Let’s look some more into English, in the sense of “investigate”, a verb already colored, by me, for me, by the Wittgensteinian corpus. I’m referring to an Austrian philosopher, first name Ludwig, who also spent a lotta time around military hospitals, as well as in academic settings.
Mostly LW preferred staying by himself (he secluded himself in Scandinavia somewhere) and thinking deeply about language and how words mean. Our contemporary philosophy owes a lot to this thinking, in synergy with the thinking of others.
The verb that comes to mind this morning is “to rationalize” which usually means “to contrive a rationale in retrospect” when something, likely unbidden, is already a fait accompli yet maybe still in need of some justification, explanation, or excuse. When one endeavors to “rationalize” whatever, one strive to fit whatever into some schema whereby it seems planned, intentional, or at least explicable, and therefore more acceptable.
From the previous paragraph you may gather, correctly, that rationalizations often ring hollow, as they’re used to justify the unjustifiable sometimes. So there’s a negative connotation to the word, as rationalizations have a poor reputation.
But you might wonder, seeing how “rationalize” is so close to “rational” and also “reasonable” in semantic space that it’d have more of a luster to it, more of a positive connotation. Finding ways to make something seem more reasonable in retrospect should not be judged a weakness. It’s when the reasoning seems “forced”and/or “sketchy” that the proffered rationalizations are adjudged “empty”.
I’d say our ability to rationalize in the sense of “smooth over by applying one’s reasoning powers retroactively” is a part our ability to self heal. In other words, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with making the best of new developments by incorporating them into one’s emerging sense of reality.
The active inferencer, or inferant, seeking to minimize uncertainty (free energy), is always using the wisdom of hindsight to retell a tale already told.
Revising is not a crime as there’s always more than one way to tell a story when facts underdetermine the spin we put on them. Sometimes the retelling seems phony, no question. We call that “putting lipstick on a pig”. A poor excuse might be a considered a failure to sufficiently rationalize. No rationale seems to work.
We’re taken to task for being “revisionist” sometimes, as thats another verb (“to revision”) with a bad reputation.
But here too: isn’t revisioning a responsibility more than a sin?
Both rationalizing and revising may be part of a healthy self-updating process.
Don’t deny yourself the privilege of seeing events, or even your whole life, in a new light, given the advent of new information, new experiences. A willingness to revise is often called “being open minded” which in most walks of life is at least given lip service as a positive. To be “closed minded” is to be “stuck in a rut”.
