Extralogical Reasoning: Freethinking in an Unthinking World

It's not easy being a freethinker in an unthinking world.

If one's imagination isn't confined to how things are or how they're supposed to be and they can imagine what could or should be, this adds additional variables to an already highly complex puzzle. Sadly, help is few and far between: Few recognize the complexity of the puzzle, even fewer the additional variables. 

A belief is a component of a model of reality, and everyone needs definite (even if dynamic) models to function. To one degree or another, everyone thinks about their beliefs. This process is never entirely successful, nor entirely unsuccessful. Freethinkers are the precious few who appreciate that a consensus in opinion can’t determine fact and resist adopting beliefs they don’t sufficiently understand--including their own. To understand something or solve a problem, one must answer a series of questions that leads to a final solution. Since few question commonly held beliefs, freethinkers must not only find the answers, but also the questions themselves. This is complicated further by an enviable bias against common beliefs, decisions, and advice that clouds the fact that they aren’t always wrong—even if people believe or do them for the wrong reasons. Confusion and mistakes are often the results. 

 

Therefore, due to their indefinite models of reality and rejection of useful suggestions, if extralogical reasoning (ER) is to be an effective reasoning system for freethinkers, it must compensate for the pitfalls of freethinking as much as enhance its advantages. This post will address this issue in the context of the author’s answer to one of several similar ER exercises.    

 

However, to appreciate the student’s answer, whether mine or anyone else’s, the reader must first appreciate the need for the exercise itself.

 

No human being is defined by their freethinking or by any other attribute, resource, or ability they possess. However POTENTIALLY beneficial such an attribute may be, its benefits will be determined by how it interacts with the individual’s other attributes, resources, and abilities--which vary from person to person--along with all the facets of his/her external circumstances--which vary from time to time and person to person. In other words, no person can possess any attribute, resource, or ability in an isolated universe. This makes life complex and dynamic, and that makes wisdom and context-based thinking/decision-making necessary. Just as language can’t function without words like good and bad, learning can’t exist without the all-else-being-equal viewpoint—but that, for all intents and purposes, is All it’s useful for. Like everything else, it’s only useful for WHAT it is--not more than what it is, not less, and not for something other than what it is. 

 

The first extralogical reasoning exercise requires students to take “good” attributes/resources/abilities (e.g., free-thinking, intelligence, knowledge, mortality and empathy, and passion and intensive efforts) and, embracing that this is an all-else-NEVER-being equal world, show how they could backfire. The purpose of this exercise is not to show that these things aren’t admirable and advantageous. Phrases like “trying too hard,” “overthinking it,” “being too smart for your own good,” and “caring too much” might have applicability in INTENDED meaning but remain invalid, nonetheless. The exercise allows students to discover for themselves just how much of a simplification the all-else-being-equal viewpoint is and, thus, why wisdom is necessary—including to combat its untoward side-effects in a world based largely on the opposite. 

 

 

Freethinkers question things. To question something necessarily means to pose no less than one question in response. The young freethinker asks far more questions. While this may result in more TOTAL answers, young freethinkers are vulnerable to an imbalance between questions and answers, leading to greater confusion. This doesn’t simply require answering questions, but making INQUIRIES, as well. The difference, as defined by extralogical reasoning, is that inquiries involve finding the questions, not just answering them. Thus, one could say that a good first step in remedying confusion is familiarizing yourself with what you’re confused ABOUT by finding some of the questions. 

 

This, however, is not an easy task. There are limits to language and communication, and no one’s articulacy comes close to reaching those limits, especially young people’s. I was tremendously hindered by vocabulary alone until I was at least thirty. Having more total answers can mask the freethinker’s confusion, discouraging certain types of personal inventories. The freethinker is especially quick to reject the notion they’re confused because they’re offended by accusations from people who have few of the questions and answers. Just because someone’s wrong about WHY you’re confused doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t confused—it just may be for different reasons.  

 

When someone questions something, the first question is, “Is this right?” If the inquirer concludes it’s wrong, the next question is “Why?” If people disagree with you, a common third question is “Why do so many people believe otherwise?” Since beliefs, ESPECIALLY subconscious ones, come in packages that support each other, it often becomes hard to show someone is wrong about one thing when they’re wrong about almost everything else—which can result, as it did with me, in the freethinker feeling like they can’t explain anything at all. Similarly, if you feel someone did something unethical but you think they meant well (which happens more often than most think), “Why was it wrong, and why did they do it in spite of meaning well?” (Extralogical reasoning curricula will include exercises that allow students to identify common fallacies and sophisms, or deceitful arguments).

 

These follow up questions show that those inclined to ask more questions have higher standards for answers. Lacking the relevant explanations, people often withdraw from situations, conversations, etc. that they require. Extralogical reasoning can mitigate a person’s confusion and accelerate the journey toward enlightenment by providing many important questions. Extralogical reasoning axiom: While there are many ways people can ADD TO and HELP you acquire wisdom and enlightenment, ultimately, these are things one must discover for themselves. Answering these questions accelerates the journey to enlightenment more than anything else ever could. But in providing the QUESTIONS, the exercises reduce inquiries (as defined above) to finding ANSWERS, detracting from how much the resulting knowledge is self-discovered, perhaps limiting extralogical reasoning to merely ACCELERATING the process of acquiring wisdom. (One reason may be that had one undergone the process of finding, and/or a longer process of ATTEMPTING to find them, they’d better appreciate the answers and could better integrate/assimilate them into their thinking).

 

Since most people are wrong about more things than they can possibly imagine, freethinkers see falsity everywhere—but this can obscure the truth. Sometimes people believe the right thing for the wrong reasons; they explain it poorly, or you may misinterpret it; they misuse things that might in other cases be useful (especially if it’s only applicable to tricky decisions rather than opinions, like dogmas and rules-of-thumb). 

 

Freethinkers want to understand things, don’t like blindly doing what people tell them, and don’t take experts seriously. I haven’t changed all that much in this regard, but what I didn’t fully realize until I was older was that the criteria for opinions and decisions should not be the same. Opinions are almost always optional. If you don’t understand something, don’t have an opinion. A design flaw of the human thinking organ is that it doesn’t actively distinguish between WHAT it observes and how it INTERPRETS what it observes; left to its own devices, without your deliberate intervention, it will blur observation and interpretation together. This creates the illusion that opinions are mandatory while making people prone to jump to conclusions. Don’t be fooled. 

 

Decisions, on the other hand, are different: Decisions are mandatory; there are real life consequences if you’re wrong; and understanding, though obviously desirable, is not always possible. There are times in life where you have to make a decision and have almost nothing to go on; you might have nothing better than generalizations, dogmas, wild guesses, or taking someone’s word for it (though that person should still be someone YOU consider credible).   

 

Associations can be damning. Freethinkers associate unoriginal ideas and methods with mindlessness and are too quick to dismiss them, as a result. I call this the Associations fallacy. Don’t fall for it. The problem with common “wisdom”/” thinking,” for example, isn’t so much WHAT it says so much as HOW it’s said and what it DOESN’T say and, therefore, what it IMPLIES. The very fact it’s so far removed from a systematic, individualized, context-based way of thinking and decision-making implies these things don’t matter at best—and at worst, that they’re a mistake. But not all of it is wrong or worthless. If nothing else, the very fact a belief caught on must mean SOMETHING, even if not what people think. I’ve always despised the phrase “you can do anything you put your mind to.” The fact that such a belief caught on means humans are silly, sentimental creatures—but this is useful information! If you agree that this aptly describes human beings, you likely learned it FROM this proverb. 

 

When people misuse beliefs and/or methods, critics are too quick to dismiss them as wrong, useless, or meaningless without considering that the real problem is the people using them. They are by no means one in the same. Don’t fall into the trap of confusing them. 

 

Usually, freethinkers are intelligent (I’m an exception). All else being close to equal, smart people are better at apprehending truths, but not all truths are useful—or perceived to be so. This can inhibit motivation and functionality. All else being close to equal, smart people are better at apprehending truths, but, all else being close to equal, they’re also better at creating packages of beliefs that protect them from truths they’d prefer to be oblivious to. In other words, while potentially better at finding truth, they’re also potentially better at delusion. 

 

Smart freethinkers respect and enjoy learning complex ideas and are often theory-oriented. But not everything is complicated or abstract, and mismodeling them as such inhibits learning. 

 

As many have noted in one form or another, the gift of intellect oftentimes bestows more arrogance than ability. In its emphasis on addressing weaknesses in thinking, extralogical reasoning cultivates genuine humility and helps students realize that this is the only form of true confidence.

 

 

Sadly, it’s not a freethinking and intellectual world, and it’s evolved to accommodate, even encourage, simplemindedness, lessening the benefits of intelligent freethinking and commonly resultant beliefs. Thus, as stated, the student must appreciate that extralogical reasoning isn’t just designed to enhance intelligent free-thinking, but also to create a means of dealing with its pitfalls. This exercise is the first step.