Prejudice and the Unfinished Mind: A New Look at an Old Failing

Three approaches to the nature of human rationality are considered: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky on decision making, David Hume on causation, and Peter Strawson on morality. All are seen as deploring the state of rational thought and despairing of the human capacity for logic. Their implicit model of the perfectly rational human is explored with the help of Mr. Spock and found to be of doubtful value considered in terms of evolutionary survival, where prejudgment is essential to decision making under stress. The glimmerings of this insight are found in Hume's therapeutic solution to his existential dilemma, and a general argument is made-with the help of side glances at prototype theory, linguistics, categorical thinking, and archetypes-that rationality cannot be equated with logic as generally understood but rather consists of a series of pragmatic prejudgments of reality that have stood the test of natural selection. This leads to a reconstruction of the idea of from a negative to a mildly positive attribute, with examples drawn from Charles Lamb and Paul Robeson, and hence to the conclusion that prejudice is not a warpedform of thought but that thought is a particular form of prejudice.