>
> We are obviously not wired for logic. (I speak as a
> former teacher of the subject, as well as a current
> often futile supplicant on its merits to the courts.)
> I wonder what the evolutionary advantage is in
> thinking like that? Or do we survive despite thinking
> in this half-assed way? jks
Of course, I'm no expert on human evolution, but I'd guess that, living in groups like other primates, the early humans had an advantage if they reacted quickly to other groups that seemed hostile. (Of course, this assumes that primate bands fought each other -- I don't exactly recall Jane Goodall's research on this, but I know she found that individual chimps fight.) In fact, pre-human primates who didn't "think" at all in the human sense, I suppose, would have such an "instinct," and it would be inherited by Homo spp.
Once human thinking began, whenever that was, the ability to analyze and react to specific situations without simply following a built-in program, i.e., rationality, obviously was extremely useful in general, and conferred a very great evolutionary advantage, so that H. sapiens (?) is by now in a position to screw the whole global ecosystem big-time with all of his cleverness. But the old fight/flight, group cohesiveness circuits were still there, and were still useful, since a human band who acted like a bunch of liberal peaceniks -- "Before we act violently against this foreign band, let's sit down and have a council for a day or two, and see if we can think up a better diplomatic approach" -- instead of jumping into the fight now, before it was too late, might well be wiped out.
So a kind of dialectic arose between the instinctual and rational approaches to conflict -- and that's where we have been ever since.
At least that's my Just-So-Story.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. -- Attr. to Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile