GENIUS FORUMS

Matt,

I don't even understand the question. What do you mean by religion?

That is to say, has there been a cohesive enough body of work by rationalists that doctrinal claims can be made? Can rationalism be effectively summed up with reference to its paragon achievements and founding characters in a coherent and comprehensive enough way that non-philosophers can be given a full and consistent view of the world? Does rationalism have a final end (Summa Bonum) for humans to strive toward?

Is there a "perfect rationalist" that can be modeled after and that all people should strive to become?

Neil,

I guess I'm a rational empiricist then because I realize that you cannot get any "truth" from deductions based on the empiricists' definitions.

Do you have anything of substance to add to the conversation? You don't even seem to want anyone to reply to you any more; you seem quite content to simply smell your own farts.

Rationalism is simply thinking for yourself. It means creating your own conceptions and definitions from scratch - which may or may not involve accepting society's definitions - and being in full control of the reasoning process from start to finish. In other words, it means gaining mastery over your own mind.

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David,

Rationalism is simply thinking for yourself. It means creating your own conceptions and definitions from scratch - which may or may not involve accepting society's definitions - and being in full control of the reasoning process from start to finish. In other words, it means gaining mastery over your own mind.

Strange definition. Part of the confusion of this thread is from having different ideas of rationalism.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states:
"The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge."

Neil, that definition is misleading. As such, David's is far more accurate. For instance, when it says:

Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge.

...it does not explain why an empiricist might make this claim. The gut reaction of a non-philosopher is to assume that the difference is in sense experience. You might believe that empiricists like the senses whereas rationalists hate the senses. On the contrary, the dispute is more over definitions of what constitutes "knowledge". It's largely a technicality over whether or not knowledge has to be useful to be valid. An empiricist might say "a definition is not knowledge, since you cannot make predictions with it", whereas a rationalist would say "a definition is knowledge, since anything derived from a careful consideration of definitions is true."

However, both a rationalist and empiricist agree that anything derived from careful consideration of definitions is true, and that empirical predictions cannot be made solely from definitions. Both sides agree on the metaphysics, just not on the epistemology.

Trevor,

Neil, that definition is misleading.

You are free to provide a better one. I am personally not fond of the whole rationalist vs. empiricist subject because I never find common definitions.

In "The Matrix" we see minds hooked up to a network which provides the "experience" so well rendered that it seems real. How would an 'empiracist' know the diff?/

Neil,

You are free to provide a better one. I am personally not fond of the whole rationalist vs. empiricist subject because I never find common definitions.

I have already provided a better definition, that completely explains the differences and corresponds both to David's definition and is what I used to show the flaw in that definition. Since these are powerful philosophic positions, and I'm not merely defining what a person means when he says "tree", I will restate the definition here in the shortest form that I think the words merit.

The difference between the two schools of thought is the focus of the individual author. Rationalists aim toward truth, and empiricists aim toward utility. A mixture of both is necessary toward any philosophy, but when one leans toward utility, for instance, one will define knowledge to be something like "predictive power", and thus exclude tautologies (definitions) from the set of all facts that are considered knowledge. On the other hand, if one believes that discovering truth is more important than figuring out what to do with it, then knowledge will often include so-called "non-empirical" sources, such as definitions.

There is no clear methodological or ontological difference between an empiricist and a rationalist. They are competing epistemologies (theories of knowledge), which most people would consider to be the most tedious argument imaginable -- since by all appearances, they agree on everything but one definition.

I would add to this that it is impossible to resolve metaphysical problems without first having some working epistemology. Knowing what can be known is very important. Only once you have decided between empiricism and rationalism is is possible to decide, for example, between agnosticism and "gnostic" beliefs (such as atheism, pantheism, and theism). Deciding whether one is a rationalist or empiricist is the first test of what standard of evidence appeals to you. An empiricist is unlikely to consider a logical proof sufficient explanation for cause and effect, for instance, and certainly not enough to disprove once and for all the existence of the Judeo-Christian God; or he may criticize rationalists for what he views as undue stress on definitions, since as truthful as they are, they aren't very useful.

Trevor,

That is to say, has there been a cohesive enough body of work by rationalists that doctrinal claims can be made? Can rationalism be effectively summed up with reference to its paragon achievements and founding characters in a coherent and comprehensive enough way that non-philosophers can be given a full and consistent view of the world? Does rationalism have a final end (Summa Bonum) for humans to strive toward?

Is there a "perfect rationalist" that can be modeled after and that all people should strive to become?

I don't think the greatest fruits of rationality are prefabricated views that people can hold if that's what you mean.

But if you're not talking about the greatest and just asking whether it's possible in any manner, then I would say we already do that with academic knowledge and science and so forth. People memorize all the information - all the arguments for evolution and the Big Bang and human rights and whatnot (or if you're talking about the Right Wing it would be Creationism and Christian superiority and all that jazz) - and that's it, they're considered rational human beings by doing that. The more they memorize and the better they can articulate it back, the more rational they are considered to be.

I think that's all silly, though. Knowing a lot about a subject is all about doing the practice of studying it on a regular basis. If you enjoy it, that's great, but I don't think it makes a person any more rational than a person who doesn't study anything.

Studying subjects can help stimulate the mind by giving it material to think about, but it can also serve as a distraction and just flood the mind with crap and that's useless. I know someone who reads two books a week. To me that's a waste of time. There's just no way a person can remember all that, much less process it. I think a couple of pages a day is plenty.

Trevor,

The difference between the two schools of thought is the focus of the individual author. Rationalists aim toward truth, and empiricists aim toward utility. A mixture of both is necessary toward any philosophy, but when one leans toward utility, for instance, one will define knowledge to be something like "predictive power", and thus exclude tautologies (definitions) from the set of all facts that are considered knowledge. On the other hand, if one believes that discovering truth is more important than figuring out what to do with it, then knowledge will often include so-called "non-empirical" sources, such as definitions.

There is no clear methodological or ontological difference between an empiricist and a rationalist. They are competing epistemologies (theories of knowledge), which most people would consider to be the most tedious argument imaginable -- since by all appearances, they agree on everything but one definition.

Here is where I fit: I aim toward truth. But I also understand that truth is simply a value judgment and the only reason anyone seeks truth is for utility.

Thus I don't find rationalism and empiricism to be antipodes or even conflicting. Without empiricism there could be no rationalism though there can be empiricism without rationalism. Where rationalists and empiricists appear to disagree is on the fallibility of language. Rationalists forget that language is fallible and earthly, written by man for the purpose of utility (usually they even deny that their philosophizing fits in right here - for utility). In other words, rationalists forget that the english dictionary is not the law of the universe. If this mistake was never made we would never have come to the position of seeking real facts or absolute truth in the first place.

An empiricist is unlikely to consider a logical proof sufficient explanation for cause and effect, for instance, and certainly not enough to disprove once and for all the existence of the Judeo-Christian God; or he may criticize rationalists for what he views as undue stress on definitions, since as truthful as they are, they aren't very useful.

You have got it wrong though. As, apparently, an empiricist, I don't criticize any truth because it isn't useful because this very idea is ridiculous... truth is highly useful otherwise you wouldn't be seeking it in the first place. No doubt it is more useful to certain people than others, but I can still see that it is useful. What I criticise is when people use a limited inference as though it accurately reflected some population outside of that in which the inductions that led to it were made. The whole disagreement seems so small yet. Perhaps rationalists should be forced to take some history and common sense classes or some philology rather than pure logic.

Neil, what you have incorrectly assumed is that I -- or any rationalist -- hold language to be a law of the universe. When I tell you to check the definitions of words, it is because you are being careless.

Personally, I rarely use dictionaries. However, I am not so hypocritical as to believe that nothing I say has any meaning.

Nor am I so careless as to think that anyone from any philosophic school is stupid or is somehow missing a very obvious fact. The benefit of the doubt is nearly always assumed. Only when someone is being a complete idiot do I believe that they have made a glaring mistake. Quite frankly, you do not have any justification for believing that I -- or any rationalist -- is making such mistakes. The school of thought goes back millenia. If it were so easy to prove wrong, it would not.

Before you feel the need to repeat your points again, I should point out that there is a fallacy called argumentum ad nauseum that you are presently engaged in commiting.

(By the way, "philology" does not exist any more. It has been replaced by "linguistics".)

Trevor,

Neil, what you have incorrectly assumed is that I -- or any rationalist -- hold language to be a law of the universe. When I tell you to check the definitions of words, it is because you are being careless.

It follows, it is not an assumption. To you the universe can be described or at least limited by human language. Therefore you hold human language as having the universe under its control. You believe that the universe is subordinate to your concepts (language). That makes your concepts "laws of the universe".

Personally, I rarely use dictionaries. However, I am not so hypocritical as to believe that nothing I say has any meaning.

Oh it has meaning... to you. Perhaps to me also. But you need to realize how small we really are. Why do you seek truth? Probably because you feel insecure -- at any rate you need something. Why does a wolf hunt? He needs something. You could do no other. Whether the wolf catches a deer or rabbits doesn't really matter, he just doesn't want to starve. His value judgments serve him to this end and no other, regardless of what he might want to believe. At most you will influence generations of human beings and shape the future, at least what you think and say will have meaning only for yourself.

Neil, stop with the assumptions. You are turning yourself into an ass.

Also, if you have anything you'd like to say -- any insults you'd like to get out of your system, for instance -- say it directly.

Neil,

DQ: Rationalism is simply thinking for yourself. It means creating your own conceptions and definitions from scratch - which may or may not involve accepting society's definitions - and being in full control of the reasoning process from start to finish. In other words, it means gaining mastery over your own mind.

Neil: Strange definition. Part of the confusion of this thread is from having different ideas of rationalism.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states:
"The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge."

What I said is not inconsistent with this. Part of gaining the independence of mind to think for oneself is ceasing to be a slave to sense experience.

A rationalist bows down to reason alone, and from that platform challenges everything in the Universe, including sense experience and traditional conceptions. It even includes challenging reason and truth itself.

The perspective of the rationalist is greater than the one adopted by the empiricist. This is because the rationalist is able to embrace empiricism within his larger purview. He is an empiricist when it is rational to be an empiricist, and he is a non-empiricist when it is rational to be a non-empiricist.

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David,

What I said is not inconsistent with this. Part of gaining the independence of mind to think for oneself is ceasing to be a slave to sense experience.

At bottom what do we have other than sense experience? Before you say concepts, can you affirm that all concepts are derived either directly or indirectly from sense experience?

The perspective of the rationalist is greater than the one adopted by the empiricist. This is because the rationalist is able to embrace empiricism within his larger purview. He is an empiricist when it is rational to be an empiricist, and he is a non-empiricist when it is rational to be a non-empiricist.

My contention is that it is never rational to be a non-empiricist. It is never rational to forget that everything is based on sense experience. But that isn't to say we can't reason or seek truth, only that we do it as a means to utility, not an end in itself.

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David writes:

Rationalism is simply thinking for yourself. It means creating your own conceptions and definitions from scratch - which may or may not involve accepting society's definitions - and being in full control of the reasoning process from start to finish. In other words, it means gaining mastery over your own mind.

This is more suited to a definition of relativity - a closed-loop system that could illustrate the thought-world of even the most deluded being.

What one might realize is that the rationalist approach is the direct offshoot of the early belief in Natural Law. This belief says that the universe itself is rational in nature and structure, so that when we use reason, we can think our way into the nature and structure of reality itself. The more reason we use, the greater our view of this "reasonable" entity known as the World.

Your definition above is duplicitous in the sense that you claim it is more than David Quinn alone that you discover in this process. Nay, you have claimed your thinking process to tap into the nature of reality itself, even the whole of the totality. And you claim to do this with the use of reason, and that you can do this because you speak the same language as the universe itself. Rationality is impossible to separate from its roots in natural law. When one separates them, one is back to the closed-loop of private subjective experience.

I agree with Neil that this historical juxtaposition of rationalism and empiricism as mutually exclusive is a tired old philosophical parlour game.

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Rupert Sheldrake, "Morphic Resonance & The Presence of the Past" sub "The Habits of Nature", weighs in on this in a unique way. He points out that Newtonian Natural law was based on eternals and infinities. But after Einstein, we discover that the universe is 15 billion light years across; large, but not infinite, nor has it always existed, nor will it always either.

And conversely, he argues that consciousness is not as temporal as its been cracked up to be. That something existed before birth, and will exist after death. I'm only 20 pages into a 375 pg work, but what comes to me is that he's talking networks. As if the divine is a mainframe and individuals are terminals. The mainframe has always been regarded as a backup system of data collected by the terminals.

No matter what you do to a terminal, if you have the data, you can reconstruct the terminal. Even Plato, in his escatology, felt that existance was recorded, and should be judged as a work of art. Like a movie. Mine is not a very good movie, but I've not figured out who the audience to please is. May yet. Dunno.

Sheldrake argues, with some meat behind him, that 3 pounds of gray matter is not sufficient to hold the sum total of human memory, and that there necessarily is some kind of networking, his "Morphic Resonance" going on in the quantum states of some of the other dimensions we know exist. Whatever the merits of that case, "rationalism" has yet to even try to come to terms with quantum states.

All primates have instinctive behavior patterns. Dr. Paul Ekman shows how hominids still have autonomic responses inherited from primate ancestors, and there've been several studies of the reactions of babies to distorted faces or the effects of operant conditioning. Christian cosmology is challenged by the whole idea that hominids have autonomic responses to certain situations, and that "choices" are not actually, the result of "free will".

Sheldrake takes Jung's racial memory notions even further, and suggests that individual experience, which is recorded by the mainframe, diffuses thru the entire database to then affect the behavior of others later. This is a lot like the idea of "memes". Everything may be based on sense experience, but its not limited to the experience of any given individual.

White women ruled the Steppes on horseback for thousands of years, and today, their pubescent descendants still have a powerful instinctive response to horses. Girls of other races could care less. The range of operation subject to "free choice" has been dramatically reduced. When you understand the instinctive responses to an individual, you can predict how they will act. Which has always been the sign of a successful general.

Neil,

DQ: What I said is not inconsistent with this. Part of gaining the independence of mind to think for oneself is ceasing to be a slave to sense experience.

Neil: At bottom what do we have other than sense experience? Before you say concepts, can you affirm that all concepts are derived either directly or indirectly from sense experience?

I'll give you an example of how we can reason beyond the empirical realm.

Instead of, say, creating the category, "tree", and grouping a certain number of empirical objects into it, we can create a broader category, "thing", and insert every phenomena in the Universe in there. We can then use this category to uncover those traits and characteristics that all phenomena share - for example, that each and every phenomenon is limited in extent.

Notice that when thinking about things this broadly, there is no need of any empirical testing and observation. Empirical observation and testing can't add anything to the process. A thing is always a thing - whether it be a mountain, an electron, a thought, a person, a galaxy, or whatever. It doesn't matter form a particular thing has, or what empirical characteristics it might possess, it always remains a thing.

So straight away we are in the realm of pure logic, reasoning about matters that cannot be resolved through empirical methods. Our thinking has transcended the empirical realm entirely.

DQ: The perspective of the rationalist is greater than the one adopted by the empiricist. This is because the rationalist is able to embrace empiricism within his larger purview. He is an empiricist when it is rational to be an empiricist, and he is a non-empiricist when it is rational to be a non-empiricist.

Neil: My contention is that it is never rational to be a non-empiricist. It is never rational to forget that everything is based on sense experience. But that isn't to say we can't reason or seek truth, only that we do it as a means to utility, not an end in itself.

It depends on who you are, and what your purpose in life is. For some people, truth is indeed an end in itself.

When it comes to matters of ultimate truth, we have no choice but to learn how to reason non-empirically. Science can never uncover what is ultimately true. It will always be limited in this way.

This too is a non-empirical truth.

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Pye,

DQ: Rationalism is simply thinking for yourself. It means creating your own conceptions and definitions from scratch - which may or may not involve accepting society's definitions - and being in full control of the reasoning process from start to finish. In other words, it means gaining mastery over your own mind.

Pye: This is more suited to a definition of relativity - a closed-loop system that could illustrate the thought-world of even the most deluded being.

What one might realize is that the rationalist approach is the direct offshoot of the early belief in Natural Law. This belief says that the universe itself is rational in nature and structure, so that when we use reason, we can think our way into the nature and structure of reality itself. The more reason we use, the greater our view of this "reasonable" entity known as the World.

The rationalist approach may have started off that way, but it doesn't really apply to those who increasingly become more rational. There is no real correlation between understanding the Universe rationally and the Universe being rational. We can have the former even without the latter. Even if, for the sake of argument, the Universe was nothing but pure random chaos, the rational mind would still be capable of uncovering absolute truths about it.

For example, the most obvious absolute truth would be, "The Universe is nothing but pure random chaos." A skilled thinker could easily unearth many others.

Moreover, the core truth of non-inherent existence would still be the same. It doesn't matter what the rules are, or what the laws of nature are, such a truth can never change.

Your definition above is duplicitous in the sense that you claim it is more than David Quinn alone that you discover in this process. Nay, you have claimed your thinking process to tap into the nature of reality itself, even the whole of the totality.

That's right. David Quinn extends indefinitely. There is no end to him.

Fundamental nature is the same everywhere. What is fundamental to what we observe in the here and now is just as fundamental to what exists in the furtherest reaches of the Universe. As Lao Tzu said:

Without going outside, you may know the whole world.
Without looking through the window, you may see the ways
of heaven.
The farther you go, the less you know.

Thus the sage knows without travelling;
He sees without looking;
He works without doing.

I agree with Neil that this historical juxtaposition of rationalism and empiricism as mutually exclusive is a tired old philosophical parlour game.

I disagree. There really is a sharp divide between empirical and non-empirical knowledge - always has been and always be. This is a reality which cannot be fuzzed over. If this divide is to be regarded as "tired' and should be abandoned, then it is akin to saying reality is tired and should be abandoned.

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David,

Neil: At bottom what do we have other than sense experience? Before you say concepts, can you affirm that all concepts are derived either directly or indirectly from sense experience?

DQ: I'll give you an example of how we can reason beyond the empirical realm.

Instead of, say, creating the category, "tree", and grouping a certain number of empirical objects into it, we can create a broader category, "thing", and insert every phenomena in the Universe in there. We can then use this category to uncover those traits and characteristics that all phenomena share - for example, that each and every phenomenon is limited in extent.

How do you "uncover those traits and characteristics" of an abstract category that we cannot empirically observe? At most you could uncover some traits of "things" in our world (and our anthropomorphic world). To extrapolate that every "thing" outside our world must have the same traits would be a misuse of statistics. To simply define abstract attributes for your abstract category gets you nowhere.

Notice that when thinking about things this broadly, there is no need of any empirical testing and observation.

Because all the words (concepts) that you need already exist, right? This is why I said that empiricists must exist before rationalists can come along.
But just because these concepts already exist doesn't mean they are accurate. We have no way to test if these concepts are accurate because we can't test or observe them!

Empirical observation and testing can't add anything to the process. A thing is always a thing - whether it be a mountain, an electron, a thought, a person, a galaxy, or whatever. It doesn't matter form a particular thing has, or what empirical characteristics it might possess, it always remains a thing.

So straight away we are in the realm of pure logic, reasoning about matters that cannot be resolved through empirical methods. Our thinking has transcended the empirical realm entirely.

"A thing is a thing" -- umm yes but what is a thing? This is useless in itself.

DQ: When it comes to matters of ultimate truth, we have no choice but to learn how to reason non-empirically. Science can never uncover what is ultimately true. It will always be limited in this way.

I agree, science can never uncover what is ultimately true. But where do you think all our words and concepts came from? SCIENCE! We can never uncover what is ultimately true.

David writes:

There really is a sharp divide between empirical and non-empirical knowledge - always has been and always be. This is a reality which cannot be fuzzed over. If this divide is to be regarded as "tired' and should be abandoned, then it is akin to saying reality is tired and should be abandoned.

Even a blind person must at least hear a world and the words used in it, and feel a world, too in order for there to be anything over which to reason. In the case of Helen Keller, it took the umpteenth visit to the well . . . . A human born into a sense-deprived condition will be equivalently reason-deprived, too. Reason does not and never has "stood alone."

No, the empirical and the rational as "sharply divided" is brought to you by its ancient parent company of belief - the mind/body duality. It is the same wolf clothed in softer lamb's wool.


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Pye wrote: No, the empirical and the rational as "sharply divided" is brought to you by its ancient parent company of belief - the mind/body duality. It is the same wolf clothed in softer lamb's wool.

The rational operates indeed in the same universe of belief where couples like good-evil and false-true exist in. The empirical, if asserted to exist at all - and why not - only tries to refer to a non-moral, non-true-false, non-dual origin which is fundamentally still unknown to us.

To imagine oneself to have left this universe of sharp divisions, accepting of the unity of body and mind, universe and experience, is to create a completely fictive universe, one that tries to subvert consciousness itself by softening all sharp corners and edges, claiming a larger world beyond good and evil where we're now citizen off. But it just doesn't work no matter how hard and massively it's tried.

Diebert writes:

. . . accepting of the unity of body and mind, universe and experience, is to create a completely fictive universe . . .

I understood the aim here regarding truth to be "ultimate"?

In every case though, I retain the (oft-stated here) belief that minds are also organs of sense-perception, sense-making; that thinking is a form of feeling, regardless of the lack of riotousness with which it comparatively registers; and that thoughts themselves do register as a type of substance; that thinking is something and not nothing, hence, of the empirical (and of course of the rational) in every way.


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Pye wrote:I understood the aim here regarding truth to be "ultimate"?

As in funda-mental or maxim-ized, sure.

In every case though, I retain the (oft-stated here) belief that minds are also organs of sense-perception, sense-making; that thinking is a form of feeling, regardless of the lack of riotousness with which it comparatively registers; and that thoughts themselves do register as a type of substance

Nothing to disagree with here although it's open to reversal or perspective while still remaining valid.

; that thinking is something and not nothing, hence, of the empirical (and of course of the rational) in every way.

Why would you take the empirical to mean more than just observation and all the processes implied with observing? It's just a matter of method, one follows the data and attempt to reason it instead of reasoning first and seek the data. Both seem products of rationality.

I think it boils down to 'raw sensual experience' or 'established beliefs and behavior' versus the reasoning mind and not some conflict between the beliefs of an empiricist and the beliefs of anotherist.

Pye wrote:thinking is something and not nothing, hence, of the empirical (and of course of the rational) in every way.

I'm not really clear what you are saying.

Empirical knowledge is a knowledge that is guessed or presumed.

Since empirical knowledge exists by definition, it is necessarily clearly defined from non-empirical knowledge, which isn't guessed or presumed.

However, it is a certain thing that there is empirical knowledge, so in that broader sense, all things are certain.