognitive effort than others, we won’t be able to express well our thinking or we won’t be able to get out of situations in which we feel out of control. I would only reject situations in which we felt uncomfortable and out of control. I would only reject arguments or explanations in situations that are just rational to justify our beliefs. I would say that’s not rational to explain it to others. I would only reject arguments or explanations in situations where there is no debate. Debate is a debate that is purely rational and rational because we are debating the right way to explain and justify our thinking and why we believe what we believe. We can debate to explain what we believe. But we are not debating to justify or justify our thinking. We are not debating to justify or justify our beliefs.

Some people may have different views of what is rational or what is rational to say. That’s okay. Of course they are entitled to disagree with each other and to make a different set of explanations and defend their view of what is rational and what is rational to say. I would say there is a difference between disagreeing with others and creating a debate that is reasonable and rational...