The philosophical concept of Rationalism is dumb

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/12/17/011217crat_atlarge


Innate ideas, for the most part, are false. Kaplan knew this.


Here is my most recent submission to the NC State Newspaper:

Depressed in the Summer? Stay positive


It is fascinating when a fad actually turns out to be true. This is because there is a new fad of self-help just about every week. Two articles, one from Newsweek and one from the American Psychological Association give verifiability to one fad, the power of positive thinking. I’m talking specifically about something that people vaguely remember as The Secret, which was on Oprah somewhere in 2006-2007. The Secret has a couple of recommendations about the power of positive thinking. According to these two articles, there is some proof to support these claims.
Sociology Class told me that the idea of positive thinking cropped up in the 1800’s as the Horatio Alger myth. Horatio Alger was a boy who grows up in various novels to become extraordinarily rich. This of course, is sort of a misapplication of the truth, at the very best. Later, in the 1920’s, people started in with the power of positive thinking. For example, people used to say, “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.”
The Secret recommends to its followers that they use the law of attraction, which says that like attracts like. The really absurd thing is, as any NC State chemistry student will tell you, this is not true. Like solutions dissolve like solutions, and opposites attract at the atomic level, as in electricity. No one really knows what humans do.
Nevertheless, The Secret recommends considering concrete aspects of a goal or a dream. Here we go again, readers think. But this time readers are wrong. According to Wray Herbert in his Newsweek article, “the Lure of Tomorrow,” thinking about concrete aspects of a goal is one way of ending procrastination. In a word, by thinking about concrete aspects of a goal, you actually get closer to doing it. In this way, thoughts do “attract” like actions, and therefore similar material manifestations.
Next, and in parallel, there is a power of staying positive, at least in your words. In a March 1998 APA Article titled, “Mom Was Right -- If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say About Someone, Don't Say Anything At All: The Boomerang Effect Of Gossip Is Discovered,” the article states that people identify what you say about stuff with your character. When you say stuff is intelligent, people start to think you are intelligent. When you say stuff is dumb, people think you are dumb.
Some words of warning are necessary. First, when you go around making your imagination list of what mowing the lawn feels like and the imaginary dreamscape joy of having completed weeding, remember that there is a very big difference between doing something and thinking about something. You can try really hard at thinking, but that’s still different from doing. The other thing is that calling people intelligent can make people think that you are intelligent; and so as always it is still good to stay positive. Unfortunately, and perhaps most importantly, just because people think you are smart doe not mean you are smart. It is just an important step in and of itself.