The depth-psychology corpus approaches 'Rational Cognition' not as a settled faculty but as a contested site where the boundaries between reason, affect, perception, and non-rational awareness are perpetually renegotiated. The tradition fractures along several fault lines. Plato and Aristotle, read through Lorenz, establish a foundational architecture: rational cognition is distinguished by its capacity to grasp logical relations, apply predicates, and discern means–end structures — capacities unavailable to the non-rational soul-parts, which operate through perception and phantasia alone. The Stoics, via Long and Sedley, further sharpen this by defining the wise man's cognition as the disciplined withholding of assent from incognitive impressions. Yet the modern neuroscientific voices — Damasio, Barrett, Burnett, and LeDoux — mount a sustained challenge to the Cartesian inheritance, demonstrating that affect is structurally prior to deliberative cognition and that the 'rational prefrontal cortex' model is neurologically naive. McGilchrist synthesizes these tensions hemisphericaly, arguing that purely analytical, left-hemisphere rationality is not the apex of cognition but a limited mode requiring integration with embodied, right-hemisphere understanding. Sri Aurobindo reaches furthest, positing a supramental reason that supersedes the merely mental rational faculty altogether. The term thus marks, across the corpus, both an achievement and an overreach.
In the library
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non-rational cognition crucially includes, but need not be limited to, what is presented in occurrent acts of perception. The central idea behind Plato's view that belief is a distinctively rational capacity, I shall suggest, is that forming a belief is a matter of judging
Lorenz articulates Plato's thesis that rational cognition is constitutively distinguished from non-rational awareness by its capacity for judgment — the application of predicates — which depends on reason's exclusive grasp of structural, logical relations.
Hendrik Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
there is a good deal of room for desire that does not direc... appetite and spirit are non-rational forms of motivation, and a similarly clear and robust sense in which the cognition involved in these forms of motivation can, and to some extent must, be non-rational.
Lorenz, reading Aristotle, argues that a clear demarcation between rational and non-rational cognition is not only coherent but necessary to explain the motivational structure of the human soul, including the operation of appetite and spirit.
Hendrik Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
Aristotle's theory of human psychology not only leaves room for, but in fact requires, a conception of non-rational cognition that is applicable to ordinarily developed, adult human beings.
Lorenz demonstrates that for Aristotle, non-rational cognition is not a deficiency or developmental residue but a structurally necessary and continuously active component of the adult human psyche alongside rational cognition.
Hendrik Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
You might believe that you are a rational creature, weighing the pros and cons before deciding how to act, but the structure of your cortex makes this an implausible fiction. Your brain is wired to listen to your body budget. Affect is in the driver's seat and rationality is a passenger.
Barrett delivers the constructionist neuroscientific challenge to the primacy of rational cognition, arguing that affect is architecturally prior to deliberative reason in every domain of decision-making.
Barrett, Lisa Feldman, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017thesis
while rational processing is important, it needs to be combined with other ways of intelligently understanding the world… this kind of thinking, the kind associated more with the left hemisphere than the right, has been considered of only limited use, and a potential source of misunderstanding when given too much credence.
McGilchrist argues that purely left-hemisphere rational processing, treated as the highest form of cognition, is a historically specific and culturally contingent error that must be integrated with broader, embodied modes of understanding.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
while rational processing is important, it needs to be combined with other ways of intelligently understanding the world… this kind of thinking, the kind associated more with the left hemisphere than the right, has been considered of only limited use
McGilchrist's hemispheric critique frames rational processing as necessary but insufficient, historically overemphasized in Western philosophy and requiring re-integration with contextual, embodied understanding.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
wise men are incapable of being deceived and of erring, and that they live worthily and do everything well. Therefore they also give greater attention to ensuring that their assents do not occur randomly, but only in company with cognition.
The Stoic doctrine presented by Long and Sedley defines rational cognition as the disciplined governance of assent, such that wisdom consists precisely in refusing to assent to any impression that falls short of full cognitive grasp.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis
The terms reasoning and deciding usually imply that the decider has knowledge (a) about the situation which calls for a decision, (b) about different options of action (responses), and (c) about consequences of each of those options.
Damasio maps the functional prerequisites of rational cognition in decision-making — situational knowledge, option awareness, and consequence estimation — before demonstrating that somatic-affective processes are indispensable to this very framework.
Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994supporting
one stands for clarity of thought, deductive competence, algorithmicity, while the other connotes murkiness and the less disciplined life of the passions.
Damasio critically rehearses the Cartesian opposition between algorithmic rational cognition and the passions before arguing that the neural evidence collapses this neat division.
Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994supporting
Recognizing the difference between opposite features is plainly not yet to recognize their opposition. Recognizing… these are cognitive acts of a very special kind. They crucially depend on, and manifest, sensitivity to such logical relations as consequence and incompatibility.
Lorenz specifies that rational cognition, for Plato, is uniquely constituted by sensitivity to logical relations — consequence and incompatibility — which distinguishes it categorically from perceptual apprehension.
Hendrik Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
there is a greater reason in all the operations of the Infinite, but it is not a mental or intellectual, it is a spiritual and supramental reason: there is a logic in it, because there are relations and connections infallibly seen and executed; what is magic to our finite reason is the logic of the Infinite.
Aurobindo posits a supramental cognition that surpasses ordinary rational intellect while retaining its own higher logic, thereby relativizing mental reason as a limited and transitional cognitive mode.
practical thought is reason's cognitive contribution to the production of action. To justify his denial of reason to the non-human animals, it is necessary and sufficient to justify his denial of practical thought to them.
Lorenz establishes that for Aristotle, practical thought — reason's cognitive role in action — is the definitive marker distinguishing rational from non-rational cognition, and that denying animals practical thought is equivalent to denying them reason.
Hendrik Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
it is a central part of the theory that reason can work out and accomplish its own objectives by relying on its own distinctive resources, which enable it to grasp the true natures of things, prominently including the true nature of goodness.
Lorenz articulates Plato's view that rational cognition possesses autonomous resources — independent of non-rational desire — for grasping essential natures, including goodness, and directing action accordingly.
Hendrik Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
The rational part of our brain is saying, 'This situation is safe, there is nothing to worry about here'… Once again, the division between emotions and cognition is nowhere near as clearly defined as many assume.
Burnett argues that rational cognition and emotional processing are mutually constitutive rather than opposed, each shaping the other's content and output in ways that undermine their traditional binary separation.
Burnett, Dean, The emotional brain lost and found in the science of, 2023supporting
pure logic and reason isn't enough… can our rational minds, our cognition, cause us to experience irrational emotions? Yes indeed.
Burnett demonstrates the bidirectionality of the cognition–emotion relation, showing that rational cognition can itself generate irrational emotional states, further destabilizing the classical hierarchy.
Burnett, Dean, The emotional brain lost and found in the science of, 2023supporting
the actual process of thinking, so usually thought to be the very life of consciousness, is not conscious at all and that only its preparation, its materials, and its end result are consciously perceived.
Jaynes radically displaces rational cognition from consciousness itself, arguing that the thinking process operates automatically and unconsciously, with awareness confined to its initiating structions and final products.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
even in highly developed minds judging [the making of judgments in self-awareness] is a relatively rare incident in thinking, and thinking in living, an exception rather than the rule, and a relatively recent acquisition.
McGilchrist, citing Schiller, repositions explicit rational judgment as an atypical and evolutionarily recent interruption within mental life, not its normative or primary mode.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
serious moral philosophers now believe there is a calculus of morality, whereby we can tot up the costs and benefits, and come up with an answer. This is the fulfilment of Leibniz's dream of his famous abacus, and declaration calculemus.
McGilchrist critiques the reduction of moral reasoning to quantitative calculus as the pathological endpoint of an overextended rational cognition that eliminates qualitative and affective dimensions of ethical life.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
serious moral philosophers now believe there is a calculus of morality, whereby we can tot up the costs and benefits, and come up with an answer. This is the fulfilment of Leibniz's dream of his famous abacus
McGilchrist reads utilitarian moral calculus as symptomatic of a culture that has elevated algorithmic rational cognition to the point of excluding qualitative moral perception.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
It is also a mistake to imagine that clever people don't use heuristics. Intelligence seems to manifest itself in the choice of heuristic, rather than in abandoning them altogether in favour of some less efficient form of decision-making.
McGilchrist argues that genuine cognitive intelligence is not synonymous with formal rational deliberation but is expressed precisely in the skilled deployment of heuristics that complement and often supersede explicit reasoning.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Intelligence seems to manifest itself in the choice of heuristic, rather than in abandoning them altogether in favour of some less efficient form of decision-making.
McGilchrist challenges the equation of intelligence with formal rationality, locating cognitive excellence in the capacity to select appropriate heuristics rather than pursue exhaustive deliberation.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
To the rational mind this is something almost unthinkable, but its unthinkableness merely equals the astonishment of the irrational type when he comes up against someone who puts rational ideas above actual and living happenings.
Jung frames rational cognition typologically, observing that the rational mind's tendency to prioritize abstract judgments over living experience is as extreme and one-sided as the irrational type's complementary disposition.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921supporting
What is essential in philosophy is the breaking through to a deeper insight — which is something positive — not merely dissipation of fog and the exposure of spurious problems. Insight cannot be lodged in a theo
McGilchrist, via Waismann, argues that the criterion of quality argumentation has usurped insight as philosophy's aim, symptomatic of a culture that has confused the instruments of rational cognition with its proper ends.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
What is essential in philosophy is the breaking through to a deeper insight — which is something positive — not merely dissipation of fog and the exposure of spurious problems. Insight cannot be lodged in a theo
McGilchrist foregrounds the inadequacy of argument-based rational cognition alone to capture genuine philosophical understanding, which requires a form of insight that exceeds logical analysis.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Kahneman's system 1 and system 2 cut the cake 'horizontally' (top brain versus bottom brain), whereas I am cutting it 'vertically' (left versus right). His systems 1 and 2 don't map onto left and right hemispheres, but rather slice the brain at right angles to the interhemispheric fissure.
McGilchrist clarifies the structural difference between his hemispheric model and Kahneman's dual-process account, noting that both hemispheres participate in both deliberative and heuristic cognition.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
both hemispheres are involved in heuristics, and both in deliberation, a point on w
McGilchrist notes that rational deliberation and heuristic cognition are not neatly lateralized, complicating any simple identification of rational cognition with a single brain system.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
an organism that can grasp 'for the sake of' relations and that can form 'opinions about the why' — opinions that reflect its cognition of an action being for the sake of a goal.
Lorenz illustrates the adaptive superiority of rational cognition in Aristotle's framework by contrasting organisms capable of grasping teleological relations with those limited to associative impression-sequences.
Hendrik Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006aside
your mind is not a blank at the start of the reasoning process. Rather it is replete with a diverse repertoire of images, generated to the tune of the situation you are facing
Damasio establishes that rational cognition always begins within an affectively and imagistically pre-structured field rather than from a neutral, purely logical starting point.
Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994aside
People who have difficulty dealing with and being alive to social relations may fail to detect reliable patterns of difference and rely on abstract reasoning to conclude that there therefore are none.
McGilchrist notes that overreliance on abstract rational cognition in place of embodied social sensitivity can produce systematic errors of perception, not greater accuracy.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
People who have difficulty dealing with and being alive to social relations may fail to detect reliable patterns of difference and rely on abstract reasoning to conclude that there therefore are none.
McGilchrist cautions that abstract rational reasoning deployed in domains requiring embodied social sensitivity leads to false negatives, masking real patterns of difference.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
Justin, on the other hand, is very much concerned about man's full responsibility for both his salvation and his moral conduct, because of his AoYiKri Suvapic; (reasoning power) which entails the freedom of choice.
Dihle shows how early Christian anthropology, particularly Justin's, grounded moral responsibility in the rational cognitive power (logike dynamis), linking rational cognition to free choice and theological accountability.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982aside