Tag: anti-rationalism

59

Maybe it is very significant that analytic philosophy has a traditional consensus that words have meaning, not things.

An analytic philosopher is so used to the praxis of this consensus that this may sound like a bizarre attack on a notion that is trivially correct. But isn’t this actually a pre-supposition that’s both obviously contingent/questionable & vastly impactful/consequential? (& indeed ideological, begging much explanation?)

  • furthermore, words are taken as having (primarily or only) extensional meaning, which can be regarded as disconnecting/removing meaning from individual minds/persons…

so: Therefore, naturally focusing on that which seems most meaningful – and specifically words being that -, the focus of the analytic methodology and tradition in general is on words! – And this focus and prioritisation in turn(, especially considered beyond the limited aspects/interests of philosophical enquiry,) gives words[, in principal and in general,] authority and power.

or, more simply: The rational mind sees words as the locus of meaning, therefore focuses on words, thereby endowing them with power… Rational traditions supports the power of the words, and more specifically commands and law-utterances, of authorities. I.e. such traditions support [power-]hierarchy.

  • So, this seems to fit perfectly with the law & order of [the lord] god & [church] hierarchy – & theology?

– Both the things [esp. nature] & the common/lay people have no [inherent] meaning – & should thus submit under the law/order of the word, the word that is authority and power due to carrying/holding meaning, indeed the totalised, objective meaning of the god-perspective – whether explicitly or implicitly – whether administered by a monk or a philosopher…

p.s. just as a reminder for contrast: The alternative is to consider it generally reasonable and possible that things have meaning – natural entities, phenomena, people, etc. – whilst words are just compromising, abstracting tools of communication between minds and meanings. (And of course, why not also that things are meaning? – An absurd notion in our reality, but really not absurd at all.)

49

a key criticism of rational and categorical thinking:

The problem isn’t [just] the categories per se, it’s how we use them in rationalism! It’s categorical logic – how we deduce from categorical statements/judgements/propositions.

maybe in general the problem can be formulated like so:

Due to the fractal structure of nature, [and especially of the dialectical interface between our minds/thoughts/concepts/words and experience/nature,]

no statement of the form  is ever correct! (assuming S and R refer to concepts/general names/categories from science/language, & thus are not simply trivially-artificially defined sub-sets of eachother…)

  • ( I should try later to write why exactly this is the case – how the fractal structure of nature is incompatible with categorical deduction. )

entry 31

Philosophical training as the taming/tempering of the feeling of being convinced* by an argument:

Through a long process of repeatedly studying arguments, feeling convinced by them and then each time realising that there is an equally convincing (and rational) counter-argument, the threshold for being convinced gradually rises and one feels less and less convinced by rational arguments. At the end, only a perfect argument [, which has the character of direct, visual understanding,] elicits the feeling of being convinced.

That is maybe the central training/disciplining of rational thinking, and the central learning technique of philosophical training. It disciplines rationality in that it teaches one the limitations and pitfalls of rationality – of analysis by [logical] argumentation – it balances the radical ambitions of abstract analysis, instilling humility into the thinker who wants to attempt abstraction of the world – especially by means of argumentative analysis of ideas.

This practice leads to a gradual increase of the degree to which one is intuitively careful, skeptical and critical toward the tools of logical/abstract/rational analysis/argumentation themselves – a kind of meta-criticism or meta-criticalness. And, importantly, this resulting reflective skeptical stance toward rationalistic, abstract criticism somewhat ironically has the effect of gradually opening the mind, as it makes one slower to dismiss an idea that one has counter-arguments to! This is maybe the dialectic extreme/final limit/end of rationality.

– [Paranoid/simplistic] conspiracy theorists lack this training & ability, whilst also being very open-minded [by natural pre-disposition], and thus their open minds are too easily and quickly filled/satisfied by [non-perfect] argumentation (maybe argumentation that is critical of some mainstream position and that suggests some non-mainstream idea) – their minds are quickly, suddenly filled by a huge, un-tempered feeling of convincedness – a feeling they aren’t trained to handle and have no reason to question.


*re. ‘the feeling of being convinced’: To me this is one of the most useful concepts and most important phenomenal/experiential elements of the practice of philosophy. In more detail, what I mean by this: I mean a feeling in the sense of the sort of phenomenon/experience that one also calls an intuition. And I mean a feeling that appears/happens at some point while one is studying/receiving an argument/line of reasoning: at some point, while studying an argument, one starts to feel convinced, or notices that one feels convinced. I’m suggesting a non-rational or irrational, intuitive component to the practice of studying, reading and judging arguments – which is of course at-odds with the normal view of the study and judgement of arguments being an entirely rational process that entirely corresponds to philosophical, abstract theories of logic/of the structure of arguments. Supporting this view that there is always a non-rational, intuitive component to the enterprise of logical analysis is a matter for a later entry.

entry 28

meta-philosophical suspicion/hypothesis:

When philosophers (such as Richard Rorty and Paul Feyerabend) criticize contemporary philosophy through radical questioning of the legitimacy/foundations of epistemology (Erkenntnistheorie) – epistemology being right at the heart of philosophy – I think what they are truly attacking isn’t exactly epistemology in general, but instead specifically rationalist epistemology. And thus, despite providing cogent critiques of contemporary philosophical tradition, the negative conclusions that they draw on philosophy in general are too broad/general.

There is a trend of self-abasement in philosophy: of philosophers arguing that philosophy itself is a misguided, counter-productive and over-valued tradition/under-taking. In particular philosophy as an abstract tradition and philosophy as essentially epistemology. In this context, both Feyerabend and Rorty regularly draw connections to rationalism, e.g. to trends originating with Descartes or with pre-Socratics – their criticisms are made largely within contexts of identifying historical & theoretical consequences of various forms of rationalism. But they fail to reach the conclusion that this rationalistic form of philosophy which they criticize is of course contingent on whether philosophers operate within rationalism.The contents of their criticisms suggest that the epistemologies/philosophies they criticize are not the only possible/potential forms of philosophy…

And while I agree with their criticisms, I think that their criticisms are in fact themselves epistemology: they are epistemological, or meta-epistemological*, discussions and criticisms of rationalistic epistemologies! Their detailed, philosophical, critical exploration of the flaws of certain contemporary theories of and assumptions about knowledge are exactly what epistemology truly is! And indeed, this is philosophy.

*To me, it is relevant that a meta-level is involved, that the writings I have in mind are philosophy of epistemology. And, at the same time, I think a philosophical epistemology is one that includes – or rather appears only together with an attempt at – the next meta-level… And this goes for any topic or discipline… And this maybe a key distinction to rationalistic epistemology: that rationalistic epistemology is without the meta-level, presenting itself as an abstraction that is simply true in a vacuum. And this is anti-philosophical.

entry 26

This concerns philosophical discussions of the mind-body distinction and of the nature, concept and definition of consciousness & mind:

It maybe noteworthy that when more rationalistic philosophers, e.g. Karl Popper, are trying to define or explicate a notion of consciousness/mind for the purposes of a discussion/argumentation, they tend to emphasize sense-of-self as the defining or essential feature of consciousness/mind & de-emphasize actual qualia. (Which means they de-emphasize/ignore the concept that most directly and simply refers to subjective experience and the contents of consciousness in general – in favour of something more abstract.)

This maybe a consequence of the rationalistically stunted/inhibited introspection/vision of such thinkers: They fail to notice that one doesn’t actually see* a self – that self is a less concrete, more abstract entity, and that a sense of self is a very complicated basis for definition, as it is just an intuition/feeling of something that is already abstract and complex – unlike the more direct contents/constituents of consciousness, such as colours in a dream, which one does see. And the stunting of this kind of introspection or of introspective visual intuition occurs as follow:

Rationalists systematically ignore, neglect, devalue, inhibit, repress, and dismantle their intuition;**

then they destroy their understanding/idea of intuition;

then, in this new world where intuition is a broken and thus useless tool, they use just-based-on-an-intuition as an argumentative/rhetorical tool against opposing ideas, especially ones that clash with a rationalistic worldview.

*this can, theoretically, be generalized beyond the visual, but seeing suffices for the purposes of these points, and generalizing to something like perception in general to includes things like smells and tastes is counter-productively difficult because the notion of perceiving/perception is, in current philosophical discourse, too broken and confused.

**Taking intuition seriously/sincerely is antithetical to rational method/thinking, and intuitions are treated as something irrational and primitive that should be handled from the outside and treated with suspicion.

entry 24

a key concept/lesson in [philosophical] ethics

the catastrophic confusion between 2 types of *should*:

type I: as in expressing an ideal

type II: as in expressing a concrete duty or prescription in a concrete, practical situation of action/decision

A person’s actual behaviour and decisions can only theoretically conform to the ideal, because in reality, they are restricted – by reality, i.e. by the constraints imposed both by the nature of the individual person and of the reality in which the person is acting.

When actions and ideals don’t fit each other, which they practically never do, then confusing these two types of *should* leads to disappointment on the level of personal morality, judgement and psychology, and to systemic error on the level of inter-personal judgement and abstract ethical theory.

 

Ideals are something to strive or long towards, guiding practical action, not precisely determining and judging it.* Ideals are something to think about speculatively or abstractly. Ideals can be as general as basic deontological principles such as a principle of dignity or human rights. They can also be less theoretical and pertain to specific behaviour or action, permitting or prohibiting a general action or inaction of more or less specificity, such as don’t do anything that causes harm to other lifeforms, or, even more specifically, something like never resort to physical violence in a moment of anger.

And on the other hand, there is actual action, which is always a particular external and internal behaviour, and always exists in a unique practical situation. Factors that restrict an agent’s ability to match action to ideal: awareness of facts and relations relavant to a behaviour/action; the actor’s physical, mental and personal faculties in the precise moment; the person’s economic, material, social means; the person’s position within structures and systems of culture, society, reality, etc….

– In German, some philosophers utilize the difference between the two verb forms ‘soll’ and ‘sollte’: one can use ‘soll’ to indicate a concrete duty/prescription and ‘sollte’ to indicate expression of an ideal. This can be helpful, but doesn’t stop the confusion, as it is systemic:

The confusion is a systemic and often over-looked feature of rationalistic ethics, and by ‘rationalistic’ ethics I mean abstracting and generalizing actions out from their real-world, practical, particular context to the degree where one can consider the action in a vacuum** to enable manageable analysis/discussion. In other words, the unfathomable complexity of a real human acting and behaving within the constraints of themself and the real world are systematically ignored to enable analysis.

And all this makes the relevance of analysis to practical life and morality very questionable. And indeed, when philosophers are discussing ethics, speculating about what one *should* do, they often fall into over-looking this difference and taking their abstract speculations as exactly relevant to practical life. And not just philosophers, but also normal people who live under mainstream rationalist ideology that says that one’s actions should be in line with rational principles of action and that cool-headed, rational calculation/speculation should ultimately judge action.

* In a moment of reflection, one can remind oneself of an ideal, calling it into mind or imagining it whilst questioning how ones concrete actions and decisions align with this ideal, and then trying to re-align ones concrete plans and judgements with the ideal. (This is of course an endlessly difficult practical aspect of life, not something for a philosopher to solve – although many so-called philosophers think they can)

** with a much reduced number of relata of the predicate, logically speaking

entry 21

Everyone has biases, always, & it’s OK to have biases.
And the mitigation, reduction and transcendence of biases that is prescribed by rationalism – by the ideals/principles of rationality – is folly.
 
[A proponent of ideals of rationality may reply that this results in pure relativism, ]but actually this needn’t/doesn’t result in relativism:
What’s important isn’t whether one has biases, but whether one’s biases are fixed* or can move, i.e. whether there is a dogma that is a/the fixed (and oft-unnoticed) source of one’s biases or whether one[‘s mind] is open to dialectic, unconstrained movement of ideas & evolution of theories/paradigms & organic growth and development of the overall ideological/theoretical/philosophical [meta-]structure…
 
I’m suggesting a mode of thinking that results not in biases being reduced [until they maybe disappear], but instead results in uncovering of a bias going hand-in-hand with a new, biased part of theory/mind being produced** – of which the bias later should/can be uncovered… So this is a step-wise, indefinitely continuing process by which a theory or mind or philosophy organically changes and grows.
 
And maybe on the meta-level I’m distinguishing between two ways of thinking/doing philosophy: seeing biases as negative or seeing them as interesting and as a necessary component of any temporary theory that one uses before one has reached the totality [of knowledge] (which of course nobody has and is indefinitely far in the future…
 

*if they are fixed, and one insists on reduction of bias, then the result is denial.

**meanwhile, the part/structure of theory/mind that one has found a bias in isn’t sanitized and maintained – it is commensurately exited/abandoned as one’s ideas move and one’s mind shifts to a new theory – the shifting of biases is a logical result of the movement/change of ideas. (or it is (temporarily) accepted along with its bias…)

entry 20

Rationality: speakable & correctly spoken thought

One key aspect of rational thought is that it is speakable: To be or become rational, a thought is reduced to its speakable part or version, and any part or aspect that isn’t expressible in language is rejected or denied.

A potential criticism of rationalistic thinking, philosophy and theory-building presents itself when one considers aspects of our world that are at the same time of deepest importance whilst not being speakable, for example beauty: Beauty can never be fully caught by definitions, transcending and eluding any attempt to [linguistically] capture or grasp or fix.* …And therefore, in a rationalistic worldview/reality, beauty is ultimately rejected or relegated to the level of mere relativistic & irrelevant ästhetics…

A further core component of rational traditions is that one must use language correctly [when expressing the speakable]… This makes the false assumption that we know how to use language correctly and thus have the ability to use language correctly and avoid using it incorrectly… I think it should be clear that this is an absurd assumption.**

 
This is one of many instances where I collect [suspected or observed] aspects of rationality or rationalism as part my anti-rationalism project:

I’ve been trying to find out what rationality and rationalism is and how related thought, theory, tradition, culture and history may be affected by this, i.e. how rationalism shapes our world and how it relates to other contemporary paradigms of mainstream [thought and] reality.

I think readers can agree that the concept of rationality is, explicitly or implicitly, a major factor/part in contemporary worldviews, both within and outside of intellectual/scientific institutions. I want to find out how important it is and what exactly it is – and what its function is. And by ‘rationalism‘ I mean whole methodologies or traditions that are built out of or on the more basic concept of rationality.

This project is a process of exploration and speculation. I neither want to simply choose some existing definitions and base my analysis on those nor simply stipulate my own definition/usage of the terms: What I’m doing is I’m trying to find out how ‘rational’ is actually used and functions in the world and in existing traditions – even if people aren’t aware of these functions and usages – and what the concept that best fits this usage/function ultimately looks like. This is a gradual process with many observations and speculations along the way.

This is necessary because – as can be easily observed – there is no  consensus on the meaning or importance or relevance of rationality. And it has become more obvious to me over time that rationality is an astoundingly murky and ill-defined or un-defined concept – and this is especially striking considering its prominence in traditions that value clarity and definition of language so highly.***

And concerning the critical aspects of this project: In my reading I came across criticisms of past and contemporary rationalistic traditions in philosophy. I was intrigued by this unusual case of criticizing something that is usually simply assumed to be something positive and important – & from there I’ve been exploring how far and deep these criticisms and the corresponding flaws of contemporary thought & theory may go: Firstly in schools of metaphilosophy and philosophy/methodology of science – but also exploring possible connections and influences this may have on any other parts of the human world – be it a scientific tradition or economic or political doctrine or ethics/morality or any other theory, tradition or culture. I’ve continued and deepened this endeavour because it has turned out to be fascinatingly fruitful.

*Beauty really IS ineffable – and by trying too hard to eff it, you will actually just f it up.

**I won’t directly argue this point here, but will just mention some points that should be considered in this context: Consider how language actually works as a pragmatic, psychological and historical process (or result thereof). It has intuitive components. It isn’t a fixed, perfect, objective system but rather a historically grown complex of temporary inter-subjective, co-operative conventions. It’s full of quirks and multiplicities of uses of elements. Attempts at correcting natural language or translating into formal languages – i.e. at making language completely rational – are vain attempts at overcoming this and removing all undefinable parts from our thoughts. An analytical philosopher can try to use new definitions to stipulate a new, limited language game, but even then you need to somehow provide a connection to other, broader language games for your artificial language game to have any relevance or meaning – this is the point/boundary at which the philosopher tricks themself into not noticing the intuitive/irrational components of what they are doing. And, of course, one shouldn’t forget that these imprecisions, intuitive/unconscious components, pragmatic mutabilities and fluidities etc are features that make language a wonderfully powerful, adaptive tool in an ever-changing environment and society.

***in fact so murky/dark that it can actually function as a kind of everyday dogmatic basis for modern thinking that – unlike explicit dogmas – isn’t even accessible to critical inspection.

 

entry 17

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]:

    • 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:

    • 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