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Copyright © 2005, 2006 and 2007 by Jay B. Gaskill

REASONABLE MINDS …

The Reasonable Mind Chronicles Begin… 

This is just a teaser.

We lawyers tend to talk in terms of issues about which “reasonable minds can disagree”.  This is probably the single most valuable insight that the “second profession” has ever contributed to the human condition. 

I’ve spent a great deal of time and thought to this issue.  Here is a teaser:

Reason in the abstract sense is the cognitive suite that is capable of rigorous differentiation and correlation; it includes all of the formal logical disciplines, including mathematics.  Reason, in this sense, is capable of algorithmic simulation. 

Reasonableness is the decision making property or operating state of any real world intelligence that utilizes reason as an instrument for optimizing conflicting or intersecting agendas in the context of a dynamic in which the destructive pursuit of absolute perfection gives way to the pursuit of the flawed, but acceptable optimum.

THE REASONABLE MIND

A Working Definition

The reasonable mind is the executive decision maker of cognitively advanced, social intelligence as it functions as a self-correcting guide for life in the fluid, dynamic realm of exchange reality.*  It is distinguished from the “totally rational” evaluation regime in that it integrates several additional elements: the in-the-moment existence and accommodation – in an exchange relationships context – of other motivated minds and their agendas; the adoption of optimization as a goal; the recognition that optimum exchange outcomes aren’t perfect; the understanding that the information on which decisions must be made in “real time” is inherently complete; and that one’s personal positions cannot be considered as immutable.

*

Otherwise known as the “real world”, exchange reality is the realm of events, all of which is dominated by the action-reaction principle and composed of the suite of exchange processes that form the architecture of system interactions.  The entire biosphere and all its organisms (in general), and all human life in the context of its civilizations are most fully and aptly described in terms of their constituent exchange processes and relationships.  I believe that this core insight has major implications for our species’ understanding of ethics.

Reasonable Faith

Ultimately, those of us who believe in the essential unity and integration of all reality share an a priori faith stance in common with the scientific enterprise itself. As a result, we tend to we arrive at the end of incomplete explanations still convinced in the essential unity of things. We therefore accept the remainder as unity-in-mystery. This is a natural leap of faith, one that I understand as the reasonable faith of the reasonable mind.

Ethical principles are objectively real, and universally relevant to the human condition.

This means that our core reservoir of ethical wisdom is encoded in discrete discoverable principles, rather than consisting of a fragile and transient construct of invented rules or culturally determined mores. The fact that all major world religious traditions and the underlying ethical assumptions of major world civilizations converge around the seven ethical ideas listed below is highly corroborative of the objective status of core normative principles.

Here are the seven special ethical propositions common to all major human religions and civilizations:

1. Stealing is wrong.
2. Lying is wrong.
3. Assault is wrong.
4. Murder is wrong.
5. Honest and necessary self defense is a general exception to these prohibitions.
6. Integrity is an essential virtue.
7. Promise fidelity is an essential virtue.

This short list of seven special proscriptions and prescriptions represent an operative human moral consensus that is the outcome of six thousand years of “field testing.” On deeper analysis, these rules represent a policy of respect for the volitional integrity (i.e., human dignity) of individuals. No civilization of sentient, intelligent beings could long survive without incorporation of these core principles into its “normative architecture.” The perennial arguments about moral differences are issues of scope and circumstance of application. Such disputes typically represent confusion about the scope of the ethical principles, their selective application to the “in group” and the “out group”, coupled with various attempts to define away the humanity (and therefore the protected status) of various members of the human species on parochial religious, tribal, gender, cultural, cabal-membership or other arbitrary grounds.

Reasonable Agreement on Fundamentals

Reasonable minds can share the conviction that there is a universal good that transcends our sectarian perspectives. Beneath the seven special ethical proscriptions that form the human consensus, and the deeper underlying value of human dignity, we can recognize three universals that form the very root affirmations for all authentic ethics: They are life affirmation, respect for the nature and value of conscious being, and reverence for creation. In the context of human experience, life affirmation, leads to affirmation of conscious being, and proceeds to reverence for all creation. Conscious being intrinsically represents the gift of at least three powerful, life enhancing capabilities: compassionate empathy; foresight, and creative innovation. Life affirming consciousness necessarily leads to creation affirmation, through the deep understanding of the universality of the processes of creation, of the roots of life and consciousness in those processes, and of the incarnation of ongoing creation in the human mind. As a matter of simple development, human conscious being starts out by serving the life interests of an individual within the context of exchange relationships with others, then serves the interests of life in the context of civilization, (its most important technology). At the most developed level, conscious being achieves the capacity for value universalization, the extrapolation of the root affirmations, extensions of the common proscriptions and prescriptions as ethical principles that reach beyond tribe and other arbitrary boundaries, and govern the powerful and powerless alike.

In this way, consciousness gives rise to justice.

JBG