Christopher's Anti-Rationalist Beliefs

[silverchris9]

1) There is no such thing as self-evidence. Self-evidence is a nice way of saying circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is a negative way of saying self-evident.

2) Logical conclusions are only true if the premises are true.

3) The existence and validity of logical rules themselves are a "hidden premise" within all deductive reasoning.

4) As such, the rules of logic occupy no "privileged place" in the order of necessity. While conclusions of logic are necessary once the premises (including the hidden premise of the laws of logic themselves) are granted, the laws themselves are no more necessary than any other theoretical idea.

Then I reflected in myself: " Since I can not trust to the evidence of my senses, I must rely only on intellectual notions based on fundamental principles, such as the following axioms: "Ten is more than three. Affirmation and negation can not coexist together. A thing can not both be created and also existent from eternity, living and annihilated simultaneously, at once necessary and impossible." To this the notions I derived from my senses made the following objections: "Who can guarantee you that you can trust to the evidence of reason more than to that of the senses? You believed in our testimony till it was contradicted by the verdict of reason, otherwise you would have continued to believe it to this day. Well, perhaps, there is above reason another judge who, if he appeared, would convict reason of falsehood, just as reason has confuted us. And if such a third arbiter is not yet apparent, it does not follow that he does not exist."

To this argument I remained some time without reply; a reflection drawn from the phenomena of sleep deepened my doubt. " Do you not see," I reflected, " that while asleep you assume your dreams to be indisputably real? Once awake, you recognize them for what they are baseless chimeras. Who can assure you, then, of the reliability of notions which, when awake, you derive from the senses and from reason? In relation to your present state they may be real; but it is possible also that you may enter upon another state of being which will bear the same relation to your present state as this does to your condition when asleep. In that new sphere you will recognize that the conclusions of reason are only chimeras."

This possible condition is, perhaps, that which the Sufis call " ecstasy " (hal), that is to say, according to them, a state in which, absorbed in themselves and in the suspension of sense-perceptions, they have visions beyond the reach of intellect. Perhaps also Death is that state, according to that saying of the prince of prophets: " Men are asleep; when they die, they wake." Our present life in relation to the future is perhaps only a dream, and man, once dead, will see things in direct opposition to those now before his eyes; he will then understand that word of the Koran, " To-day we have removed the veil from thine eyes and thy sight is keen."

5) Therefore, when we assent to the existance of the laws of logic, we are not making a logical assertion. This is precisely analogous to the 'rationality' and 'irrationality' of socionics. Deductions from the laws of logic are 'rational'. The belief in the laws of logic in the first place is 'irrational'.

6) So, since the foundation of all justification is belief (since the laws of logic cannot, according to themselves, prove themselves), there must be some valid way to determine truth beyond the laws of logic. In other words, there is no proof, only persuasion (for a powerful and 'cognitively original' example of the difference between proof and persuasion, read Austen's novel Persuasion)

7) Evidence of the ability of logic to destroy itself is furnished by the work of Parmenides and the paradoxes of his follower Xeno.

8) Also, the problem of induction further casts doubt on the ability of logical deduction to arrive at certain truth. Simply put, if the laws of logic are so absolute, how is it that conclusions change from generation to generation?

9) As such, there are some cases in which it is proper or valid to believe without explicit justification. We have already seen once instance of this class: The belief in the laws of logic (note that it is only convention that makes us agree that the belief in the laws of logic is proper and valid---firm believers in some sects of Hinduism and New Age religion are likely to disagree with some laws of logic, such as non-disjunction).

10) How then, shall we determine truth? By weighing all things together, considering all sides and all arguments, and coming to a conclusion via the sea-like persuasion of the wise, rather than the earth-bound proof of the learned.

Bonus) Few propositions are absolutely true or absolutely false. Any value judgment, except to say that God is good, is an admixture of true and false. The earth is neither good nor bad, but both. Even phrases like "the tide bottle is orange" is not absolutely true, for it is only 'orange' insofar as my brain processes the light that bounces off of it in a way that is identified with other objects and grouped under the heading "orange". If another person's brain processes that same light as green, how can we say they are wrong? We can merely say that they are different. Most propositions are an admixture of truth and falsity, and almost all, in this world of shadow and flame, turns on which side is emphasized. All dichotomies resolve to unities, but since we cannot perceive the unities, both our personalities and our beliefs turn on which side is emphasized. To apply this to a current debate, sex before marriage is both right and wrong. It is right for people to express themselves. It is right for people not to repress themselves. It is right for people to experience pleasure. All of those things are also wrong. There is a unity into which these opposites resolve, but that is too high for us to comprehend.

[krieger]

11) philosophy of epistemics and logic are boring and useless

[golden]

I love this but need maybe three more days with it, and even then I'll have nothing worthwhile to contribute.

[xerx]

1) There is no such thing as self-evidence. Self-evidence is a nice way of saying circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is a negative way of saying self-evident.

Self-evident statement?

[silverchris9]

My apologetics teacher in high school held that one may say that one's belief is justified when objections thereto are more ridiculous than the original assertion. But what is the arbiter of ridiculousness? Culture. To the Greeks, what could be more ridiculous than creation ex nihilo? Thus, as al Ghazali later says, philosophy ultimately rests upon a bed of convention, as Socrates did not reason from universals, but rather began always with premises such as "we agree that... do you agree that... let us say that..." As such, philosophy cannot establish necessary or certain truth. In truth, philosophy, or analytic philosophy, establishes "that truth which arises when everything that can be broken is broken." That is, truths arrived at by pure reason are the truths we can believe without having to forsake those beliefs which are most integral to ourselves, those beliefs which are most "self-evident". We cannot believe that it is good to murder children (except for one crackpot at Princeton, but he's a crackpot). Some of us cannot believe it is possible to have a being that exists outside of time. But when we break that which cannot be broken (without breaking ourselves, or "dying" in Emily Dickinson's sense--to live is glee; to die is gain), then, perhaps we can know a fuller truth, and start accessing some of those unities that lie behind the dichotomies that organize experience.

Let us reason from experience, and recognize "mystical experience" as a part of experience. It is experience of a different class and kind than sensory experience, and harder to classify and make explicit. And yet we must recognize that it too has a place and a role and a function ("The other I am must not abase itself to you/and you must not be abased to the other.") It too communicates truth, only in a different way, and so we must approach the integration of that truth into our lives in a different way. Stop building models and then dropping them, like carpet, on top of things. Rather, humbly walk down your neighborhood streets, and sketch what you see there, to as fine and as close a detail as you may, and perhaps then we will find something worthwhile.

[silverchris9]

Self-evident statement?

Very nice. Here's my evasion: nope, merely an assertion or belief, which I may hope to persuade you of using examples, perhaps.

[MatthewZ]

The thing about rationalism is the understanding that the natural complement of logic is empiricism. No rationalist is going to assert the absolute certainty of any form of "knowledge." (insert discourse about the etymology of the word "knowledge" here, along with definitions of "truth" and "reason") Not to get too Randian, but rationalism is preferred because it works. Honestly, why reject something that holds under scrutiny?

[silverchris9]

The thing about rationalism is the understanding that the natural complement of logic is empiricism. No rationalist is going to assert the absolute certainty of any form of "knowledge." (insert discourse about the etymology of the word "knowledge" here, along with definitions of "truth" and "reason") Not to get too Randian, but rationalism is preferred because it works. Honestly, why reject something that holds under scrutiny?

Because I don't think it works under certain conditions, and about certain things, like the nature of consciousness, the soul, etc. More seriously, I still hold logical demonstration of a proposition to be highly persuasive, and more persuasive the more rigorous and sound the proof is. But I don't think it constitutes inviolable proof, nor that logical demonstration is the only road to truth.

[MatthewZ]

Because I don't think it works under certain conditions, and about certain things, like the nature of consciousness, the soul, etc. More seriously, I still hold logical demonstration of a proposition to be highly persuasive, and more persuasive the more rigorous and sound the proof is. But I don't think it constitutes inviolable proof, nor that logical demonstration is the only road to truth.

Assuming the existence of either consciousness or a soul, of course.

[krieger]

1) everything is subjective
2) my subjectivity is superior to that of others by virtue of being mine
3) i reserve the right to apply violence and trechery in service of my beliefs
4) win

[EyeSeeCold]

1) everything is subjective

The First (and probably only) Natural Law.

I don't see the point in arguing against rationalism, if you want to be a pure empiricist then fine. Go figure out for yourself that some berries are poisonous.

[silverchris9]

1) everything is subjective
2) my subjectivity is superior to that of others by virtue of being mine
3) i reserve the right to apply violence and trechery in service of my beliefs
4) win

In many ways that is accurate. What logical rule told you that your argument invalidates mine?



There is pathos, logos, and ethos. You cannot have one without the other two, and the distinction is one of emphasis. There is no pure logos just as there is no pathos without intellect, and no ethos without a fellow feeling, i.e., pathos.

[krieger]

In many ways that is accurate. What logical rule told you that your argument invalidates mine?

Everything is subjective. You don't objectively exist. Subjectivism implies solipsism. It also implies ethical nihilism.

[silverchris9]

Everything is subjective. You don't objectively exist. Subjectivism implies solipsism. It also implies ethical nihilism.

Well that's the point. If you only get to solipsism, then sure, you can be a nihilist. Or, instead, you can give up on the rationalist position and realize that if following your logical commitments to their logical end results in positions that are intutively false, i.e., "I may not exist, life has no meaning or purpose, it makes no difference whether our actions are good or bad," then it's the logical commitments that are wrong, not things that are obvious like the fact that it's bad to kill people for no reason, or that sense experience is usually reliable (except in cases where we have extraordinary evidence that it is not, and even then its really scary and disorienting). It's just about accepting that there can be other reasons to believe in things beyond deductive and inductive reasoning, and that such reasoning is not the sole or ultimate arbiter of truth. I think the world is subjective and objective, and that, like all dichotomies, makes a deeper "something" to describe the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity in the world (Shelley is apparently quite concerned with that relationship).

I don't see the point in arguing against rationalism, if you want to be a pure empiricist then fine. Go figure out for yourself that some berries are poisonous.

It's not about being stupid or being empiricist. It's about believing in things for reasons beyond rationalism, simply because it's necessary: everyone believes in things for non-rational reasons, including believing in logical reasoning. I'm not saying not to use deduction. I'm saying not to assume deduction is the be-all and end-all of determining truth. I couched it in very big language to further explain and elaborate, but it's actually a pretty simple position, imo.

[Skeptic]

Our understanding of our universe is emergent and the premises and conclusions are constantly changing. Deduction and induction devices are temporary absolutes (which are objectively true if the if statement is true) to occupy space until contradictory information is presented. To disregard their use because you either
A) Intuit that they are wrong or
B) Find their temporal nature less attractive than your intuitions
is to fail to acknowledge that your intuitions hold no intrinsic truth value other than as they apply to you. Honestly, I would want a system of beliefs based upon a foundation that applies to all people; I consider myself of no greater worth than any fellow human being and to assert that the truth produced through my intuition is 'more true' than the truth generated by other intuitive claims is to be egotistic, self centered and narcissistic. There can be no consensus on truth when an imposed elitism like that exists.

"observation, logic and testing has long trumped superstition, intuition and metaphysics."

"There is no shortcut to truth, no way to gain knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of the scientific method"

The great irony of this thread is that you tried to arrive at the conclusion that rationalism is wrong through deduction. If deduction is an incorrect means of producing truth and you arrived at that truth through deduction, it is no longer certain that deduction is an improper means of truth acquisition and your conclusion is suspect... and so on. You just created a paradox by biting the hand that feeds your argument.

[munenori2]

I guess I don't get why you'd be "anti-rationalist". It's all well and fine to say that rationalism doesn't encompass all aspects of experience. In the same way that hammers are great when you're dealing with nails and not so much if you're dealing with crying babies, we don't seem to have any sort of cognitive swiss army knife that's going to bail us out of every situation. There's no fault to be had in a tool that doesn't do more than it's suited for, only in pressing it into service beyond its purchase.

Naturally, reading your last post it looks like we pretty much agree on that, but I'm not sure we necessarily take it and run with it in the same direction. I'd say that this points to approaching perception and processing as something fuller, as something that is only partially susceptible to any given singular perspective. Thus you wouldn't necessarily be anti-rationalist, just more likely to call into question your natural, preferred mode and to be less immediately dismissive of contrary or contradictory viewpoints.

[EyeSeeCold]

It's not about being stupid or being empiricist. It's about believing in things for reasons beyond rationalism, simply because it's necessary: everyone believes in things for non-rational reasons, including believing in logical reasoning. I'm not saying not to use deduction. I'm saying not to assume deduction is the be-all and end-all of determining truth. I couched it in very big language to further explain and elaborate, but it's actually a pretty simple position, imo.

But you could make the same argument about Empiricism. Arguing against one side makes you seem supportive of the other. Even if you aren't.

[DividedsGhost]

You're all a figment of my imagination and I hate you for it .

[Creepy-male]

You're all a figment of my imagination and I hate you for it .

You're a figment of mine.

[silverchris9]

Our understanding of our universe is emergent and the premises and conclusions are constantly changing. Deduction and induction devices are temporary absolutes (which are objectively true if the if statement is true) to occupy space until contradictory information is presented. To disregard their use because you either
A) Intuit that they are wrong or
B) Find their temporal nature less attractive than your intuitions
is to fail to acknowledge that your intuitions hold no intrinsic truth value other than as they apply to you. Honestly, I would want a system of beliefs based upon a foundation that applies to all people; I consider myself of no greater worth than any fellow human being and to assert that the truth produced through my intuition is 'more true' than the truth generated by other intuitive claims is to be egotistic, self centered and narcissistic. There can be no consensus on truth when an imposed elitism like that exists.

"observation, logic and testing has long trumped superstition, intuition and metaphysics."

"There is no shortcut to truth, no way to gain knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of the scientific method"

good. Now we're arguing on the right grounds, i.e., ethical ones. Your objection to this idea has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of deduction and induction and everything to do with your ethical objection to an epistemology that privileges that which is available to the few (esoteric) over that which is available to the many (exoteric). You identify the explicit with the exoteric, but I think that you could just as easily argue that explicit scientific knowledge is made esoteric by jargon, while, for instance, religious knowledge is presumably substantially shared by millions of people every Sunday morning, i.e., is exoteric.

But personally, I still think you're looking at "truth" the wrong way. Rather than thinking about it in terms of right and wrong, I imagine truth more like a bulls eye in the middle of a dart board. There are literally an infinite number of ways to be wrong (insofar as there are an infinite number of points in a circle, or any line), one way to be right (that is, one objective truth). But on each circle, people are equally right. So I wouldn't say that my intuition is necessarily more right than others, I would just say that simply because others are right in ways that I'm wrong, doesn't mean they aren't also wrong in ways that I'm right. I'm picturing a dart board with two darts in it that are mirror images of each other (that is, flipped over an axis that goes through the center point). Both darts are equidistant from the center, despite being in different locations. In the same way, two "truths" (such as, the world is good and the world is bad) can be equally true, but nevertheless different/contradictory. The laws of logic, used alone, would tell us that this cannot be.

Also, all truth hangs together (I'm pretty sure that's Plato, unless its Parmenides), so you can't have the whole truth about any one thing until you have the whole truth about everything, which no one has (especially not me).

Those quotes you posted offend my soul. Do you really need proof to understand that those are at best incomplete? What you said above that was more true: observation, logic, and testing are more explicit than intuition and 'superstition' (also, don't you notice how both those quotes rely entirely on persuasive rhetoric, and not at all on logical reasoning?). But more explicit (as we know from socionics) does not equal more true. It merely means more explicit. The balance between the two is to recognize that neither more explicit/objective not more implicit/subjective equals more true.

The great irony of this thread is that you tried to arrive at the conclusion that rationalism is wrong through deduction. If deduction is an incorrect means of producing truth and you arrived at that truth through deduction, it is no longer certain that deduction is an improper means of truth acquisition and your conclusion is suspect... and so on. You just created a paradox by biting the hand that feeds your argument.

Have you read anything I wrote? There is no proof, only persuasion. Even though my deductive reasoning doesn't prove that deductive reasoning is fallible (obviously, it can't), it should be able to persuade you that deductive reasoning is fallible, simply because that makes sense. Also, your argument proves my point: you do arrive at a paradox or several applying reason. One such paradox is that reason destroys itself. What do we do with these paradoxes? We pick a truth based on something besides reason.

But you could make the same argument about Empiricism. Arguing against one side makes you seem supportive of the other. Even if you aren't.

Honestly, I don't argue against Empiricism, because very few people are strict empiricists. I mean, no one thinks that they have to experience history in order to learn in a history class. No one thinks they have to experience being a Danish prince in order to learn about Hamlet. But lots of people do think that nothing is true unless established to be so through deduction and induction. It's not culturally worthwhile to argue against Empiricism. It's culturally worthwhile to sharpen my arguments against rationalism, because I'm more likely to meet a rationalist than an empiricist.

You could also argue that I'm still a rationalist in the sense that a rationalist is "any view appealing to reason a source of knowledge or justification." I just think 'reason' is wider than contemporary usage would have us believe. After all, I apprehend a pun with my reason. The part of poetry that transmits knowledge is apprehended through reason (and the transmission of feeling aids this transmission of knowledge through self-awareness). Reason includes "rational intuition," of propositions that are not inferred from any other truth. I'm just saying that we can rationally intuit things besides just "1 + 1 = 2" and "don't kill babies."

I guess I don't get why you'd be "anti-rationalist". It's all well and fine to say that rationalism doesn't encompass all aspects of experience. In the same way that hammers are great when you're dealing with nails and not so much if you're dealing with crying babies, we don't seem to have any sort of cognitive swiss army knife that's going to bail us out of every situation. There's no fault to be had in a tool that doesn't do more than it's suited for, only in pressing it into service beyond its purchase.

Naturally, reading your last post it looks like we pretty much agree on that, but I'm not sure we necessarily take it and run with it in the same direction. I'd say that this points to approaching perception and processing as something fuller, as something that is only partially susceptible to any given singular perspective. Thus you wouldn't necessarily be anti-rationalist, just more likely to call into question your natural, preferred mode and to be less immediately dismissive of contrary or contradictory viewpoints.

Yes, I agree with that. Calling "anti-rationalist" is dramatic. What I mean is "I am against any system of epistemology that holds that truth can only be reached through induction or deduction, and especially against any system of epistemological ethics that holds that we ought not to believe anything that cannot be proven through induction or deduction." And yes, I should be more likely to call into question my preferred mode. But I'd rather have my preferred mode and go very far in it, and then but up against others' truth, as I have in this thread. I hate to socionicize this, but it sounds like Se vs. Si. Opposition is true friendship vs. Can't we just get along.

Also, we might disagree on what the "proper place" of reason is. I think that it doesn't matter how much one proves via reason that I do or don't have a soul---I have a soul, and that is just true. I don't know what that sentence "I have a soul" means, but I know that it has some inherent truth value, that it is at least somewhat true, and we can work out the details later.

[munenori2]

I think that it doesn't matter how much one proves via reason that I do or don't have a soul---I have a soul, and that is just true. I don't know what that sentence "I have a soul" means, but I know that it has some inherent truth value, that it is at least somewhat true, and we can work out the details later.

But...but!

1) There is no such thing as self-evidence. Self-evidence is a nice way of saying circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is a negative way of saying self-evident.

2) Logical conclusions are only true if the premises are true.

[silverchris9]

But...but!

1) There is no such thing as self-evidence. Self-evidence is a nice way of saying circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is a negative way of saying self-evident.

2) Logical conclusions are only true if the premises are true.

Nice.

I would say that just reflects a limitation of my language. There is no such thing as self-evidence for a logical argument, but my whole point is that things like "I have a soul" are true, and that we apprehend that truth through means other than deduction, and that we are justified in those beliefs. I am justified in believing I have a soul not because it is self-evident propositionally or logically but because it is evident to me via intuition or what-you-will.

(Even Plato/Socrates required only that we tie down our beliefs with account, and although this is only subtly different from the requirement of logical justification, I think it's an important subtle difference.)

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

at school they taught me how to be, so pure in word and thought and deed

(They didn't quite succeed)

[EyeSeeCold]

at school they taught me how to be, so pure in word and thought and deed

(They didn't quite succeed)

Indeed.

[somavision]

Everything is subjective. You don't objectively exist. Subjectivism implies solipsism. It also implies ethical nihilism.

Nope, solipcism requires a belief in yourself, which requires external validation. If anything it implies non-dualism and as I've learned from wikipedia.

Nondualism superficially resembles solipsism, but from a nondual perspective solipsism mistakenly fails to consider subjectivity itself. Upon careful examination of the referent of "I," i.e. one's status as a separate observer of the perceptual field, one finds that one must be in as much doubt about it, too, as solipsists are about the existence of other minds and the rest of "the external world." (One way to see this is to consider that, due to the conundrum posed by one's own subjectivity becoming a perceptual object to itself, there is no way to validate one's "self-existence" except through the eyes of others—the independent existence of which is already solipsistically suspect!) Nondualism ultimately suggests that the referent of "I" is in fact an artificial construct (merely the border separating "inner" from "outer," in a sense), the transcendence of which constitutes enlightenment.

-and that's a whole different ketle of fish

[Brilliand]

Nope, solipcism requires a belief in yourself, which requires external validation. If anything it implies non-dualism and as I've learned from wikipedia.

Nondualism superficially resembles solipsism, but from a nondual perspective solipsism mistakenly fails to consider subjectivity itself. Upon careful examination of the referent of "I," i.e. one's status as a separate observer of the perceptual field, one finds that one must be in as much doubt about it, too, as solipsists are about the existence of other minds and the rest of "the external world." (One way to see this is to consider that, due to the conundrum posed by one's own subjectivity becoming a perceptual object to itself, there is no way to validate one's "self-existence" except through the eyes of others—the independent existence of which is already solipsistically suspect!) Nondualism ultimately suggests that the referent of "I" is in fact an artificial construct (merely the border separating "inner" from "outer," in a sense), the transcendence of which constitutes enlightenment.

-and that's a whole different ketle of fish

To add another twist to the argument... why must we doubt things that we do not have absolute proof of? At this point the argument in favor of doubt has to be a logical argument based on something more certain, when everything becomes doubtful, doubt itself becomes suspect.

Pushing this a bit further justifies basically every line of philosophy, as every alternative to it is naturally suspect (but by the same token, not necessarily wrong).