I talked to a painter the other day, after first Friday, and he had this to say:
"If you paint like I do you are irrational in the way you create a composition. Rational in the way you execute a painting and believe it or not when we draw realistically we are irrational. It's like an automatic mechanism that is triggered when you suppress the logic-related side of our thought."
What does that mean?
"It means when we draw we think of anything but the subject we're drawing. If your brain knows what you are trying to draw, for example an arm, you wont be able to. Unless your Raphael. In fact, you just learn to recognize lines in the objects you want to draw and you reproduce the lines, not the edge of an arm. I don't know if that makes sense to you. When they 'let go', that's what it means. You have to trust your brain. One practical example, if you fill a glass to the top and you walk across a room trying not to spill it you will be able to, walking normally, if you don't look at it. If you look at it you will spill it if you try to walk normally. Why? Because our brain is able to do more that we can imagine. If you rationalize the process you won't be able to because you are limited by the rational thought-process. If you let go Adonis Extra: and let your brain do the work your mind is able to perceive, for example, the vibrations and balance of the water inside the glass and will adjust your hand, arm automatically. You should try."
And I did. And he's right. There are some things that we do consciously that we don't rationalize, and can't. This may be obvious to you, but this shook my world a little.
Do you think this has implications for the "rational" philosophers? Do you think Descartes would agree?
ReplyDeleteI think it definitely does have implications for the rational philosophers. Descartes, as you bring up, defines himself by his ability to think and to reason, and therefore defines reality out of his own existence and his ability to reason God's existence. But, as shown, there are very many situations in which reason just doesn't, and arguably shouldn't, play a role. This is something that it is still hard for me to wrap my head around at times, but when you take out the absolute need to see things in a logical and reasonable way, it breaks down their entire argument that logic and reason are the only way to know that we exist in the first place. Radical skepticism is completely cancelled out, for starters, but also all logicians' premises that the world can be figured out by a specific way of reasoning, and the specific belief that this process, if the rules are followed correctly, can solve any and all problems in the universe, is called into direct question. If I can't even draw an arm while reasoning that an arm must be drawn, and instead in order to finish this task I must think about everything but the arm, then the desired result is in fact hindered by the use of logic or reason and therefore every problem can't be solved by reason. If there is any case where one must not think reasonably in order to do anything better, than logic and reasoning are just not the tools that we claim them to be. What should reason- based philosophers and logicians do about this problem? I'm not sure. Many may just put it aside and never speak of it again. I think, however, that a philosopher is just not looking at the whole problem of logic and reasoning if he or she does not recognize that logic and reasoning are not always needed. This is a very large issue that is left out of every reason-based philosophy that I know of, and it is a problem that needs to be addressed. Bacon would be horrified if he found out his Novum Organum, a reasoning process to be sure, was found not to work in every situation. Even more perturbed, I think, if he found that no philosopher was going to attempt to address this issue and to either correct it or give a better outline on when tools such as his should be used.
ReplyDelete