Quote:
Originally Posted by filtherton
Most everyone is "logical". I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who believes in things for which there is no evidence. Whether you happen to agree with the validity of said evidence is another matter altogether. Standards of evidence are arbitrary and are perhaps chosen to yield the most aesthetically pleasing result.
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I don't think it's very useful to define "logical" as that which can be rationalized. By that definition, most everyone is logical and that lack of distinction is useless.
I think a more useful (albeit more nebulous) meaning of "logical" would be to be self critical, consistent and expansive in thought. Either that or we can simply avoid the use of such a loaded term since we're really just going on about semantics at this point.
I do disagree somewhat with your theory on the aesthetic appeal of beliefs. Many things that people believe have no aesthetic appeal to them. Also, too many people turn away from comforting beliefs for your appeal theory to be credible.
I don't know why people believe what they believe. Like taste, there may very well be no accounting for it. People believe things that sound reasonable to them but why some people find some things reasonable while others do not is beyond me.
For instance, there are those that think that
homeopathy is an effective form of medical treatment because its principles are similar to a treatment that's actually effective,
immunization. How some people don't recognize this as fallacious thinking is beyond me...
Is it just ignorance? In some cases, it is, but in other cases, it's not. I just don't know. It's probably something complicated. Each individual belief for each individual person is held for some reason different than some or any others...