Rationality and Freedom

You think inside a box.

Thought is limited. We don’t arrive at conclusions by pure, unconstrained reason. Thought is framed by assumptions. The frame limits the alternatives under consideration. Some framing assumptions depend on the context. Others are always present.

Frames limit your freedom of thought. Most of what you believe is either nailed down or tied to something that is nailed down. That might seem like a bad thing, but it is necessary. If your beliefs were always open to revision, you would have no stable beliefs. If you considered every possibility, you would never arrive at a conclusion. Framing assumptions make thought possible.

Everyone thinks inside a box, but some people have bigger boxes than others. Some people think more than others. They consider more alternatives. They are more open-minded. They have more complex, nuanced beliefs, and they are more able to change their beliefs.

Our brains use heuristics to limit the complexity of thought, such as:

• Intuition: Use intuition instead of thought to make judgments. Trust your “gut” (quick pattern recognition and habitual responses).
• Conformity: Adopt the beliefs and behaviors of those around you.
• Obedience: Rely on the judgment of authorities.
• Tradition: Rely on what has worked in the past. Don’t trust new ideas.
• Dogmatism: Refuse to question certain assumptions.
• Xenophobia: Avoid people and things that are different or strange. Stay within a familiar, stable environment.

Many fallacies are heuristics that work in most cases.

There is a trade-off involved in simplifying thought. On the one hand, it eliminates some potentially good ideas. On the other hand, it makes thought more efficient, and it eliminates some potentially bad ideas. Thought is the mental exploration of ideas. A bigger box contains more ideas, so it takes longer to explore. It might contain better ideas than a smaller box, but it will also contain many bad ideas. Greater rationality is not always better than lesser rationality.

We all think inside boxes, but those boxes can be bigger or smaller. A bigger box allows greater freedom of thought. It allows you to consider more possibilities and make more choices. The bigger the box, the greater your mental freedom. The smaller the box, the more your beliefs and actions are determined subconsciously. Mental freedom is the ability to think.

The box contains you, in a sense. The self is awareness and will. The size of the box is the size of the self. The more rational you are, the greater your awareness and will. The more you think, the more you consciously make judgments and choices.

Cognitive dissonance is created by questioning the frame in which someone thinks. People feel confused and afraid if their framing assumptions are brought into consciousness as explicit propositions. They feel even more confused and afraid if those framing assumptions are questioned or negated.

Rationality is linked to social and cultural freedom. Freedom and complexity are essentially the same thing. More rational people can handle greater complexity, because they can consider more possibilities and make more choices. Thus, more rational people tend to prefer greater social and cultural freedom. They have more internal freedom, so they prefer more external freedom. Less rational people are less capable of dealing with complexity. They have less internal freedom, so they often prefer less external freedom.

Of course, most people believe that they can handle freedom. It is a rare person who demands less freedom for himself. However, many people demand less freedom for others, and for their society as a whole. By doing so, they are demanding a simpler environment. More rational people are more tolerant of the complexity created by cultural and social freedom. They want more freedom for themselves, because they have the mental ability to use it. They tolerate more freedom for others, because they can deal with the complexity that it creates.

Rationality is linked to freedom of speech. Most people support freedom of speech only for ideas that are inside their own boxes. Other ideas would bring their framing assumptions into doubt, causing cognitive dissonance. Heresy is the explicit questioning of framing assumptions. It usually provokes anger. If someone is more rational, they can tolerate a greater range of ideas, including what is heretical to others.

Rationality is linked to individuality. More rational people are more individualistic, because they rely less on conformity and obedience. They are more comfortable making decisions for themselves, and they often benefit by doing so. Thus, they prefer a more individualistic culture and society.

Rationality is linked to civilization. Civilization is based on the use of abstract ideas, such as laws and money, to organize human behavior on large scales. The ancestral form of society was based on emotions, not abstract ideas. Reasoning about abstract ideas requires conscious thought. Civilization also creates a social environment that doesn’t fit human social instincts very well, so it requires more explicit thought to act effectively within civilization.

Rationality is essentially freedom of thought. It is the capacity for an individual to consider alternatives and make choices. Those with more internal freedom want more external freedom.