One of the important conditions for human adaptation is the extent to which our understanding of the world corresponds to reality. Of course, a one-hundred-percent correspondence between our representations and reality is impossible. We always perceive the world through certain models, beliefs, past experiences, and predictions. But the closer this internal “map” is to the real world, the more effectively we can navigate it, make predictions, make decisions, and adapt to change.
Ultimately, many psychological problems can be viewed precisely from the perspective of adaptation: at some point, a person’s internal model no longer works particularly well in the environment in which they live. They predict danger where there is none, fail to notice what actually matters, or continue to use strategies that may once have been useful but no longer work. This is why, for me, one important criterion of mental health is not simply “feeling good,” but the ability to interact with reality as effectively as possible.
This, however, raises an interesting question. What if a person’s worldview is not scientific – for example, it is religious or esoteric – but they feel good and everything in their life seems to work? Why change it?
Theoretically, we can imagine a coherent system of beliefs that contains no internal contradictions, does not interfere with a person’s life, is sufficiently flexible, and can adapt to changes in the external world. In that case, it may indeed function for a long time without creating any obvious problems. In practice, however, the main difficulty with such systems becomes apparent when reality begins to contradict them.
It is precisely in these boundary situations that rationality becomes not merely a collection of knowledge, but a particular choice – a method for making judgments about the world.
Being rational does not mean knowing the answer to everything. Quite the opposite. Sometimes the most rational answer is simply: “I don’t know how this works.”
But there is an important continuation:
“I don’t know how this works” does not yet mean, “Therefore, it is supernatural.”
In my view, this is one of the most important distinctions of scientific thinking. An unexplained phenomenon calls for an explanation, not a story that fills the absence of one.
In Bolesław Prus’s Pharaoh, for example, a solar eclipse can be perceived as a divine event by people who do not understand its mechanism. But not knowing the mechanism does not mean that something supernatural has actually happened to the Sun.
The same logic is beautifully illustrated in Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. Everything is constructed in such a way that a supernatural explanation seems highly tempting. But Sherlock Holmes’s advantage lies precisely in the fact that he does not accept that explanation simply because he has no better alternative at the moment. He continues searching for the mechanism.
For me, this is one of the central ideas of rationality: look for the mechanisms.
Rather than simply saying, “I saw it,” “I felt it,” “It was a coincidence,” “Therefore, some force must exist,” we should ask: How exactly? Through what chain of events? By what process? Under what conditions? Can it be tested? Can we predict when it will happen and when it will not?
This way of thinking is also extremely important in psychotherapy, particularly in some manifestations of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
In OCD, we often encounter beliefs in which the causal mechanism is simply absent or ignored. For example: “If I had this thought, something bad might happen,” “If I don’t perform this action, something terrible will happen to someone,” or “If I saw this sign, it must mean something.”
When we ask, “By what specific mechanism is your thought supposed to cause an external event?”, it often becomes clear that there is no mechanism connecting the two at all. There is only a feeling, a coincidence, fear, or a “what if.”
And here rational thinking does not require a person to know everything. It demands something far more modest: not filling the space of what we do not know with an explanation for which we have no grounds.
Sometimes the most scientific and most rational statement is simply:
“I don’t know yet.”
And that is a much stronger position than:
“I don’t know, therefore it must be supernatural.”