The Binary Fallacy and the Misappropriation of Intellect
Tom Montalk – The intellect is overrated and underrated because few understand its true purpose. In truth the intellect is a passive tool that evolves a given input towards an output according to certain rules and takes a premise toward its logical conclusion. But like a computer it passively carries out its programmed function without true creativity of its own.
What the intellect produces depends on two things, its input and programming, both of which originate from outside itself and are therefore unguarded sources of corruption. As the saying goes, garbage in garbage out: with a corrupted input comes corrupted output. And even with perfect input, if the rules are incomplete or sloppily applied then the output is likewise garbled. So for all its virtues, the intellect alone is insufficient for effective truth seeking.
The problem with overrating the intellect comes from thinking that through accurate application of the rules one can produce an accurate output, which ignores the possibility of incomplete or false input. In practical terms this implies that intellectuals, or let’s say stubborn skeptics who pride themselves on scientific objectivity, refuse to question the root assumption from which they are logically reasoning.
These root assumptions originate with statements made by potentially fallible sources of external authority like group consensus, prolific academics, university curriculums, and irrational biases rooted in financial and social survival that embed themselves into institutional policies. When confronted with truths that contradict these, rather than revise incomplete or false assumptions, intellectuals use them to rationalize away counter-examples and counter-reasoning, thereby misappropriating the intellect into fortifying the walls of their mental prison.