In \u201cA Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Enter\u2019d Into Holy Orders by a Person of Quality\u201d (1721) Jonathan Swift wrote:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
“Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.”<\/p>\n\n\n
Maybe you’ve heard the simplified version which emerged over time:<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t reason someone out of a position they didn\u2019t reason themselves into.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
Certainly rings true, right?<\/p>\n\n\n
Its only shortcoming as a truism is that it fails to acknowledge how often we run into people who hold positions they didn’t reason themselves into.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Swift’s observation is even more salient when, like me, you agree with Scott Adams that we humans don’t reason ourselves into the positions we hold but maybe 10% of the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And that 10% reached by logic is the 10% of subjects which don’t touch our emotions directly.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Politics, theology and social issues are all inherently emotional.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
When was the last time you were able to persuade someone to change their political, theological, or social position on a hot topic?<\/p>\n\n\n
When was the last time someone persuaded you to change one of your positions?<\/p>\n\n\n
IF persuasion actually occurs, it’s more than likely the result of an emotional appeal rather than a logical one.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In \u201cA Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Enter\u2019d Into Holy Orders by a Person of Quality\u201d (1721) Jonathan Swift wrote:\u00a0 “Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.” Maybe you’ve heard the simplified version which emerged over time: \u201cYou can\u2019t reason someone out of a position […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,77,76,75,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-being-wrong","category-emotions","category-logic","category-scott-adams","category-swift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6013,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6012\/revisions\/6013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}