In this entry I return to a my main projects: criticism of rationalism and rationality. Reading this note now, it seems rather speculative and maybe unfair. It was written several months before I planned on starting this blog, and I didn’t even write down which book the quote was from. But whether the quote is precise or correctly attributed isn’t really relevant to the main points here. And expansive speculation and mental gymnastics are productive and healthy. Also, the more dominant and historically causal/operative a tradition, the stronger society’s attempted criticism must be – as it is correspondingly more important to make sure that the tradition isn’t fundamentally flawed and imbalanced and to test/explore ways in which it might be…
How my anti-rationalism may connect to [analysis of the meaning behind] seemingly anodyne rationalist maxims, for example what Karl Popper states as a credo¹ of his:
1: ”I accept that I may be wrong”
Consider the quote not simply at face value but in the context of Popper communicating/laying out his philosophy and calling it a credo. It seems clear that it must mean something other than the literal², particular meaning – a personal statement – as this would be trivial and irrelevant to his project. I think he means to imply a general methodological rule and that what we see here is a prescriptive/normative statement formulated as acceptance/seeing of reality – I propose that rationalists’ actual meaning of such credos/maxims is something like these paraphrases:
1p₁: I should/must admit that I am wrong in cases where [rational] reason(s) dictate so.
1p₂: If I am faced by a logically sound [counter-]argument & I am [in the moment] unable to come up with rational/explicit/clear reasons for a premise of the counter-argument being incorrect³, i.e. reasons with which to defend my position – and if I proceed based simply on a *reasonless* un-convincedness, i.e. a feeling/intuition that I am nevertheless right, then this is irrational, unreasonable of me! (and this even in the moral sense!)
When thus interpreted, many problems arise [in a world in which we follow the credo]:
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- Conformity to standard established/accepted language – & thus to currently dominant conceptual paradigm – becomes prerequisite to inclusion in discourse! (One is excluded as soon as one sticks to a position in the face of rational reasons – despite only having a reason that doesn’t conform to the criteria of dominant rationality.)
- Only those concepts are permitted for which there are/is currently available language/terminology.³ (If, to defend oneself, one uses a word that is meaningless to a rationalist, then they will say that you must accept you are wrong.)
- …Non-rationalism is confused with infallibilism!
also connected:
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- debating: Adeptness in established/dominant linguo-conceptual paradigm and in ability to connect ideas/positions to the terminology of the paradigm/tradition gives a prohibitive advantage which can be utilized and presided over in a lawyerly fashion…This is a technical, non-philosophical mastery in contrast to what should really count and be made visible in debate – the brilliance of the actual idea/position.
- conservatism: It is too easy to rationally defend established ideas and ways of speaking against new ideas that have not yet had time and space to fully take form and be institutionalized in systems of abstractions and in terminology/language/culture…
¹ It is ironic and fitting that, whilst religions state their credos openly and sincerely, rationalists state their credos with ostensible irony.
² – This would also be ironic given rationalism’s general linguistic methodology of clarity, precision and literalism.
³ see Paul Feyerabend: Erkenntnis für Freie Menschen p.47 footnote