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Being Human Core Topics, Our nature is to reason and it is reason that…

- - - - Plato's Chariot Analogy as representation of of our core nature - reason as the charioteer
      - Plato's analogy of poisoned water as evidence for our self control: passion cannot control itself, therefore reason must exist
      - Plato's analogy of the cave & Decartes - our ability to absolute truths, like mathematics and self evident truths, as our uniquely human trait
      - We are rational because 1) our ability to grasp absolute truths, our objectivity, and our ability to control our passion
      - our ability to not drink poison surges from our instict to not die rather than reason, reason as a refined set of insticts
      - Arguments for: self control, mathematics, self evident truths
    - - Hobbes: reason is weak because it is based on our experience, it cannot be divine nor absolute
      - Hume: all knowledge is derived from sense experiences, no objective judgement can be made from uncertain knowledge
      - Hume's attack on causation: the principle of reasoning itself is not an absolute truth
    - - Kuhn's Paradigm Shift: science does not move linearly, reason is relative
      - Foucault: our episteme (our way to use reason) changes throughout time, reason is not universal
      - Nietszche's perspectivism: we cannot physically look from any perspective other than our own, objectivity is impossible
      - Reason is relative to the context, it therefore cannot be our nature
  - - - Darwin: our capability to reason is a product of evolution and natural selection, we are not special
      - The mind as too complex to have been a product of physical evolution
      - Examples: male agression, mating preferences, kin selection and reciprocal altruism
      - Human irrationality as proved by cognitive bias and optimism bias
      - Cognitive and optimism bias as a shortcut to reasoning, does not mean that we cannot be rational
      - Reason as a product of evolution does not make it less valid, reason could still be objective
      - Evolutionary psychology as being purely speculation and non-falsifiable