Pranav

EFFICIENCY AND RATIONALITY

We have seen above that rationality demands relevance, which means it demands selectivity in focus and effort. Now, I shall look at a related aspect of rationality in practice, namely the need for efficiency, whose basis is the same as the basis of the need for relevance: the fact that consciousness is finite. We start by grasping what the use of reason must ultimately be based on. The use of reason is the use of one’s faculty of identifying and integrating the material provided by one’s direct awareness of reality. Since reality is integrated by identity and causality, the use of reason must ultimately be based on the broadest context we can grasp, i.e. the context of our life as a whole, i.e. life lived long-range.

Hence, rationality does not demand that we subject ourselves to a constant, excruciating effort in every moment of our life to perceive every detail we can so as to work our minds to analyse as many integrations as possible of what we perceive; such would be an irrational use of one’s mind since it would degrade and ultimately destroy our ability to deal with life in a broader context, because consciousness is finite, the energy needed to use it is finite (though renewable), values are time-bound and their achievement is conditional. Moreover, since contexts are integrated in a non-contradictory whole, such an irrational use of one’s mind would also degrade and ultimately destroy one’s ability to deal with particulars beyond short-range reactions.

Hence, the most scrupulous use of one’s reason demands not a constant, excruciating effort to focus on every detail but the sustainable, i.e. efficient and long-range application of our volition, which can be painstaking or even excruciating but only when needed, which would not and should not be in one’s every waking moment. Integrating our knowledge of reality does not involve agonising over every particular but recognising the essential truths that form the basis of the context and the relevant possible paths we may take. The scrupulous use of one’s reason consists not of adding burdens to one’s mind but of enabling and advancing the pursuit of one’s own life and happiness; such a pursuit, of course, is profoundly rational.

Volition — and by extension reason — has to be selective, since the mind’s capacity is finite while the needs of one’s life are time-bound and conditional. Hence, rationality demands that we understand that which is most relevant, i.e. significant within our knowledge in the pursuit of our life and happiness. We cannot and should not try to know or do everything, not because of passivity but necessity; we must not disregard what is most important in our context, which means that given the finite capacity of the mind, we must disregard much of what is less important. To put it starkly, to place the arbitrary and/or the less important over what you know to be relevant and/or more important is profoundly irrational. However, note that the use of reason is always absolute; we can and must use reason even to understand why and in what way to trust others or to leave concerns unattended.

NOTE: One of the essentials in the pursuit of values is the affirmation of life in the moment, i.e. the concrete experience of values in the here and now (see: “The basis of motivation” from Integrating the Actual and the Potential from Philosophy in Practice). This requires engagement with the present, either as pleasure or enjoyment in the moment or other kinds of focus or engagement. Hence, note that to keep taking away one’s engagement from the moment for some deliberation without a clear reason arising is irrational.

Given that rationality demands efficiency, how to actually be efficient in our volitional effort? In other words, what constitutes the rational application of volition? This is will be explored in the upcoming topics.