No one really uses reason

Though many may see it as troubling, it is now clear that few of the action-bound processes taking place in our brains ever touch on our being conscious. In other words, we do most of our "thinking" without ever being conscious of it. The simple act of seeing something depends upon what the German expert in physics, medical man and wise man Hermann von Helmholtz called "unconscious things discovered by reasoning". It is these that make able our brain to work out which thing is causing the unworked signs coming from our senses. The same general rule put to use in acting. When we act a simple act, getting up a glass, for example, we are not conscious of the complex decisions our brain has to make about the best way to move our arm and form our fingers.

It is a good thing that we are not conscious of these low-level things discovered by reasoning. The true statement is that we would never do anything if we had to have in mind consciously everything we see and every move we make. And it turns out that even quite important decisions involving many causes producing an effect, such as selecting which automobile to give money for, are better made if we do not consciously have in mind that about them. This is because the unconscious brain is very good at taking many things into account at the same time.

Conscious reasoning is an attempt to account for a decision after it is made

We have feeling that it is probable that as soon as you start thinking about those things consciously, a brain system with very limited capacity is employed, which can get, come together at one point on just a few things on a list.

So where does conscious reasoning come into the picture? It is an attempt to account for the selection after it has been made. And it is, at the end, the only way we have to do one's best to give an account of to other people why we made a decision. But given our feeble amount of way in to the brain processes got into, our reasoning is often false: a after-the-event act made to be in agreement with reason, or even a mind/memory mix - a "story" born of the mix in one's head between mind picturing and memory.

Taking all of this into account, what then is reason? Just because our decisions are not conscious, it does not come after that reason is not got into. Given two selections, the good-sensed thing to do is to select the better thing for which selection is made. Brains are very good at doing this. After all, this is the base of learning: to select the pleasing, good, delicate things and keep from the disgusting ones.

Experts in business and men of mathematics, such as John Nash of “A Beautiful Mind” much talked about, have developed to do with mathematics algorithms ¹ to make certain the best thing for which selection is made is chosen - and brains have been shown to use like-apparatuses. The hard question lies in coming to a decision as to what we have the sense of by "best". For based on a reasoning Economic Man, the best good quality is the one that gets him the most profit. But do true, in fact people make such "best" selections?

In the testing of the “Ultimatum” play activity, for example, take as probable one player is given $10, and can give any part of this money to the second player. If the second player makes a protest to their offer, then neither player gets any money. What should the second player do? The reasoned act is to take in any offer since some money is better than not any. But in material fact most people say is not good low offers.

This outcome is often had knowledge of to make clear to that people are unreasonable, that their opinion is clouded by their strong feelings move to an unequal offer. However, from the point of view of the group, rather than the person, the not-taking of cruel offers is a good good quality because it increases the chance of the group working together and rightness. In this example, therefore, we can make the argument that our strong feelings moves are more good-sensed than our conscious decisions.

In the 21st hundred-years, we are making more and more discoveries about the brain and the undertakings of feeling, and questioning old ideas about how we learn, make decisions, act and have in mind. This is already starting to make us go over our desires of what forms reason - and that, in turn, is bound to have effects for our points of view about reason and to the attempts of men of science.

1  Algorithm  This Word comes from the name of the expert in mathematics Al-Khwarizmi (780-850AC). It gives a group of instructions that can be used to work out or SOLVE a problem.   Go back

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