One misconception of rationality equates having a mental fog or a struggle to focus on various things with irrationality, which would mean that the other side of this idea is the conflation of having clear thoughts with rationality. Being "scatterbrained," or scatter-minded, since consciousness thinks rather than the organ called the brain, is not the same as being irrational. A person could be scatterbrained and rational or have a focused mind and still be too pathetically irrational to even identify and intentionally avoid basic philosophical assumptions. How well a person understands the epistemological or metaphysical nature of reason and how well they sidestep the idiotic blindness of assumptions is their level of rationality, and anyone could improve their rationality to the point of making no assumptions at all and recognizing that logical axioms are absolutely certain, universally true, and at the heart of all things. Being scatterbrained might pose its own intellectual challenges, but they do not prevent a person from achieving any of these philosophical victories.
Besides just being another easily avoidable misconception that is still vital to refute, this misconception that holds otherwise is a way for non-rationalists to feel or mistakenly believe themselves superior to others when it is actually they who are irrational, and therefore inferior to rationalists. To dismiss someone who is legitimately or seemingly scatterbrained as irrational (which is ultimately the same as thinking them unintelligent) and to equate a lack of focus or a jumble of thoughts with irrationality, without thinking of any particular example of someone who supposedly suffers from this, is outright stupid. Not only is this utterly shallow, not even looking past mere perceptions, which is itself irrational, it overlooks the objective fact that intelligence is just a grasp of reason, having nothing to do with other factors like mental fog that a rationalist could push through despite the difficulty.
Concentration difficulties do not mean someone does not recognize logical axioms or their own conscious existence as self-evident, nor does it mean they have not reasoned out other philosophical facts and ideas or that they have made even a single assumption. Jumping from one thought to another unrelated thought does not mean someone is irrational unless they believe that unrelated things are related or commit the non sequitur fallacy, assuming that something which does not logically follow from one truth or concept does follow from it. Having general mental fog for a time or as an unwanted, lifelong experience does not mean someone is irrational because they are still capable of understanding logical truths--they are, after all, still relying on the laws of logic knowingly or unknowingly to even understand anything at all about what mental fog is and is not--even if it will take more effort in some cases.
Misperceptions, philosophical assumptions, and cultural or personal biases embraced out of convenience are the only reasons a person would ever conflate rationality and an absence of mental fog or total concentration one one subject. Someone who is "scatter-minded" might choose irrationality because of the heightened difficulty of being consistency rational, but it does not follow that they will believe fallacies and hold to assumptions or contradictions. Logic is the set of necessary truths that are true as self-verifying axioms or that follow from other truths and concepts, and rationality is nothing other than an understanding of logic, of the only self-evident axioms and of various conclusions that follow from things. Not a single person has to have no concentration issues to be perfectly rational and deeply rationalistic. Alignment with reason does not necessarily entail a lack of problems with focusing. It entails an intentional rejection of assumptions, emotionalism, and arbitrary beliefs in direct exchange for direct awareness of necessary truths.
Logic, people. It is very fucking helpful.
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