thefugitivesaint

99%:
This is not quite true. Cats, like most animals, do possess many inherited traits that could be called "instinct" but if you've ever watched a kitten play with a piece of string you've watched the very process by which it learns to stalk, hunt and balance its developing body. The behaviour that is evident is a very interactive one between what is inherited and what is learned. Animals that do not grow up among other animals of their own species usually suffer emotionally and developmentally. This same abnormality is present in human beings who have been subject to an unbringing that is outside of the norm.

As to the Human rationality Demosthenes stated that:

This is, in part, true. The capacity to be rational is hardwired into the human brain. How this potential is made manifest depends very much on the socio-biological environment the developing organism is immersed in.

Rationality is only one aspect of the human cognitive processes. People often believe that emotions and rationality are oppossing impulses but they do in fact compliment one another in our development.

In Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Antonio Damasio does a pretty god job of establishing the necessity of emotions and their healthy development for the development of a competent rationalism. Rationalism divourced from emotions is a dangerous and unreliable tool although our rational side can put checks on our emotional impulses.

It is also been heavily established that our Rationality is not as infallible as some make it out to be. In Inevitable Illusions : How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini a case is made and supported as to the ease by which our rational side is easily tricked into basing conclusions on faulty imput which is mistaken to be legitimate.

To put to much stock into the human ability to reason is a mistake. We can reason, we do reason but reason is not all we utilize when weighing opposing or competing choices. We use our emotions more than most care to admit although it seems that some of those people around me use their emotions less than they should.

For a short list of some good books to look into go here . Those titles can assist anyone in establishing a sound basis for evaluating "Rationality" and the process of decision making.

Here i align myself with Gurdur and must also reiterate his dislike for "Objectivism" in general.

Happy new years all. Back to work for me.
-theSaint

Not a very comprehensive post but my time is limited here at my job. excuses, excuses.

thefugitivesaint

woops, double post. Sorry.

Demosthenes

Ok, so humans do have the ability to learn how to reason, but does the humans have inherent rationality?

I'll have to check out the readings people suggested in this thread. From what I've learned, people use their experiences to generalize about what will happen and what to expect, but is that reason?

If humans were perfectly rational then we certainly won't have developed religions and all the associated faults. It seems like when people say that humans are inherently rational, they are perfectly capable of being purely rational and faultless. That's just my general impression of the terms being used here.

I'll look into it some more.

DRFseven

To say that we are reasoning animals means that we employ reason, and this we, of course, do! To reason by no means means to comprehend correctly; it is just that reasoning is the method we use to determine what to think and how to behave; wrong or right, we operate by finding reasons for things. This is why people usually think they have to have a reason for everything, including a reason for existing. Physiologically, reasoning cannot exist without emotion; the two are are part of the process of forming opinions, of desire and will. There is no either/or to it. To even want to know the correct answer to a question, be it concerning choice of dessert or solving an equation, we employ emotion as well as intellect.