Rational thought, it has been said,
is an acquired taste. And where, one
might ask, is one to go to acquire such a taste? Well, the logical answer to that question is:
one goes to the logical to acquire logic—and who is more logical than Mr. Spock
himself? But how does one learn from a
fictional character? Again, the answer
is simple: listen to what he says.
But before we go to our teacher to
learn how to be logical, we should ask, what is logic? Well, logical or rational thinking is simply thinking
clearly. Speaking the truth, said
Aristotle, means saying of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is
not[1]—matching our words to
reality. Logical thought—which also
benefitted a great deal from Aristotle—is simply thought which seeks to find
“what is” and match our thoughts and our words to it.
Now, what can Spock teach us about
doing this? Well, we begin with a few
notes of caution. First, we must remind ourselves, as we noted
to begin, that rational or logical thought is not automatic, but it is a skill
to be acquired—an observation we must credit to Charles Gunn, attorney-at-law,
in season 5 of the television show Angel
(episode 11, “Damage”), where he said simply, “Rational thought: it’s an
acquired taste.” Secondly, even Spock
himself noted that logic has it limits when he warned his young protégé Valeris
that “Logic is the beginning of wisdom…[but] not the end”:
Again, we say it: logic means
finding what is, and matching our thoughts and words to that. For this, we need evidence to guide us in
discovering what is. What we do not need
is feelings and desires getting in the way, making us see things the way we
want them to be, rather than the way they are.
We find this idea at least twice in Spock’s words of wisdom. The first time is in Star Trek IV. Spock has just
finished a test of his knowledge, and the testing computer ends with “How do
you feel?” To which, of course, Spock
responds, “I do not understand the question…The question is irrelevant.” And so it is, at least when we are reasoning
our way to the truth. How we feel does
not matter:
Likewise, what we want is
irrelevant. What is relevant is the
situation at hand. This truth Spock
expressed to Valeris (not long after cautioning her about the limits of logic)
when she found herself in an unexpected situation. When she said essentially, “I don’t want to
do this,” he said “What you want is irrelevant; what you’ve chosen is at hand.” In any given situation, the truth of what
is—even if it is something that results from a choice we have made—must be
discovered and confronted first. Only
after that can we consult our feelings and desires:
And so, in order, first to discover,
then to submit to (or demonstrate to others) what is, we must learn to follow
the advice Spock once gave to his good friend Dr. Leonard McCoy when the good
doctor was getting—as was his habit—a bit too heated up: “Really, Dr. McCoy,
you must learn to govern your passions.
They will be your undoing" (the quote occurs some 3:00 into the video below):
Okay, so, all we have to do is
control our passions, our feelings and desires, and look at the evidence, and
all will be well, right? Wrong. We must also be careful to misunderstand the
very evidence we are looking at, Because, as another wise man of SF once said,
“Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them.” (Obi-Wan Kenobi). Indeed, as Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge
said when asked, “Why do you doubt your senses?” “Because…a little thing
affects them. A slight disorder of the
stomach makes them cheats. [What I see
before me] may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of
cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.”
Here
are those very words, performed by the rather Spock-like Mr. Data on an episode
of Star Trek: The Next Generation:
So, we ought indeed to base our
reasoning on evidence, but it must be relevant evidence, and we must be careful
not to be deceived by faulty evidence or evidence gatherers. Joe Friday’s famous “Just the facts, ma’am”
may sum this up, but discovering exactly what the facts are takes much care and
hard work—not to mention that, sometimes, even our emotions may be relevant
facts. As Captain Jonathan Archer said
when he was accused of letting his emotions cloud his judgment., “My emotions
guide my judgment!”
Just so.
For Captain Archer understood, at
least intuitively, one simple truth: not everything we “feel” is a mere
emotion. Love, for example, the sort of
unconditional compassion the captain was invoking at the time, is not an
emotion. The Doctor (go ahead, ask the
question—yes, that Doctor) once said it perfectly:
Love. It’s not an emotion. Love is a promise [i.e. a choice; cf. what
Admiral Cornwell said to Dr. Hugh Culver on the same topic in an episode of Discovery]. When we say emotions are irrelevant, we are
pointing to a larger truth: our egos (often what we really mean when we speak
of our “feelings”) are irrelevant. And a
truly logical person—such as Spock—should have no ego to bruise:
Finally, the key to properly
understanding the evidence relevant to any topic is finding the proper
reference frame for looking at the subject, and understanding all the relevant
words and idea. Hence our final two quotes
from Spock:
“It
would be impossible to discuss [any] subject without a common frame of
reference”
And:
Precision
of language is paramount, so ask questions like, “What does it mean, ‘exact
change’?”:
Go
forth and meditate on these things.
Master them. The rest is
commentary.
[1] The Metaphysics (1011b25): “To say of
what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of
what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”.
