The conscious mind may represent its selective experience in terms of logic. In this case, a map is constructed towards which the mind is directed. Sensory input is filtered through this set of conscious values which are permitted.
The values are determined by the manipulation of symbols represented by words. These symbols may be subject to the same limitations of expression that the words are subject to. The grammatical rules governing one's language determine the scope of what our language is capable of describing or expressing. For instance, it is difficult in English, if one adheres to coherent speech, to convey the phenomenon of a certain item being a part of a whole and the whole at the same time. One may even be compelled to condemn such an allegation as lunacy, yet such condemnation is always symptomatic of an excessive dependency upon language to delineate what makes sense.
The problem with empiricism I have all ready thoroughly attacked, and in the process I have dispossessed myself of such a handicap. Now I will address the problems with Rationalism.
Rationalism is entirely verbal. The world as represented to the stringent Rationalist is entirely confined to the limits of a consciousness that subtly overvalues itself. Its map of Reality has become presumed to BE the Reality, for in the absence of a coherent Rational argument for why a Reality should rest OUTSIDE of that map, the Rational feels entitled to a one-pointed fanaticism.
Intuition does not suffice for the Rationalist as a Source of Authority. One begins with what makes Sense verbally, from the standpoint of Directed Thinking, and only then, according to what may be permitted, as though the mind were the wall of a plant cell, one can allow Intuition to manifest.
As was once said to me a psychiatrist, in the midst of a wholly unjust and abusive conversation wherein I was treated as a Scapegoat because of what would be later found to have been a misdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, one "bases one's intuition upon one's logic." Yet this is wholly absurd. Intuition is independent of Reason, and it is not subject to its laws.
Were I to live a life of Pure Reason, I should be inclined to never leave the computer. I would be afraid to go outside, for every innocent remark made by passerby would appear to warrant an Analysis. If Analysis is necessary at all, it must be necessary in all situations EXCEPT WHERE, by VIRTUE OF ANALYSIS, I can prove that I ought not to become distracted.
Obviously, if I am walking my dog, puzzling over a difficult problem, and a woman asks me, gregariously, if my dog is tired, I can choose to answer politely, to ignore her, to lash out at her, or a number of other retorts. I might become so infuriated that she interrupted the train of my thoughts that I would direct that train at her, as though to run her over. I should say, "And now, because of that bitch, I have to analyse what she said." I would conclude, upon admittedly limited grounds, that she was most probably a moral adolescent who sought to perpetuate her own comfortable anti-intellectual worldview by appealing to Kantian Intersubjectivity. The basis for her conjecture was a kind of misinformed anthropomorphism, a kind of participation mystique that had been the natural outcome of her unquestioning empiricism.
Yet that would be in itself, however apparently precise and brilliant, one-sided. I should be reminded of the Prince of the Fire Nation from "Avatar: The Last Airbender", and then I should have to think of his character foil, Uncle Iroh. Whereas the former is the archetypal anti-villain who has a righteous haughteur and an ambitious intellectual rigour, the latter would be what the psychologists refer to as an example of "Emotional Intelligence": E.Q. versus I.Q. This is probably the same dichotomy that could be drawn between Severus Snape and Rubeus Hagrid, although, in the instance of Snape and Hagrid, the two appear less often in the same scene.
Yet obviously this appears as somewhat of a caricature of the Rationalist. Obviously, most Rationalists would probably care little for condemning a passerby in the streets, choosing to shelter themselves further in their "Important" thoughts instead. Yet what I am asserting is that, to value Reason over Intuition is to either live at this absurd extreme or to be a hypocrite, for one uses Intuition always to surmount these situations. One knows intuitively that certain paths may be a "waste of time", even if one does not have sufficient resources available in consciousness by which one might explain this Intuition and thereby justify acting according to it. Intuition is always at work, predominantly beneath the threshold of consciousness, regardless of whether or not it is expressed verbally.
Enter why the Sinking House problem is a phenomenon. The map that Rationalism ensnares one in is drawn according to the rules of what is Rational. Certain experiences are taken note of, and they are presumed Real from the outset. This premise is the beginning of a logical construction. Experiences are represented in words, and to the degree that such an arrangement of words makes coherent sense, carrying the aesthetics of Reason and following the principles of not only logic but grammar (since the two are inextricable from one another), to that degree something is said to be "True".
The Rationalist becomes ensnared in his or her own map, as consciousness tapers to only include those experiences which "make sense". The other vague experiences are ignored as hallucinations.
If the map, however, is of no use, the Unconscious will refuse it. Intuition enters. The Unconscious interferes with Consciousness. Non-directed Thinking, which is irrational, intrudes upon Directed Thinking. The individual, from the perspective of the ego, feels his or herself to be going mad when, suddenly, he or she is faced with the Sinking House. What he or she fails to recognise is that the source of MEANING does not have its locus in Consciousness. Meaning arises from the Unconscious.
All of a sudden, in trying to complete an order of Rational operations, I find that I cannot be CERTAIN that I am reading a text without skipping sentences, for instance. I try to ASCERTAIN that I am not doing so, yet this is impossible. I think that I am going crazy. In FACT, I need only admit to myself that I am striving for CERTAINTY, an impossible state of perfection, in the absence of a NECESSITY to perform the operation. I am NEVER truly certain of anything in Life. I may be 99.99% certain, but I am never 100% certain. I can only be ASSURED, and I WILL only be Assured insofar as Consciousness and the Unconscious are in accord. Otherwise, the Unconscious offers me no reassurance that what I am doing is sensible, but not because it is ILLOGICAL (from the standpoint of Rationality), but because it is MEANINGLESS (from the locus of Meaning). Therefore, Intuition shows through the fabricated net of Reason, which disintegrates. My map is seen to be obsolete, and I cease, with luck and my cooperation, to REPRESENT Reality according to that map. I have to wait to take more variables into consideration by virtue of which I can expand my frame of reference in regards to "what is Real".
dm.A.A.
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