RoR: Forum

And the hijack continues...(sorry Dennis.)

First off...

Bill, you like to use the words "racist" and "prejudiced" interchangeably. I don't.

The KKK is racist.

The girl in my high school class who kept insisting that I "must be able to dance well!" (despite my explaining to her over and over that I can't), was prejudiced.
She was a nice girl, and I liked her. She just had a preconceived notion about blacks, that's all.
(That's how I've always used these words.)

All my life, I've have had many white friends who liked me just fine. They didn't necessarily want me marrying their brothers, but we got along just fine otherwise.

That's what I mean by subtle, Bill. That's all.

As for Obama, his experience is hardly representative of that of all minorities, or even most of them, Bill. He is a "rock star" (like Oprah, and other minorities---Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, etc.---who have achieved tremendous success due to their popularity among whites.)

And yet, if you asked any of the people mentioned above if they're aware of the kinds of things I'm talking about, they would answer in the affirmative. (They probably don't experience it as much anymore, if at all, because they're so famous, and powerful...but they know it exists, and that the only reason they're insulated is because of their status.) I am not Oprah, Bill. I'm not insulated. I work in a trade with a bunch of blue-collar white guys who would still feel more...let's just say comfortable...if I was one, too. (And I'm not even a "rabble-rouser"!) Except on RoR, of course. ;-)

Incidentally, the prominent black conservatives you keep quoting to bolster your arguments would also answer that they know exactly what I'm referring to. (By the way, why do you always assume I'm not already aware of Steele, McWhorter, etc.? I love those guys!)

The black conservatives, of course, would say what I've been saying in my most recent posts...that this is no excuse for blacks not to achieve success in their lives; it's an annoyance, not a hindrance.
(Obama and Oprah may publicly say the same, but they curiously choose to support a political platform that says otherwise...in fact, the white liberals who are supporting Obama are some of the most prejudiced people out there! One of their core beliefs is that the government needs to assist minorities, who clearly can't do for themselves---through no fault of their own, of course.)

The black conservatives who choose to mainly write on race relations are pointedly non-complainers...that's their purpose as black conservative writers!
But for you to quote them spreading their intended message, and then assume that means they don't still encounter subtle prejudices themselves, or worse, that it must not exist anymore for anyone, is the height of naivete.

Sorry, I don't buy it. (Bill)

(Sigh.)

I know you don't, Bill. It's outside the scope of your personal experience. You've obviously never seen it in action, and you've certainly never experienced it. Nothing I can say will change that fact.

And as long as Steele, McWhorter, Elder, etc. keep doing their jobs, you will use their words to argue that the success of larger-than-life stars like Obama, Oprah, etc. are proof that prejudice (or racism, as you call it sometimes) has been eradicated, at least in this country.

And I don't know how else to explain to you that the lives of minorities are just a tad more complicated than that. (Especially when they're not rich, famous, and powerful.)

Are things better than they were 50 years ago? Of course! They're better than they were 20 years ago! 10 years ago! 5!

I've never suggested that we're still living in Jim Crow times, for Pete's sake! Obviously, we're not. The fact that Obama has a very real shot at becoming the first black President is proof that the times, in general, are different...and that's good...but that does not make anything I've said in any of my previous posts an exaggeration. (Not for those of us who aren't "rock stars", anyway.)

Erica

Post 81

Saturday, February 23, 2008 - 9:43pm

(My post and John A.'s post crossed.)

In this kind of social setting or any social setting where it is a social gathering for the purpose of friendly conversation, as a given I give everyone a blank slate, and then I take their own words subsequently to come to a judgment about THAT person. (John Armaos; bold emphasis and italics mine)

Exactly!!

Post 82

Sunday, February 24, 2008 - 10:58am

If you compliment someone while making note of their race it is going to be interpreted as a backhanded way of saying "the exception proves the rule". It is glaringly obvious that you are prejudicial in your thinking and that it is part of your interactions towards this person. Instant "game over".

Post 83

Sunday, February 24, 2008 - 12:10pm

Erica,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply (which I sanctioned)! You wrote,

All my life, I've have had many white friends who liked me just fine. They didn't necessarily want me marrying their brothers, but we got along just fine otherwise.

That's what I mean by subtle, Bill. That's all.

Okay. I was under the impression that you had to endure a steady diet of racially prejudiced remarks, because you said, "Bill, as a highly educated white man, you don't have a clue as to what it's like to hear this crap on a regular basis." Glad to hear that's not the case. I was not suggesting, by the way, that these kinds of remarks had been expunged entirely from our society.

Incidentally, the prominent black conservatives you keep quoting to bolster your arguments would also answer that they know exactly what I'm referring to. (By the way, why do you always assume I'm not already aware of Steele, McWhorter, etc.? I love those guys!)

Oh, I don't assume that you're not aware of them. Quite the contrary. I quoted Steele, precisely because I knew that you had read and liked him. By the way, what do you think of Thomas Sowell? -- because he deals a lot with these racial-cultural issues.

The black conservatives who choose to mainly write on race relations are pointedly non-complainers...that's their purpose as black conservative writers! But for you to quote them spreading their intended message, and then assume that means they don't still encounter subtle prejudices themselves, or worse, that it must not exist anymore for anyone, is the height of naivete.

I don't assume that at all. I've never said, nor would I say, that subtle prejudice doesn't exist. I was simply taking issue with what I thought was your view that racially prejudiced remarks were a regular occurrence in modern American society.

Another reason I had for doubting your assertion is that white people who are prejudiced against blacks are more likely to reveal their prejudices to other whites than they are to blacks, and I rarely encounter another white person who is prejudiced. So I didn't see how whites who don't reveal their prejudices to me would reveal them to blacks by making overtly prejudiced comments in their presence, and not only make them in their presence but do so on a regular, ongoing basis.

But my primary focus was on a slightly different issue -- that remarks with racial qualifiers are inappropriate, because they're inherently collectivist. Suppose an African American said to John Armaos,"You know, John, for a white man, you show a rare appreciation for the problems African Americans face in our society." Would you object to that remark, because it contained a racial qualifier? Suppose that most whites didn't have such an appreciation, and that John were a distinguished exception. Would you still object to it?

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer on 2/24, 12:24pm)

Post 84

Sunday, February 24, 2008 - 2:01pm

Buck Rogers will now wrestle control of the spaceship away from arch-nemesis Princess Ardala and put it back on course… (Just kidding, Erica.)

When we last saw our hero, he was explaining that a major challenge facing Objectivists was widespread misunderstanding of the ethics of rational self-interest, due largely to the fact that people do not grasp how the word “rational” differentiates our cultural-social agenda from that the Hobbesian nightmare of “war of all against all.” If Freud and others believe that religious morality has a certain social utility in preventing such chaos, perhaps critics dismiss Objectivism because it appears to do the exact opposite.

Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Age of American Unreason, provides still more grist for the mill. I enjoyed her previous work, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, and found it a welcome antidote to Bush-era quasi-patriotic evangelism. In her new book, however, Jacoby displays her conventional left-wing bias, denouncing Ayn Rand as an advocate of “social Darwinism.”

Here is a quote from Jacoby in a message to Washingtonpost.com, echoing a similar reference in her latest book:

“American freethought has run the gamut from deism--belief in a God who set the universe in motion but takes no active role in the affairs of men--to outright atheism. Freethinkers are not necessarily atheists (neither Thomas Paine nor Thomas Jefferson were atheists, but both were freethinkers), and atheists are not necessarily freethinkers. The novelist Ayn Rand and the satirist H.L. Mencken, both well-known for their atheism, were devotees not of the democratic freethought tradition but, ultimately, of right-wing social Darwinism.”

The phrase “social Darwinism” is interpreted in various ways. Applying Darwin’s theory of natural selection to human culture, it is often used to denote free competition and minimal government. According to wikipedia, however, the pejorative sense of the term was popularized by historian Richard Hofstadler in the 1940’s, and it is commonly associated with Fascism and Nazism. In fact, Hitler adopted it as a pillar of Nazi ideology:

“…Hitler often refused to intervene in the promotion of officers and staff members, preferring instead to have them fight amongst themselves to force the "stronger" person to prevail - "strength" referring to those social forces void of virtue or principle. Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”, 1925) exemplified one of his core values which he applied to all of society, one in which, as animals and plants struggle for survival and dominance, so do peoples and cultures and societies….”

Oblivious to the fundamental benevolence of rational self-interest, writers like Jacoby are doing their part to smear Ayn Rand as an advocate of social guerilla warfare. This further underscores the critical importance of clarifying precisely what rationality means in general and with respect to self-interest in particular. There is just too much confusion surrounding that term for observers to grasp how it distinguishes our social perspective from traditional views.

As witness, another bewildering quote from Jacoby:

"Describing freethinkers in the revolutionary generation, I write in my book: "What the many types of freethinkers shared, regardless of their views on the existence, or nonexistence, of a divinity, was a rationalist approach to fundamental questions of earthly existence--a conviction that the affairs of human beings should be governed not by faith in the supernatural but by a reliance on reason and evidence adduced from the natural world." Many people of liberal faith, now and in the past, qualify as freethinkers by that definition."

But apparently not , in her biased opinion, Ayn Rand. (!)

Post 85

Sunday, February 24, 2008 - 2:37pm

Dennis, post 84 was illuminative.

I think that the key reason that many folks think that the term: "rational" is a stand-in for "cold and cut-throat" is that they don't sufficiently understand what it means to be human -- in the Aristotelian and Randian sense of the term (i.e., what's been referred to as "philosophical humanism").

Herbert Spencer (who coined: "survival of the fittest"?) made this mistake when writing about folks as if they were beings in zero-sum relations just as nearly all animals and plants are (except for symbiotics).

Something terribly close to 100% of Game Theory researchers also make this thinking error, and end up calling rational behaviors irrational -- because they don't fit into their short-sighted and narrow-minded schemata of what it means for a human being to exercise rationality.

References upon request.

;-)

Ed

Post 86

Sunday, February 24, 2008 - 3:45pm

Ed,

If I understand you correctly, your last post relates to some of what I had to say in post #20:

So how does the average person think about the issue of rational action? Here’s a clue from wikipedia, under the topic of rationality: “All that is required for an action to be rational is that if one believes action X (which can be done) implies Y, and that Y is desirable, he or she does X.”
In other words, our reasoning powers can deal with facts and draw conclusions from them, but cannot dictate our choice of values; only our emotions can do this... So if you told an anxious, troubled thief to be rational, he would not question his decision to be a thief—he would think about more effective ways to steal.

Wikipedia’s entry on “social Darwinism” has an extensive discussion of Herbert Spencer and Thomas Malthus. This particular quote supports your zero-sum reference:

"While Malthus's work does not itself qualify as social Darwinism, his 1798 work, An Essay on the Principle of Population, was incredibly popular and widely read by social Darwinists. In that book, for example, the author argued that as an increasing population would normally outgrow its food supply, this would result in the starvation of the weakest and a Malthusian catastrophe."

I can see how this thinking might be applied to game theory, especially those games that assume that players can only gain at each other’s expense. Apparently you have done some reading in that field. I would definitely be interested in your insights about the prevalence of the zero-sum thinking you encountered and the extent of its’ current influence in spheres such as economics.

Post 87

Sunday, February 24, 2008 - 4:52pm

Dennis,

Here's a couple. As a highly-skilled researcher, I can generate these abstracts at whim. However, I haven't (yet?) retrieved the full-text for the following, relevant abstracts ...

On the "failure" of rationality:
==============
Behav Brain Sci. 2003 Apr;26(2):139-53; discussion 153-98.

Cooperation, psychological game theory, and limitations of rationality in social interaction.

Colman AM.

School of Psychology, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom. amc@le.ac.uk

Rational choice theory enjoys unprecedented popularity and influence in the behavioral and social sciences, but it generates intractable problems when applied to socially interactive decisions. In individual decisions, instrumental rationality is defined in terms of expected utility maximization. This becomes problematic in interactive decisions, when individuals have only partial control over the outcomes, because expected utility maximization is undefined in the absence of assumptions about how the other participants will behave.

Game theory therefore incorporates not only rationality but also common knowledge assumptions, enabling players to anticipate their co-players' strategies. Under these assumptions, disparate anomalies emerge. Instrumental rationality, conventionally interpreted, fails to explain intuitively obvious features of human interaction, yields predictions starkly at variance with experimental findings, and breaks down completely in certain cases.

In particular, focal point selection in pure coordination games is inexplicable, though it is easily achieved in practice; the intuitively compelling payoff-dominance principle lacks rational justification; rationality in social dilemmas is self-defeating; a key solution concept for cooperative coalition games is frequently inapplicable; and rational choice in certain sequential games generates contradictions.

In experiments, human players behave more cooperatively and receive higher payoffs than strict rationality would permit. Orthodox conceptions of rationality are evidently internally deficient and inadequate for explaining human interaction. Psychological game theory, based on nonstandard assumptions, is required to solve these problems, and some suggestions along these lines have already been put forward.
==============

On economic effects [Caution: Camerer & Fehr seem to speak from that wrong mindset which I characterized above]:
==============
When does "economic man" dominate social behavior?
Camerer CF, Fehr E.

California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. camerer@hss.caltech.edu

The canonical model in economics considers people to be rational and self-regarding. However, much evidence challenges this view, raising the question of when "Economic Man" dominates the outcome of social interactions, and when bounded rationality or other-regarding preferences dominate.

Here we show that strategic incentives are the key to answering this question. A minority of self-regarding individuals can trigger a "noncooperative" aggregate outcome if their behavior generates incentives for the majority of other-regarding individuals to mimic the minority's behavior.

Likewise, a minority of other-regarding individuals can generate a "cooperative" aggregate outcome if their behavior generates incentives for a majority of self-regarding people to behave cooperatively.

Similarly, in strategic games, aggregate outcomes can be either far from or close to Nash equilibrium if players with high degrees of strategic thinking mimic or erase the effects of others who do very little strategic thinking.

Recently developed theories of other-regarding preferences and bounded rationality explain these findings and provide better predictions of actual aggregate behavior than does traditional economic theory.
==============

Ed

Post 88

Sunday, February 24, 2008 - 4:58pm

My favorite quote (from above):

===========
In experiments, human players behave more cooperatively and receive higher payoffs than strict rationality would permit.
===========

"[H]igher payoffs than strict rationality would permit." [!]

Ha! What philosophical bankruptcy (of Colman; a publishing scientist)!

Ed

Post 89

Sunday, February 24, 2008 - 9:37pm

Ed—Thank you. These articles are a revelation.

The “orthodox conception of rationality” in the first abstract seems to be exactly that of Humean means-end thinking: what is the most efficient way to achieve a predetermined result? The assumption seems to be that such “instrumental” thinking becomes intuitively unreliable in contexts where one person’s decisions involve predictions about another person’s choices and where both agents are working toward mutually shared goals. The apparent implication is that rationality is “self-defeating” in social situations.

The second paper’s attempt at developing a model for predicting socio-economic behavior strikes me as even more muddled. The term “bounded rationality” is a new one on me. It seems to designate something along the lines of subjective rationality—i.e., the sub optimal limitations (e.g., of knowledge or intelligence) that impair rational choices. The abstract seems to suggest that people change their behavior pragmatically based on their perception of whether others are getting better results. “Bounded rationality” appears to be even less “rational” than that which is based on pure means-end utility.

Wow. I am starting to feel overwhelmed. The task of helping people to see the actual meaning of rational self-interest seems truly daunting. The misconceptions we must try to unravel are so numerous I scarcely know where to begin. No wonder the Objectivist movement seems to be treading water.

Thanks again for submitting these. They help to clarify what we're up against.

Post 90

Monday, February 25, 2008 - 9:21am

Dennis,

I did research on the origin and propagation of this wrong view of rationality. What I found that was, while Plato started it all, Hume, Kant, and William James -- as well as existentialists and feminist philosophers -- kept this bad ball rolling.

James did it by Kant-worship that involved breaking folks up into tough-minded and tender-minded. He regarded tough-minded folks as empirical & fact-based; and the tender-minded ones as rational & principle-based.

And when you pit principle AGAINST fact like that; there's no place to go but to Hell in a hand-basket!

Ed

Post 91

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - 12:06am

Well, Ed, I got so frustrated trying to figure out what rationality is that I decided to go to the bookstore, and—Eureka! There it was! Just what I was looking for: The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, by Alfred Mele and Piers Rawling. Finally, the definitive source for applying this radical new Objectivist principle of rational self-interest.

Wow! Now I have all the answers I was looking for…

“…Decision theory is one approach in which rationality is seen as a matter of internal consistency. Minimally, the idea behind internal consistency approaches to rationality is that one might be rational and yet have false beliefs and perverse preferences provided that one is in some sense coherent….”

“…Sometimes the issue of the basis of morality is put in terms of reasons: does one have reason to be moral? …But some authors deny that rationality requires doing what you have most reason to do…”

“…Practical reasoning differs from theoretical reasoning in allowing arbitrary decisions and a certain sort of wishful thinking….”

“…according to proceduralism an agent is open to rational criticism for lacking a desire only if she fails to have a desire that she can rationally reach from her beliefs and other desires, whereas according to substantivism an agent is open to such criticism not only if her desires fail procedurally, but also if they fail substantively…”

“…coherence provides us with the needed accounts of inductive and practical rationality…In the theoretical domain there are propositions to serve as objects of belief, and these propositions can be reasons for further beliefs….”

“…Her central concern in “Kant: Rationality as Practical Reason” is to explicate Kant’s account of how we could have unconditional practical reasons to do as morality requires…what makes a practical reason unconditional is its universal recognizability….”

“…On the one hand, the rational sociopath is immoral. But, on the other, morality does not require that we always act on the weightiest moral reasons; we may not be reasonably expected to know what these are…”.

“…Rationality assumptions are a basic ingredient of game theory, but though rational choice may be unproblematic in normative decision theory, it becomes problematic in interactive contexts, where the outcome of one’s choice depends on the actions of other agents…”

“Patricia Greenspan, in “Rationality and Emotion”, discusses emotion as an element of practical rationality. One approach links emotion to evaluative judgment and applies some variant of the usual standards of rational belief and decision making….”

Based on this, I have concluded that rationality is just a matter of trying to be practical while remaining faithful to your beliefs and desires, especially if it seems like everyone else has the same beliefs and desires. That is, of course, unless you just don’t happen to feel like it.

Wow. Rationality is really cool.

Post 92

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - 9:06am

Ho ... ly S-M-O-K-E-S, Dennis! What have you unearthed?!

Wow.

Oxford, huh?

[sighs heavily, but with a cracked smile]

I have a heightened respect for the professional philosophers who -- wrestling in the mud with such intellectual swine -- keep themselves relatively cleansed of this muck. These philosopher's contributing to this book -- obviously -- didn't take Mill's advice about living as a satisfied pig!

Anyway, no matter. I mean, the Hardin-Thompson (or is it: the Thompson-Hardin??) book: "Rationality Revived: A new look at an old way of thinking." hasn't even hit the printers, yet -- so how are we supposed to expect these pro's to be able to think straight about straight-thinking??

:-)

p.s. It wasn't a coincidence that neither Myers nor Briggs were "professional" psychologists. Sometimes the pro's can get in the way of the true experts.

:-)

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 2/26, 9:09am)

Post 93

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - 11:17am

Some interesting discussion here... for myself, have noted the following - the general presumption is the old saw of philosophy,m namely tha "all is belief, with knowing as belief with certainty.".... despite all the prepondernce of visible evidence, let alone invisible yet derived evidence, most still seem to hold to the 'zero-sum' view of the world - indeed, it is the straw dog of the enviromental/global-warming/greenie mentalities... yet -

whenever I have discussed the idea of reason/rationality/emotionalism to others, it is always prefaced with noting the following - that, by the nature of being able to survive as living entities, all living organisms must, by their nature, be integrated beings - else they would/could not survive.... and that this includes humans... further, all higher animals have emotions, not just humans, as it is aconsequental aspect of the developed complexity of nerve organization, itself an enhancement to survivability... so the idea of reason/emotion conflict as an inherant aspect of being human is false -with a craveat, namely that humans are not robots, that their reasoning faculty, while a necessity for their survival, has to be learned in order for it to be optimally useable - and that as such it is not a 'necessary evil' as so oft supposed, to be used only when it absolutely must be used, indeed, the more it is used, the better off one is... [for one, if something is necessary, it cannot be evil]...

I rarely have any disagreement thus far - and it is short stepping to then point out what an emotion actually is, that it is an 'effectual', that is, it is a psychosomatic response to the evaluative of 'for me or against' me in regards to that particular instance of the human's relationship to the immediate enviroment, be that another person, the job, the weather, the traffic, the lost pet - whatever.... [and if they're not understanding of what'psychosomatic' means, is quickly said is an automatic physical response to a mental evaluation - and as such, being automatic, is neither good or bad, just is]

then one merely points out that reason is the means of asserting whether that emotion in question is correct or not - that reason is that faculty one possesses that perceives, identifies, and integrates what the senses provide - that is why humans have it, that is what it is for - and that it is the identifying [the conceptualness of reasoning] and the integrating which is what makes for the human as human, that emotions are a pre-human, lower than human animal method of assessing for survival, but that the human has greater survivalness due to being to assess the emotions and note whether or not is founded on valid suppositions - which then in turn leads to greater survivability...

This all in turn allows for assessing the 'zero-sum' notion and making clear how false that is, as well as the notion that 'all is belief' [an idea bourne in the time when no one knew the nature of the mind as biology and thus understandable, tho incorrect...] the times when this discussion has taken place, usually among those at, say a pub or some such, among 'ordinary' persons, has never failed to bring enlightenment and clarity to the others - and thus allowing for further discussions on other matters... [now - whether this would work among college students is another matter - considering how corrupted their thinking process so often has become, I would not make guarantees..] ;-)

Post 94

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - 12:17pm

Ed,

Anyway, no matter. I mean, the Hardin-Thompson (or is it: the Thompson-Hardin??) book: "Rationality Revived: A new look at an old way of thinking," hasn't even hit the printers, yet -- so how are we supposed to expect these pro's to be able to think straight about straight-thinking??

Do we have a publisher yet? If not, maybe we could try selling this as a piggyback to Al Gore’s Assault on Reason.

Post 95

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - 2:20pm

Dennis, you asked:

==================
Do we have a publisher yet?
==================

Not yet, but I kind of just submitted our "Table of Contents" as an RoR article (sorry I didn't run it by you first; was too excited!). Anyway, if the bugger passes through the article moderator and gets posted, then methinks you will not be displeased with the "product" ...

;-)

Ed

p.s. I'm counting on you to come up with the "Index", the "Preface" and/or "Introduction", and the "Bibliography." And we're set up -- at least in my mind -- to alternate writing/editing chapters (keeping each other honest, you know?).

Post 96

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - 11:55pm

Ed,

... I kind of just submitted our "Table of Contents" as an RoR article (sorry I didn't run it by you first; was too excited!). Anyway, if the bugger passes through the article moderator and gets posted, then methinks you will not be displeased with the "product" ...

I am quite sure you’re right. I couldn’t take the suspense, so I did the “rational” thing: I asked a mind-reader to tap into your brain for an advance copy. This is all she could give me:

Chapter One: Practical Reasoning: Getting the most from your perversions

Chapter Two: Theoretical Reasoning: Setting your psychotic fantasies free

Chapter Three: Reasoning & Game Theory: Pretending to play well with others

Chapter Four: Ethical Reasoning: Having your cake and eating everyone else’s

The psychic channel shut down after that. My medium thinks you were scrambling the signal.

p.s. I'm counting on you to come up with the "Index", the "Preface" and/or "Introduction", and the "Bibliography."

Done. I had to fudge the page numbers for the index, but hopefully no one will notice.

And we're set up -- at least in my mind -- to alternate writing/editing chapters (keeping each other honest, you know?).

Good idea. We shouldn’t plagiarize the same sources.

Post 97

Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - 12:22am

Dennis!

:-))

LOL! You're too funny! Your sense of humor precedes you [or something very much like that].

Anyway, I got to thinking about how we're to go about splitting this book's royalties and it dawned on me that this whole project was basically YOUR IDEA. And, with that fact firmly in mind, I felt that you should get no less than 30% of the royalties. And don't try to argue this with me, Dennis, because I wouldn't accept any less for you. It's a "justice" thing, you know -- so you're going to have to learn to live with at least that much of a cut on this deal.

:-)

Also, seeing's how you said you were the victim of suspense, I thought that I could give you at least a sample ...

... RATIONALITY (WELL UNDERSTOOD):

Ayn Rand (b. 1905)
===============
Irrationality is the rejection of man's means of survival and, therefore, a commitment to a course of blind destruction; that which is anti-mind, is anti-life.

The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action. …

It means a commitment to the principle that all of one's convictions, values, goals, desires and actions must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of thought—as precise and scrupulous a process of thought, directed by as ruthlessly strict an application of logic, as one's fullest capacity permits.

It means one's acceptance of the responsibility of forming one's own judgments and of living by the work of one's own mind (which is the virtue of Independence). It means that one must never sacrifice one's convictions to the opinions or wishes of others (which is the virtue of Integrity)—that one must never attempt to fake reality in any manner (which is the virtue of Honesty)—that one must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved, neither in matter nor in spirit (which is the virtue of Justice). …

It means a commitment to reason, not in sporadic fits or on selected issues or in special emergencies, but as a permanent way of life.—“The Objectivist Ethics”, VOS, 440
===============

RATIONALITY (POORLY UNDERSTOOD) ...

... Ah! You're going to have to wait for the rest!

Anyway, notice how I trimmed the quote to make it entirely positive and affirming of something -- except for the one broad and bland characterization of what all "irrationality" entails (in the first sentence).

Aristotle said that men are good in one way, but bad in many -- and I think his wisdom can be extrapolated from ethics to epistemology. There's one good way to think about rationality. And a focus on the positive is more fruitful than finding the myriad wrong ways to think.

Even still, I summarized probably close to a whole dozen wrong ways to think about rationality! And on top of that, I know for a fact that my research was not exhaustively complete!

:-)

Ed

Post 98

Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - 3:59pm

Ed,

…that this whole project was basically YOUR IDEA. And, with that fact firmly in mind, I felt that you should get no less than 30% of the royalties. And don't try to argue this with me, Dennis, because I wouldn't accept any less for you…

I scarcely know what to say. Gee. You’re too generous. I’m touched. And humbled.

Aristotle said that men are good in one way, but bad in many -- and I think his wisdom can be extrapolated from ethics to epistemology…

I can think of another place to extrapolate it. Say, royalty distribution for example.

Even still, I summarized probably close to a whole dozen wrong ways to think about rationality! And on top of that, I know for a fact that my research was not exhaustively complete!

Looks like an excellent start. I suppose you realize we’re challenging two and a half thousand years of cultural tradition…Setting people straight on what rational self-interest is and isn’t will be a formidable task. I feel sure you’re up to it. I will be there to take most of the credit if we succeed.

Post 99

Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - 4:22pm