It's easy to idealise rationality. After all, it has produced many of the modern wonders of the world, through its application in science and engineering. It's even tempting to let it replace religion, through a faith that all of the great existential questions will eventually succumb to careful reasoning and the application of the scientific method. But, even putting aside the fact that science has
Convincing claims about the limits to rationality, very much including this one, often depend a lot on rationality. Rationality is thus not really a closed system. This is unlike a religious or mystical belief that claims that an inability to understand it is its own proof because it lies beyond us.
Adam Elwood says:
1 October 2022 at 8:09 pm Edit
I guess every formal system relies on axioms outside it. It’s just that rationality is seductive to certain people as the only way to approach things, when it fundamentally misses something.
Laurentius O. Zamoyski says:
1 October 2022 at 10:41 pm Edit
Which religious tradition makes this claim? I ask because it isn’t true of, say, Catholicism (Christ is essentially identified with divine rationality in John 1:1, and the created order a result of that supreme rationality and therefore itself intelligible).
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Laurentius O. Zamoyski says:
1 October 2022 at 11:59 pm Edit
A step in the right direction, to be sure. Now for a theoretical course correction…
While valuation is not the task of empirical science per se (and indeed, even the choice to pursue science is itself a result of valuation), the view that value and ends aren’t rationally knowable, that they are somehow “pre-rational” or “extra-rational” or even “irrational” (Hume famously said that rationality serves the passions) only holds if you reject telos, and this is something the materialist metaphysical doctrine does axiomatically. But if human beings have a nature, then the end or ends of human nature are a defining part of that nature. Human nature is then what determines what is good for human beings and what furthers human flourishing; in short, what results in human happiness. Indeed, it is human nature that is the foundation for any truly defensible objective morality, because without it, we are left with nihilism or relativism or subjectivism or whatever. To reduce rationality to the methods empirical science is not only incoherent, but it is to take a narrow, castrated view of rationality that condemns whole swathes of reality (such as the axiological) to unintelligibility. If the author were to revise his metaphysical views to include telos, I think he would be in a position to make sense of value rather than consigning it to some realm of unintelligible priors.
This is where the blog post becomes confusing. On the one hand, value seems to be construed as something outside of rationality. Then we speak of “intrinsic” values which frankly begins to sound like the beginning of an awareness that human nature is a determiner of such things, though still mired in a subjectivist perspective. Then the author speaks of things as if they were objectively valuable which seems to contradict what he said earlier. How can you criticize the hamster wheel of productivity on subjective grounds? Maybe the workaholic loves the hamster wheel. You need human nature to show that workaholism is bad for human beings.
It is important here to recognize that telos is not a matter of conscious intent. This is a common misconception (though telos is involves here as well). Telos that toward which something is ordered, especially causally. Indeed, without telos, efficient causality itself becomes unintelligible and scientific explanation itself becomes impossible. You could not explain why striking a match, for instance, predictably results in fire and not something else like confetti falling from the ceiling or the sudden appearance of an elephant.
Adam Elwood says:
2 October 2022 at 12:15 pm Edit
I think this criticism is fair, and I’ve actually started to update my beliefs a bit after writing this article. However, I’m not sure I buy the idea of Telos, but I do now think that positive valence conscious experiences are objectively good. All intrinsic values ultimately derive from the fact that they cause more positive conscious experiences in the long run. If you take this fact, you can start to use the tools of rationality to optimise for positive conscious experiences.
The point I was trying to make here was to be careful of people hiding their own value judgements under the umbrella of rationality. Ultimately leading to things that serve themselves, or some other non-intrinsic value (e.g. accumulation of wealth), instead of things that serve consciousness at large.
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Alex says:
3 October 2022 at 2:02 am Edit
Is this not precisely the ‘question’ that is answered by culture? In the case of contemporary Western culture, the intrinsic values are very much out there in public view: liberté, égalité, fraternité or any pretty much any other political/institutional motto conveys it. In the case of a very different culture, say India of the 3rd century AD, the answer was the 4 purusharthas: pleasure, wealth, morals and self-actualization (which I believe best translate to 21st century ears the terms kama, artha, dharma & moksha), with each one being superior in a vague way to the preceding one. It sounds like you’re asking for an equivalent codified version for 21st century America — my submission is: fun, family, fortune and fairness.
Adam Elwood says:
3 October 2022 at 1:01 pm Edit
Yeah I think culture exactly does try to answer this question, although I’m not sure it always gets it right. I think there might actually be a more important meta-value, i.e. ensuring positive conscious experiences, that different cultural values do a better or worse job of addressing.
What might be the role of temperament relative to intrinsic values?
This is an excellent article, very well written.
Previous comments imported from Wordpress
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LV says:
1 October 2022 at 5:36 pm Edit
Convincing claims about the limits to rationality, very much including this one, often depend a lot on rationality. Rationality is thus not really a closed system. This is unlike a religious or mystical belief that claims that an inability to understand it is its own proof because it lies beyond us.
Adam Elwood says:
1 October 2022 at 8:09 pm Edit
I guess every formal system relies on axioms outside it. It’s just that rationality is seductive to certain people as the only way to approach things, when it fundamentally misses something.
Laurentius O. Zamoyski says:
1 October 2022 at 10:41 pm Edit
Which religious tradition makes this claim? I ask because it isn’t true of, say, Catholicism (Christ is essentially identified with divine rationality in John 1:1, and the created order a result of that supreme rationality and therefore itself intelligible).
==========================================
Laurentius O. Zamoyski says:
1 October 2022 at 11:59 pm Edit
A step in the right direction, to be sure. Now for a theoretical course correction…
While valuation is not the task of empirical science per se (and indeed, even the choice to pursue science is itself a result of valuation), the view that value and ends aren’t rationally knowable, that they are somehow “pre-rational” or “extra-rational” or even “irrational” (Hume famously said that rationality serves the passions) only holds if you reject telos, and this is something the materialist metaphysical doctrine does axiomatically. But if human beings have a nature, then the end or ends of human nature are a defining part of that nature. Human nature is then what determines what is good for human beings and what furthers human flourishing; in short, what results in human happiness. Indeed, it is human nature that is the foundation for any truly defensible objective morality, because without it, we are left with nihilism or relativism or subjectivism or whatever. To reduce rationality to the methods empirical science is not only incoherent, but it is to take a narrow, castrated view of rationality that condemns whole swathes of reality (such as the axiological) to unintelligibility. If the author were to revise his metaphysical views to include telos, I think he would be in a position to make sense of value rather than consigning it to some realm of unintelligible priors.
This is where the blog post becomes confusing. On the one hand, value seems to be construed as something outside of rationality. Then we speak of “intrinsic” values which frankly begins to sound like the beginning of an awareness that human nature is a determiner of such things, though still mired in a subjectivist perspective. Then the author speaks of things as if they were objectively valuable which seems to contradict what he said earlier. How can you criticize the hamster wheel of productivity on subjective grounds? Maybe the workaholic loves the hamster wheel. You need human nature to show that workaholism is bad for human beings.
It is important here to recognize that telos is not a matter of conscious intent. This is a common misconception (though telos is involves here as well). Telos that toward which something is ordered, especially causally. Indeed, without telos, efficient causality itself becomes unintelligible and scientific explanation itself becomes impossible. You could not explain why striking a match, for instance, predictably results in fire and not something else like confetti falling from the ceiling or the sudden appearance of an elephant.
Adam Elwood says:
2 October 2022 at 12:15 pm Edit
I think this criticism is fair, and I’ve actually started to update my beliefs a bit after writing this article. However, I’m not sure I buy the idea of Telos, but I do now think that positive valence conscious experiences are objectively good. All intrinsic values ultimately derive from the fact that they cause more positive conscious experiences in the long run. If you take this fact, you can start to use the tools of rationality to optimise for positive conscious experiences.
The point I was trying to make here was to be careful of people hiding their own value judgements under the umbrella of rationality. Ultimately leading to things that serve themselves, or some other non-intrinsic value (e.g. accumulation of wealth), instead of things that serve consciousness at large.
==========================================
Alex says:
3 October 2022 at 2:02 am Edit
Is this not precisely the ‘question’ that is answered by culture? In the case of contemporary Western culture, the intrinsic values are very much out there in public view: liberté, égalité, fraternité or any pretty much any other political/institutional motto conveys it. In the case of a very different culture, say India of the 3rd century AD, the answer was the 4 purusharthas: pleasure, wealth, morals and self-actualization (which I believe best translate to 21st century ears the terms kama, artha, dharma & moksha), with each one being superior in a vague way to the preceding one. It sounds like you’re asking for an equivalent codified version for 21st century America — my submission is: fun, family, fortune and fairness.
Adam Elwood says:
3 October 2022 at 1:01 pm Edit
Yeah I think culture exactly does try to answer this question, although I’m not sure it always gets it right. I think there might actually be a more important meta-value, i.e. ensuring positive conscious experiences, that different cultural values do a better or worse job of addressing.