On Parabolic Thinking

An important feature of much of our daily conversation is that it is filled with what might be called linear patterns of thought. We start from a premise A, and try to argue to a conclusion Z through a series of intermediate steps. In most cases, however, we do not really try to establish the validity of A itself. That latter attempt would be a case of parabolic thinking.

Here is one example. You can ask a question such as : ‘Are ‘John will be a boy’ and ‘It was rain now’ grammatically correct?’ However, you cannot meaningfully ask : ‘Is English grammatically correct?’. Though within the framework of the English language, you can ask whether a certain sequence of words is grammatically correct or not, it makes no sense to ask whether this framework itself is ‘grammatical’. Here is another somewhat controversial example. Strictly speaking, you cannot prove that you are rational, for if you were to attempt to prove your rationality by putting forward some arguments, you have already pre-supposed what you have to prove, for ‘proving a point’ is itself usually regarded as a supremely ‘rational’ exercise. This in itself does not establish, of course, that you are irrational or that rationality does not have its uses, only that there is no non-question-begging (or non-circular) method for proving your rationality.