Comments on: A Ramble Through Rationalism

By: Tim Jones

Tim Jones — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:51:07 +0000

Principles on scientific advice to government

http://nds.coi.gov.uk/clientmicrosite/content/Detail.aspx?ReleaseID=409612&NewsAreaID=2&ClientID=431

By: Tim Jones

Tim Jones — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:35:19 +0000

Interesting illustration of the confusion around what is rational (& see early part of comment thread) in the context of the climate change ‘debate’.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=409454&c=2

By: Sven

Sven — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:55:56 +0000

There’s nothing wrong with rationalism per se – if an infinitely powerful computer can deduce the existence of lemon-soaked napkins (to steal Douglas Adams’ metaphor) from first principles (i.e. the Standard Model of particle physics), then that’s fine.

But for primates that evolved on the African savannah for 200,000+ years, running a fixed-in-time ‘wet-ware’ that’s constrained by many biological and physical factors, rationalism-in-an-armchair is beyond us. Hence empiricism, as a constant check on every idea we have, is essential.

If we have too many guesses at the world, especially if those guesses accumulate upon each other and self-reference each other, that leads to intellectual dead-ends at best and dangerous ideologies at worst.

The history of philosophy is the history of false assumptions, no matter how ostensibly ‘rational’. Every great thinker in history has been wrong about most things. Philosophy students have more unlearning than learning to do when graduating.

Our human brains, as clever and unique as they are at abstract symbolic manipulation, can’t cope with running a mental simulation of the infinite complexity of reality, which is what advocates of rationalism promise.

So, Fry is right, the belief that rationalism alone is a panacea that humans can employ, a view held by many Continental academics throughout the 20th century, is a superstition.

Semantic confusion arises when scientists claim theological or new age superstition is irrational, but what they actually mean is that they are not empirically supported.

By: Ruth Seeley

Ruth Seeley — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:17:46 +0000

Funny that you’re struggling so much with the Consolmagno quote – it made instant sense to me – I concluded there’s a system of checks and balances going on within the Vatican that means you have to balance the possibility of miracles with the likelihood that they won’t occur.

By: Tim Jones

Tim Jones — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:06:17 +0000

Clare, just read some reviews on What Does China Think; looks like another for the in-box !

Even more so than Eastern Europe, China is a big experiment to go wrong.

By: Twitted by LalSox

Twitted by LalSox — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:49:37 +0000

[...] This post was Twitted by LalSox [...]

By: Clare Dudman

Clare Dudman — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:00:21 +0000

Interesting point about China – the book WHAT CHINA THINKS comes to more or less the same conclusion. Interesting too what you say about the definition of the words. I suppose it is a form of abbreviation, which is what newspapers do with academic research sometimes. In both instances vital information can be lost.