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Thoughtlets. LXVII. When the term “motivated reasoning” is deployed in rhetoric …

Another candidate for the Department of Idiotic Redundancies is the term “motivated reasoning”.

Assuming one wants to overcome motivated reasoning, in so-doing she is processing information to arrive at conclusions that suit her own needs and goals; i.e. her goals to overcome motivated reasoning. What non-motivated reasoning means I can’t imagine. 

Cf David Hume: “Reason is, and ought only be a slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any office than to serve and obey them.”

  • Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Book III, Part III, Sect. III. Of the Influencing Motives of the Will. 

What Hume means is that reason needs a driver; otherwise reason is inert.

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pammentations

I’ve completed all but defence of my thesis for a masters in philosophy. My disciplinary interest is in the acquisition and maintenance of our beliefs. But I also have a background in the study of rhetoric, linguistics, and philosophy of language. Political rhetoric particularly interests me.

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