ON THE EXISTENTIAL, EXPERIENTIAL, AND OBJECTIVE (OBSERVABLE)
(worth repeating)
Humans are usually, when not defective, capable of reasoning – meaning comparing and contrasting properties, methods and relations, then forecasting, then ranking and choosing – usually without much introspective requirement – although our abilities to do so differ vastly. Very often we use language to organize these thoughts, which then frames the thoughts themselves by the language available to the speaker.
One can be sentient (aware of changes in state of memory) and willing, but not able to make rational judgements. (see Sacks). One’s rational judgements can be internally consistent, and therefore self-justifiable as rational, but externally non-correspondent (false) and therefore objectively non-rational. (or more easily stated, an individual may be too incompetent or ignorant to make an objectively rational assessment.)
So while we use the term ‘rational’ categorically, we cannot ‘cheat’ and because of that verbalism, conflate the existence, the experience, and the measure. This is also the technique used by the postmoderns, of whom Heidegger is the most advanced, in their attempt to restate truth as experiential rather than objective. For him, Being is experiencing, not acting. This is an elaborate defense of hedonic ignorance. The most anti-rational set of ideas yet made.
It is possibly not obvious that advocating both Popper’s Platonic Truth, and your above statement that we “ARE” rational (which is also an obscurant use of the verb to-be) with as Experiential Truth, is itself a contradictory definition of Truth. We may use language to mask the point of view, but points of view are different: existential, experiential, and objective are three different points of view.
(I suspect this might be brain-frying, because I have to actually pay attention when I’m writing it myself this morning) lol Operational language, constant awareness of the ‘fungibility’ of empty verbalisms, has helped me avoid these mistakes.